Who said that to travel you have to move, take the car or plane, go to another place? Forced isolation due to the coronavirus can be an opportunity to make a sustainable holiday with almost zero impact, comfortably from the sofa at home: you just need a computer and an internet connection.
There are dream places that you can visit online thanks to the images made available by Google Street View. It is certainly not the same thing as immersing yourself in the landscape, breathing its smells and hearing its sounds, but it is certainly a way to escape from your apartment and find yourself, at least virtually, in places that we all dream of visiting.
Those who love wild nature can immerse themselves in the Amazon rainforest, among rivers and ancient trees, get to know the community of the Rio Negro reserve and the paths of the Tumbira. You can visit the snow-capped mountains of the Dolomites, imagining the sun reflecting on the snow creating special light effects, or go to the United States and admire the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Park.
Blazing sun and sand in the United Arab Emirates, where you can virtually visit 360-degree panoramic images of the Liwa desert, the largest oasis on the Arabian Peninsula. And if instead the snowy landscapes attract you more, then you can go to Antarctica and discover the secrets of this boundless frozen place.
From land to sea with Google Earth which, thanks to an agreement with some institutes, gave birth to the Catlin Seaview project and managed to show the world the marine depths and the Australian Great Barrier Reef. Make yourself comfortable and enjoy the seventh continent, the submerged one, and explore secret places that only a few have had the privilege of seeing live.
Forced imprisonment from Covid-19 can be an opportunity to take a journey into culture and visit the most beautiful and important museums in the world. We start from our home, from the Vatican Museums of Rome which contain a vast collection of works of art, frescoes and classic sculptures desired by the various Popes over the centuries. It is possible to take a virtual tour of the various rooms of the museum and the Sistine Chapel.
We move to France where is the Louvre, one of the most famous art museums in the world, which offers free online guided tours of exhibitions dedicated to Egyptian antiquity and allows a 360-degree view of its interior.
Even in the British Museum in London it is possible to admire objects, over eight million, dating back to ancient times. Many pieces from the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum are part of the collection that can be consulted online.
Among the most visited museums in the world and also available online is the Smithsonian National museum of natural history in Washington. The halls are full of historical and naturalistic treasures including mammals, insects and dinosaurs. For space enthusiasts, NASA offers free virtual tours of its Houston space center with a very special tour guide: an animated robot called Audima.
If we know how to carve out spaces for ourselves, to cultivate our passions and to learn new things, then the quarantine will not be wasted time but time that we can use to do all those things that we normally cannot do, too busy with the daily commitments that absorb us completely.
