Armchair Travel: How to “Visit” New Places From Your Living Room

Grab your favorite throw blanket, pour a cup of tea and get ready to journey across the globe from the comfort of home.

What Is Armchair Travel?

Armchair travel is exactly what it sounds like. It’s exploring the world from your armchair — or recliner, sofa or warm bed. It’s a fun and fulfilling way to learn about different cultures, foods and landscapes without leaving your own neighborhood or senior living community.

You might “travel” through books, movies, virtual tours or cooking international recipes. It’s a low-stress, no-suitcase-required adventure that can spark joy, curiosity and conversation at any age.

Ways to Travel Without Leaving Home

There’s no one right way to armchair travel. Explore locations of interest to you by mixing and matching from some of the options below.

Watch Documentaries or Travel Shows

Let stunning visuals and expert narration whisk you away. Travel programs and nature documentaries are a great way to see new places and cultures in real time.

Some programs you might want to try include:

• Rick Steves’ Europe. This long-running travel series offers more than 10 seasons of half-hour shows highlighting interesting places across Europe. You can explore countries like Austria, Greece, Spain and Ireland with host Rick Steves. You can watch many of the episodes online, and the transcripts are included if you want to read along.
• BBC’s Planet Earth. If your interests lean more toward the animal and plant kingdoms and you’d rather see sweeping desert landscapes or deep ocean canyons than villas and castles, BBC’s Planet Earth may be the right travel show for you. You can watch clips from the show online and may be able to stream episodes via Amazon Prime or another provider. Local libraries also often have Planet Earth DVDs you can borrow.
• Expedia’s YouTube channel. The discount travel booking site publishes short-form videos about people and places from across the globe. These can be a great option if you only want to armchair travel for 15 minutes at a time.

Read Fiction or Memoirs From Around the World

Books can drop you into another place and time. Pick a story set in a different country or a memoir from someone with experience in another culture. Some options to consider include:

• The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See, which takes place in remote, mountainous China
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and other books in the series by Alexander McCall Smit, which takes place in Botswana and nearby nations
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed, which is a memoir about a young woman hiking in the Pacific Northwest
• World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever, which explores interesting locations across the globe

Try International Recipes

Tasting another country’s flavors can help you feel like you’re abroad. Try preparing simple snacks or meals inspired by different cultures. You don’t need a full kitchen — just a microwave, a fridge and some creativity. Try options like:

• Chickpea salad
• Japanese onigiri
• Cantarito cocktail

Explore Virtual Museums and Tours

Online tours let you visit world-famous museums and natural wonders with just a few clicks. Many offer free access and guided videos, so you can explore at your own pace.

Digital museums to visit today:

• The Louvre. Choose from numerous exhibits and conduct a digital walk-through of fine art from across the ages. The Louvre also offers a Mona Lisa Beyond the Glass virtual reality experience online. Consider casting your smartphone or tablet screen to a smart TV screen to get a better view of the art as you explore this digital museum option.
• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Walk through the permanent and current exhibits at this D.C. gem and view prehistoric fossils, priceless stones, animal habitats and other natural wonders. A perk of digital access to this museum is that you can also explore past exhibits.
• The British Museum. Explore the collection of the British Museum, which covers more than 2 million years of history. You can explore by clicking on images or filtering by medium, subject or location.

Enjoy Armchair Travel With Friends

Travel is often better with an adventure companion. Invite a neighbor to watch a documentary with you or talk about a book you’ve read over lunch. You could host a “travel night” in a shared space:

• Pick a theme — a country, time period, location or specific museum, for example.
• Plan ahead for drinks and snacks — make it potluck and ask everyone to bring something related to the theme.
• Set up a television and watch a documentary or explore a virtual museum together.
• Play music relevant to the theme as you discuss what you learned.