Begin a Svalbard visit with the stories inside the museum
Use an indoor cultural and natural-history visit to give a Svalbard journey more context before choosing outdoor activities.
Learn, read and create
Skills and cultural projects, at home or elsewhere.
Begin a meaningful project, follow a question or try something new close to home.
Start with these guides
- Learn enough of a language for one real conversation. Explore the experience and decide what would make it meaningful for you.
- Read your way into Edinburgh with three different books. Explore the experience and decide what would make it meaningful for you.
- Look through a telescope at Chabot and take your time with the sky. Explore the experience and decide what would make it meaningful for you.
- Read three books around one question: how did early societies take shape?. Turn a large interest in ancient history into a reading project built around evidence, competing arguments and your own questions.
- Meet Vasa as a ship people built, not just a spectacular wreck. Give Stockholm’s preserved ship a question to answer, then use the museum’s interpretation to look beyond its scale.
- Give Coimbra’s Joanina Library your attention, not your camera. Build a Coimbra visit around the library’s timed entry, with its photography rules and access arrangements settled before you arrive.
Check current arrangements before committing to your visit.
More experiences to consider
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Look at the Americas through objects in Santiago’s Precolombino museum: Choose a small thread through pre-Columbian art, with the museum’s current gallery closures kept in view.
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Begin Great Books of the Western World one work at a time: Begin a lasting reading project with one work, a workable rhythm and a thoughtful decision about buying the collection.
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Read Hemingway in Key West, then visit the home behind the legend: Pair a Hemingway book with his Key West home, an unhurried reading break and a day shaped around one literary connection.
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Spend a Vienna morning inside Bruegel’s seasons: Build a Vienna museum visit around Bruegel’s landscapes, with time to look before adding more of the city.
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Begin a Svalbard visit with the stories inside the museum: Use an indoor cultural and natural-history visit to give a Svalbard journey more context before choosing outdoor activities.
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Read a little Walden, then spend time beside the pond: Take one question from Thoreau’s book into a modest visit, without trying to recreate his life or complete an entire reading list.
All guides in this topic
Spend a Vienna morning inside Bruegel’s seasons
Build a Vienna museum visit around Bruegel’s landscapes, with time to look before adding more of the city.
Read a little Walden, then spend time beside the pond
Take one question from Thoreau’s book into a modest visit, without trying to recreate his life or complete an entire reading list.
Read Hemingway in Key West, then visit the home behind the legend
Pair a Hemingway book with his Key West home, an unhurried reading break and a day shaped around one literary connection.
Begin Great Books of the Western World one work at a time
Begin a lasting reading project with one work, a workable rhythm and a thoughtful decision about buying the collection.
Give Coimbra’s Joanina Library your attention, not your camera
Build a Coimbra visit around the library’s timed entry, with its photography rules and access arrangements settled before you arrive.
Look at the Americas through objects in Santiago’s Precolombino museum
Choose a small thread through pre-Columbian art, with the museum’s current gallery closures kept in view.
Meet Vasa as a ship people built, not just a spectacular wreck
Give Stockholm’s preserved ship a question to answer, then use the museum’s interpretation to look beyond its scale.
Give Alaska’s living cultures time in Anchorage
Visit the Alaska Native Heritage Center with a particular interest, and choose the season and format for the conversations you want.
Cook a Thai meal on a farm outside Chiang Mai
Turn a favorite cuisine into something you can make, with a hands-on class and one dish to bring into life at home.
Make an illustrated record of a place you know
Six small drawings can preserve the character of an ordinary place more personally than another folder of photographs.
Spend a quiet Dublin visit at Marsh’s Library
Enter a historic library as a visitor, with time to notice the room and its relationship to books and readers.
Make your first piece of pottery in San Francisco
A beginner clay workshop with a useful reminder that the experience and the finished object happen on different days.
Try citizen science by helping Galaxy Zoo classify real galaxies
A short session with a genuine research project can turn an interest in space into something you participate in.
Dye a small piece of Kyoto to take home
Try a beginner Kyo-Yuzen workshop and turn a small fabric item into a memory you helped make.
Learn enough of a language for one real conversation
Make the goal a small exchange about something you care about, with room to listen, hesitate and try again.
Learn one family recipe and keep the story with it
Make a dish with someone who knows it, record the details that usually go unspoken and create something another person can use.
Try making music at Liverpool’s British Music Experience
Pair a museum of popular music with a small practical experiment on an instrument, even if you have never played.
Keep a field journal at one familiar place and see what changes
Return to the same small patch of nature with a notebook and give ordinary observations a chance to accumulate.
Look through a telescope at Chabot and take your time with the sky
A public telescope evening in Oakland offers a nearby way to turn curiosity about space into something you actually do.
Build a small Montréal meal at Jean-Talon Market
Use a market visit to choose a few ingredients or ready-to-eat items, with the season deciding what interests you.
Follow colour and familiar objects through Nice’s Matisse Museum
Give a Nice museum visit a practical focus: how an artist turns everyday things into a different way of seeing.
Spend a museum visit with one painting and let it become familiar
Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London offers a concrete starting point for looking slowly, even if you know little about art.
Go inside Oxford’s Bodleian on a library tour
Choose the actual rooms you want to see, with a guided library visit that goes beyond admiring Oxford from the street.
Read your way into Edinburgh with three different books
A city portrait, a schoolroom novel and a crime story offer three starting points for a reading journey you can take anywhere.
Make a Singapore hawker meal an experience at Lau Pa Sat
Choose a small tasting adventure in a real working food venue, with time to notice the cooking and setting.
Understand a Skye whisky at Talisker’s distillery
Choose a visit about how whisky is made, with the production route, tasting format and journey home considered separately.
Explore Taipei’s Palace Museum through jade, bronze and ceramics
Give a large museum a personal theme by following three materials and the choices of the people who worked them.
Read three books around one question: how did early societies take shape?
Turn a large interest in ancient history into a reading project built around evidence, competing arguments and your own questions.
Discover how much a shoe can tell you in Toronto
Visit the Bata Shoe Museum with one everyday object as your way into design, work and social history.
Visit the Library of Congress as a curious reader
Give Washington’s Thomas Jefferson Building a focused visit, with the public visitor experience kept distinct from doing research.
Learn about Wendat life on a guided visit in Wendake
Choose an interpreted visit to Onhoüa Chetek8e, with the guide, language and outdoor setting central to your plans.