Dear reader,

Last Saturday morning, I finally (finally!) finished a book I’d started several months ago: Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel, a philosophical-yet-relatable take on what it means to travel for pleasure. (It’s also a funny exploration of the disappointments and banality that can accompany travel. You know, like fighting with your partner in a beautiful part of the world or driving through mind-numbingly flat terrain.)

I actually laughed out loud as I made my way through the last chapter, “On Habit.” It opens with de Botton feeling depressed about returning to London after a satisfying trip, but it soon segues into a mediation on cultivating a travel mindset at home. He even introduces “room travel,” a concept that struck me as remarkably timely, given that it was invented 230 years ago.

Pioneered by a young Frenchman named Xavier de Maistre in 1790, the idea is to journey around your room—as in your own bedroom or living room—with the same level of curiosity and awareness you bring to traveling in a new city or country.

I mean, how spot on is that?! How many laps around your house, studio apartment, or cabin in the woods have you made in the past month? (Possibly as part of AFAR’s #TravelAtHomeChallenge?) If you’re like me, you might actually be a little sick of room travel—which is why de Botton’s reminder “to look around me as though I had never been in this place before” grabbed my attention.

Missing France? Now is the perfect time to try making your own éclairs and pretend you’re dining at Parisian sidewalk cafe.

And so that Saturday, I took a trip to a faraway land: the kitchen. You wouldn’t believe the miles I racked up! I decided to make strawberry preserves, but you know, in a room travel kinda way. I pulled out the cutting board, a hardy beast that a friend made for me years ago. I ran my hand along the oiled surface. I admired the sunlight brightening the counter that’s just long enough for pulling strands of pasta and attempting French éclairs or Australian Lamingtons.

As I halved a lemon, I was aware of the stillness of the house. I’d turned the news off, which allowed sounds from outside to drift in. There was the hum of sparse traffic on the freeway, the brassy honk of a goose, and somewhere the whine of a circular saw.

I began to hull strawberries, and my mind drifted back to when I studied in western France. On weekends, my host mom and I would hike in the hills outside the seaside town of Cancale searching for the tiniest, sweetest strawberries I’ve ever tasted. When I sliced into a fat brown vanilla bean, I thought about watching workers on perilously tall ladders collect the spice on a Balinese farm, which made me appreciate how insanely expensive vanilla is. It’s funny how travel memories have a way of surfacing even when you’re trying to stay in the present.

Are you (literally) dreaming about travel more lately? You’re not alone.

I’m not giving up on actual travel. In fact, my dream of hiking the Kumano Kodo like Peggy Orenstein is even more vivid. (As are the rest of my dreams—and those of my coworkers.) And I can’t say that an afternoon in my kitchen was as exciting as a trip to Japan. It did, however, shake me out of my quarantine stupor and remind me that there’s value in looking more closely at the things we think we know.

Everyone’s quarantine is different. Whatever you do to stay sane, whether it’s taking spectacularly long walks around San Francisco like AFAR’s director of photography, Tara Guertin, or virtual bird watching, or learning to bake sourdough as 95 percent of the adult population seems to be doing, I hope you’ll take this line from de Botton with you:

“Dressed in pink-and-blue pyjamas, satisfied within the confines of his own bedroom, Xavier de Maistre was gently nudging us to try, before taking off for distant hemispheres, to notice what we have already seen.”

Be well,

Aislyn Greene
Senior Editor

@aislynj

A half-dozen things getting me through these endless days at home:

AFAR’s first-ever book club! Join, read, chat—just don’t forget to support your favorite independent bookstore.
If you need a dose of warm and fuzzies, spend some time exploring Canadian kindness with writer Colleen Kinder, part of our just-released May/June 2020 issue.
Rick Steves on the piano. Noel Fielding’s art club. French butter-making. Eight things brightening our days here at AFAR.
“Yeah, your definition of a pretty big deal is gonna change.” Comedian Julie Nolke travels back in time to warn her January 2020 self about what’s to come.
My partner and I are obsessed with Ozark, even though it’s super dark. Maybe that’s why we’re obsessed? I don’t really know, but I do know that the aerial footage of the Lake of the Ozarks has made me wonder what it’d be like to spend a summer weekend there.
I’ve been making these buckwheat chocolate chip cookies about once every other month since I gobbled up David Lebovitz’s L’Appart, a cookbook-slash-memoir about renovating his Paris apartment, a couple of years ago. Bake up a batch and settle into the couch to read the book—I guarantee you a perfect day.

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