How to Re-live Past Trip Experiences
It’s been a rough year. And without having upcoming trips to look forward to, I’ve found myself developing new ways to re-live past travel experiences. Below are my favorite ways to share with you!
RE-CREATE YOUR FAVORITE MEAL
Possibly our very favorite aspect of travel is eating. Who’s isn’t?! And our favorite way to bring our past travels to life is by cooking food that we loved on the road. Fried rice from Cambodia. Ramen from Japan. Re-creating favorite salads that we enjoyed in Budapest, Marrakech, and Chiang Mai. I have so many food and menu pictures throughout my camera roll.
We have a list of 96 of our favorite dishes, drinks and snacks that we love from all over the world. We’re cooking through that list, finalizing recipes that are as close as possible to their originals and turning them into a cookbook for our family. If one day my kids cook their families kebabs or Tom Ka from that cookbook, I will know that we’ve done our job right!
A few of our favorite recipes to re-create that epic meal: Goulash from Budapest, Khao Soi from Chiang Mai and Spicy Roasted Peanuts from Cambodia.
MEMORY GAMES
The downside of traveling when your kids are small is that they can’t hold on to memories like adults. We encourage the kids to repeat stories of their favorite travel memories again and again to help retain them. We also love to play a game we titled “I’m thinking of a place”. Someone thinks of a place that we traveled to and then begins to offer the other players clues. Starting with vague clues and then progressing to clues that are more and more specific until someone guesses the right location. We would play it during long bus rides or waiting in lines and now we play it around the dinner table.
Even something as simple as showing them photos from your travels and having them score points for naming the city or country would be easy and fun!
HAVE A WEEKEND ADVENTURE
Beside trying new-to-us foods, our favorite things about traveling are: getting outdoors, spending time in/near water and seeing amazing sights. Good news… This can all be done in your hometown! A trip to the lake or even the community pool added a little adventure to our week during our first summer in Oregon. Hikes and scavenger hunts through the neighbor got us outdoors and time spent soaking up some Vitamin D.
OUTDOORS - Our family loves to go camping. We took four camping trips during a two months span over the summer. We love all of the time spent outdoors. Morning eating breakfast in the crisp, cool air. Nights around the campfire. We always come back feeling refreshed even if we’re covered in dirt! Even daily park trips and long runs/walks help us get outdoors each day. I love the website 1000 Hours Outside who’s entire purpose is to get people outside no matter the weather. You can join their 1000 Hours Outside Challenge and track your family’s hours on their beautiful templates.
WATER - It took our kids awhile to learn to swim. I grew up with an aversion to swimming in the, often turbulent, Pacific Ocean. I mistook this for us not being a “water family”. I was wrong! I think that our family is happiest when we’re in or near water. One of my happiest memories from the summer was when all four of us swam out to a buoy in the middle of Suttle Lake. It was a long swim (the kids had life vests on) and we needed to cheer each other on. The sun was setting, the lake was beautiful and we felt accomplished! Find a body of water, a pool, or even just turn on your sprinklers. But the most important part, get in that water with your kids. I promise that it will be worth it.
SIGHTSEEING - Take a moment to make a list of the places in your town or city that tourists visit and you have never seen. I’m sure that you can think of something! Explore your town like a visitor. Walk down your Main Street, pop into small stores and support their business. Peruse a record store. End your day with local beer or dinner at a local restaurant. Experiencing new places in your home town will leave you with the “just traveled, filled-up” feeling. This is our first year in Oregon and we loved visiting new-to-us state and national parks this summer. There are so many state parks throughout the U.S. I’m sure there is one within an hour’s drive that you have yet to visit!
FINALLY MAKE THAT ALBUM
There’s nothing like combing through hundreds of travel photos to help you re-live your memories! Building travel albums takes time but it’s time well spent. Dedicating time to re-call memories and document them can be fun. Get your family involved and have them add their own memories. I’m sure they will be more likely to spend a slow, Sunday morning paging through the albums if their own memories are included.
I love photo albums so much that I turned our Instagram Stories into an album. About two months into our travels, I ditched my personal journal since most of our memories were already being captured through our Stories. Whenever I miss our travels, I open to a page and read through our favorite moments.
What are some of your favorite ways to re-live past travel memories? I love to add new ways to our list! Share in the comments below!
