Travel · 30 min
Be curiousclose to home
Walk somewhere ten minutes from your door as if you were visiting, and find three things you never noticed.
Travel is mostly a way of paying attention. You can do some of that without leaving your own streets.
The steps
Four small steps,in your own time.
Choose a street, a park or a shop ten minutes from home that you pass but never stop at.
Walk there slowly, as a visitor would. Look up at the buildings, the roofs, the windows.
Find three things you never noticed: a date on a wall, a tree in flower, a shop you did not know was there.
Stop somewhere for five minutes: a bench, a cafe, a wall. Take one photo, or none.
The reason
Why it helps
Familiar places stop being seen. Looking at them as a visitor brings back some of the interest and lightness of being somewhere new, without the cost or the planning. A short outing also gives a long week a change of scene, which is often what people miss most when travel is out of reach.
A gentle variation
If you cannot get out, look out of a window for ten minutes and find three things you never noticed from there.
WE · TRIBE
Try itwith someone.
Take someone with you and each find your three things, then swap. Or ask a neighbour who has lived there longer what you should look for.
Try it today
Today or this week, walk somewhere ten minutes from your door as if you were visiting, and find three things you never noticed before.
More like this
More from VIVE Travel,for real days.
Travel · 15 min
Sketch a one-page getaway
One sheet of paper: where, how you would get there, where you would sleep, and one thing you would do. No booking.
Travel · 20 min
Take the street you never take
On a walk you already do, turn down one street you have never taken, and see where it goes.
Travel · 20 min
Plan a small day out
Choose somewhere within an hour, one thing to see there, and a day this month. Write it on the calendar.