Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is to take a hobby themed vacation. Rather than
Speaker 1: starting with where, sometimes it's fun to start with what
Speaker 1: you'll be doing and use some of your time off
Speaker 1: to go deep on something you really love. So on
Speaker 1: the blog Cup of Joe, a recent post described a
Speaker 1: cookbook vacation dreamed up by two friends. Both of them
Speaker 1: loved to cook, so they rented an airbnb and planned
Speaker 1: to cook their way through some famous cookbooks. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: pandemic derailed their plans, but I still think that this
Speaker 1: is a really neat idea. People whose ski or dive
Speaker 1: or golf might take hobby vacations, but many folks with
Speaker 1: other sorts of hobbies don't really think about how those
Speaker 1: might work in a holiday context. And yet, if we
Speaker 1: love our hobbies and generally enjoy our time off, combining
Speaker 1: the two might make for some really memorable experiences. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you like to cook, you could take
Speaker 1: a page from Cup of Joe and plan a vacation
Speaker 1: or staycation centered around cooking. Maybe you could cook from
Speaker 1: a specific cookbook or visit a location known for a
Speaker 1: particular cuisine to take a cooking class. You could enroll
Speaker 1: in a short course at a cooking school. You could
Speaker 1: go somewhere with lots of farms and markets and really
Speaker 1: use the local ingredients. Maybe you could arrange a private
Speaker 1: lesson with a chef, or a visit to a kitchen
Speaker 1: at a well known restaurant. String a few of these
Speaker 1: ideas together and you'd really have a vacation worth remembering.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you like crafting or some other creative hobby.
Speaker 1: You could make a pilgrimage to a famous store in
Speaker 1: another city, a well known yarn store, for instance, or
Speaker 1: a stationery store you've been hearing about for years. You
Speaker 1: could take a class somewhere. You could visit a museum
Speaker 1: devoted to crafts, or go to a craft's related conference,
Speaker 1: or visit lots of craft markets. Rent a space with
Speaker 1: some fellow craft lovers and bring all your materials and
Speaker 1: go to town. A photographer might visit a space with
Speaker 1: natural beauty for the purpose of taking lots of great shots.
Speaker 1: A book lover might enjoy visiting a bookstore in another place.
Speaker 1: Plenty of people happily travel hundreds of miles to go
Speaker 1: to the Strand in New York City, Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: or Anne Patchett's Parnassus in Nashville. Buy a few new
Speaker 1: books at the Destination book store, find a park bench
Speaker 1: or a coffee shop, and read to your heart's content.
Speaker 1: Another reading themed possibility is to visit your favorite author's
Speaker 1: home town and spend a weekend reading his or her
Speaker 1: works and walking the streets where the author walked. I
Speaker 1: have toyed with the idea of wandering around Dublin to
Speaker 1: see where the various events in Ulysses happened. Or hey,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like seeing a Christmas Carol performed in London
Speaker 1: or seeing one of Shakespeare's plays there. When people plan vacations,
Speaker 1: a common starting point is where they want to go.
Speaker 1: But another approach is to start from an activity that
Speaker 1: you'd like to do. Instead of focusing your time off
Speaker 1: on a place, focus it on an activity. Then you
Speaker 1: choose the where or the wares based on what fits best.
Speaker 1: Of course, if your focus is on what, then you
Speaker 1: may not even need to travel somewhere to indulge your hobby,
Speaker 1: but you do want to make sure that you are
Speaker 1: still in a vacation mindset. If you are taking a
Speaker 1: hobby vacation, so think through this hobby staycation so you
Speaker 1: maximize the good stuff and minimize any not so fun stuff.
Speaker 1: What would you enjoy doing on a hobby themed vacation.
Speaker 1: I would love to hear about it. You can let
Speaker 1: me know at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
Speaker 1: to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Send me your tips, your questions,
Speaker 1: or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod. That's b E the
Speaker 1: number four then Breakfast pod. You can also shoot me
Speaker 1: an email at Before Breakfast Podcasts at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1: That Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Should I look forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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