Second Cup: Take a hobby-themed vacation

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to take a hobby themed vacation. Rather than
starting with where, sometimes it's fun to start with what

(00:27):
you'll be doing and use some of your time off
to go deep on something you really love. So on
the blog Cup of Joe, a recent post described a
cookbook vacation dreamed up by two friends. Both of them
loved to cook, so they rented an airbnb and planned

(00:49):
to cook their way through some famous cookbooks. Unfortunately, the
pandemic derailed their plans, but I still think that this
is a really neat idea. People whose ski or dive
or golf might take hobby vacations, but many folks with
other sorts of hobbies don't really think about how those

(01:11):
might work in a holiday context. And yet, if we
love our hobbies and generally enjoy our time off, combining
the two might make for some really memorable experiences. So,
for instance, if you like to cook, you could take
a page from Cup of Joe and plan a vacation

(01:33):
or staycation centered around cooking. Maybe you could cook from
a specific cookbook or visit a location known for a
particular cuisine to take a cooking class. You could enroll
in a short course at a cooking school. You could
go somewhere with lots of farms and markets and really
use the local ingredients. Maybe you could arrange a private

(01:56):
lesson with a chef, or a visit to a kitchen
at a well known restaurant. String a few of these
ideas together and you'd really have a vacation worth remembering.
Or maybe you like crafting or some other creative hobby.
You could make a pilgrimage to a famous store in
another city, a well known yarn store, for instance, or

(02:20):
a stationery store you've been hearing about for years. You
could take a class somewhere. You could visit a museum
devoted to crafts, or go to a craft's related conference,
or visit lots of craft markets. Rent a space with
some fellow craft lovers and bring all your materials and
go to town. A photographer might visit a space with

(02:44):
natural beauty for the purpose of taking lots of great shots.
A book lover might enjoy visiting a bookstore in another place.
Plenty of people happily travel hundreds of miles to go
to the Strand in New York City, Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon,
or Anne Patchett's Parnassus in Nashville. Buy a few new

(03:06):
books at the Destination book store, find a park bench
or a coffee shop, and read to your heart's content.
Another reading themed possibility is to visit your favorite author's
home town and spend a weekend reading his or her
works and walking the streets where the author walked. I

(03:27):
have toyed with the idea of wandering around Dublin to
see where the various events in Ulysses happened. Or hey,
there's nothing like seeing a Christmas Carol performed in London
or seeing one of Shakespeare's plays there. When people plan vacations,
a common starting point is where they want to go.

(03:49):
But another approach is to start from an activity that
you'd like to do. Instead of focusing your time off
on a place, focus it on an activity. Then you
choose the where or the wares based on what fits best.
Of course, if your focus is on what, then you
may not even need to travel somewhere to indulge your hobby,

(04:13):
but you do want to make sure that you are
still in a vacation mindset. If you are taking a
hobby vacation, so think through this hobby staycation so you
maximize the good stuff and minimize any not so fun stuff.
What would you enjoy doing on a hobby themed vacation.

(04:34):
I would love to hear about it. You can let
me know at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and here's
to making the most of our time. Hey, everybody, I'd

(04:58):
love to hear from you. Send me your tips, your questions,
or anything else. Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook
and Instagram at Before Breakfast Pod. That's b E the
number four then Breakfast pod. You can also shoot me
an email at Before Breakfast Podcasts at iHeartMedia dot com.

(05:19):
That Before Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters.
Thanks so much. Should I look forward to staying in touch.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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(05:39):
you listen to your favorite shows.