How are you all doing since Covid stopped travel?

So with a year since travel has effectively stopped what have you all been doing to pass the time? How have things been going where you are? Notice any changes that worry you or give you hope for the future? Anyone do some domestic travel or found some other activity to substitue travel?

I managed to get some road trips around my state and now that state borders are staying open I'm thinking of actually crossing some of them. Also got some vouchers to visit tourist attractions in Sydney, so it has been pretty interesting being a tourist in my own city but wow places like Darling Harbour and Circular Quay are very dead. On the other hand with everyone staying in our local areas the suburban centres have been busy.

Everything relatively well here, thanks for asking, just waiting for the vaccinations starts to do their thing and world starting to open again

I joined english discussion group and yoga (both which I have been thinking for a long time that I would like to do), otherwise just business as usual, the pandemic haven't affected my work which I can't do remotely..

We actually have rented cabin up north where we are going this week so little bit travelling is on the horizon!

Still, I am little bit jealous of you, I have always wanted to go to Australia and there you are, road tripping

The UK has been in lockdown of one sort or another for almost a year (thfirst lockdown started on 24th March). Basically, I haven't been anywhere for the past year other than a few daytrips to see my daughter & her family who live about 100 miles away.

Travel abroad has been very difficult indeed. Imo it's not worth the effort of being tested (and paying £100+ GBP for each test) and having to self-isolate for 10 days on return (either at home or, for some countries, in designated hotels at the cost of over £1000).

In the short period when travel and staying overnight in the UK was allowed I simply didn't bother. Everywhere was hugely crowded because almost everyone who could go on holiday ...or for daytrips to e.g. historical sites...did so. We have a population of 66 million+ in a very tiny island so absolutely nowhere appealed to me.

So I've mostly stayed in my home area, walking locally in the months when we've not been allowed to travel for exercise (we've not been allowed to do that since December 26th) and, when we have been allowed, driving further afield to walk.

But things will, hopefully, improve fairly soon. I've had my first vaccination and will get my second before mid-May. UK vaccinations are going very well (now doing the over-50s) and we're hopeful that that hotels, bars, pubs and restaurants will be properly open by the end of May. I've just made a fully-cancellable early-June booking for a few days in a coastal town and we all have our fingers crossed that the planned VT Euromeet in Newcastle-on-Tyne will go ahead in September...and our fingers even more tightly crossed that our many non-UK VT friends will be able to visit by then.

What I *really* want to do is visit the US to see my son and his family: it's been 2 years since I was there. That's hard (and sad, because children grow up so quickly) but it is as it is. Maybe in October/November...or maybe in 2022. We'll see...........

[ Edit: Edited on 17 Mar 2021, 18:29 GMT by leics2 ]

I discovered a time machine. Insert Budweiser. On the plus side (my new physical description) I have logged a lot of travels here on the site, marveled at some old photos and remembered some awesome hotels and meals I took pictures of.

I also remembered the bad hotels, meals....

I have also found lots of photos of the people who make life worth living even if some are no longer with us.

I also found that crazy photo of me on school photo day - the day after my parents decided to get a 'home haircut' kit.

I am currently blackmailing my own mother. She offered to buy me flowers when I sent it to her....

Being serious, my photos remind me of the amazing places my great grandparents could not have seen or possibly even read about. I am thankful for so much.

However.... if I don't get travelling soon I will explode.

All the best,

DAO

(1 jab done and 1 to go)

I've been down bad brother. Definitely taking more bike rides round the city but it's just not the same. I've been looking at my old photos a lot, as well as watching travel vlogs of other people on Youtube. And taking notes!
Gustavo Woltmann

Hello,
Hope the travel industry will boom again. Looking forward to best

Well, I consider myself the biggest gallivanter and I am actually. It was tough to hold my traveling desires during lockdown so I planed a socially distant road trip during COVID. If you want to get away and embrace nature, but feel uncomfortable checking into a hotel or private lodging, there are lots of other outdoor options from camping to glamping that make it easy to avoid mobs.

I'm quite amazed at how little I've managed to do in the last year. We started staying in slightly earlier than most as my husband had symptoms at the very start of February 2020, and I did three weeks later, so even though we didn't know we had it at the time, and there weren't any restrictions in place, we put ourselves in 'lockdown' then.

Aside from a couple of short visits to family in Kent last summer when rules permitted, we've not left our local area at all. We're in Greenwich, London, don't have a car, and the main park is always packed with locals and others who've driven here, so we stick to the smaller park nearby if we get out for a walk. I'm pretty envious of all the people I see who have lots of quiet places that they can go out to, or can drive to, or even just having a garden. Still, I am mostly just grateful that we and our friends and family have got through pretty much unscathed so far. We've both had our first jabs in the last two weeks, so hopefully we can start to get closer to normal. Can't see foreign travel on the horizon for a while though, as even if we're OK, we don't want to travel to places that are under significant restrictions and, more importantly, we don't want to risk causing issues elsewhere.

I didn't really lose that much. On the contrary, I have made even more acquaintances since I stayed in Russia. I flew in from the US and stayed here for a while. I specifically flew in order to get russian citizenship, but as it turned out later, I could not do this, since I found some russia-travel passport services on the Internet that takes care of passport registration. I could have stayed in America and not gone anywhere if I had known. But I don't regret anything in the end. I'm even glad that everything turned out this way.