I’m not in a position to take a holiday at the moment, but as someone who is self-employed, I find it’s actually more difficult to take a break than to work, and being based at primarily at home makes it even more tricky to work out how or what to do regarding carving out time to switch off and get away from things without actually going anywhere.
I’ve tried staycations before (that is to say a staycation in the truest form of the word: staying at home but treating it like a holiday venue rather than the more recent interpretation which means staying in your home country rather than going abroad) but I’ve never been able to get myself in to the necessary mindset. So this time I decided to create a staycation based around a different place, and for no other reason that it’s somewhere I would never normally go and equally, my veg box scheme had an offer on all things from here for the time period I was considering, I choose Greece.
I went on Pinterest and randomly chose the island of Paros for my staycation. I remembered that during Lockdown there were a vast range of walking tours available on YouTube, and sure enough, there was both a daytime and evening stroll through the winding and impossibly beautiful streets of Parikia, the capital city of this now immensely popular island, but thanks to the filming being carried out during the pandemic, there were far fewer people than there would be now so it seemed wonderfully quaint. There are also a lot of tours of the Parthenon and the Acropolis so as I could transport myself to the mainland with the click of the mouse, I added those to my list.
I took some screenshots as the chosen walkers did their tours, and thanks to the subtitles, I gleaned a fair amount of information about what was where. I then drew them in my sketchbook, and felt thankful that I wasn’t having to deal with the heat of Athens! I then found a video of someone’s birdwatching trip to a neighbouring island, Lesvos, and although there was no commentary or description, I managed to identify most of the birds thanks to my field guide which covers Europe as well as the UK.
Here are my pages:
It was fun to have a focal point and give myself permission to explore somewhere totally different, while also catching up on some reading, walking, eating nice food, drinking nice coffee, as well as a much needed chance to ignore my emails and to-do list for a few days. I’m considering somewhere in Italy for next month. Any suggestions?
