Story
Creating a Stay-at-Home Vacation Experience
How Amelia created a stay-at-home vacation to Scotland for her mom.
As the holiday season began, I [became] flooded with memories of last year’s Christmas. We were supposed to go to Scotland, but the pandemic canceled [our] travels abroad. Initially, we were all sad. However, I was able to put together a stay-at-home vacation present to Scotland for my mom.
Creating a Stay-at-Home Vacation
I did research on everything Scottish like typical patterns, food, and drinks. After researching, I finally started to implement my special plan. I bought my mom a Royal Stewart tartan blanket. [The blanket] is red, black, a touch of blue, green, and yellow plaid patterns. It was extremely soft and cozy. I also bought a basket with that same theme pattern. [Next], I went to my local British store and chose Scottish Breakfast tea and Scottish Walker Cookies, clotted cream as well as the Scottish soda, Inbru. At World Market, I bought another type of cookie called tea cakes. The tea cakes were made of tea biscuits, marshmallows, and chocolate.
I grabbed the basket, put the blanket in, arranged the cookies, treats, tea and soda neatly. [Then, I] put the basket into a nice fit box and wrapped the box with the Themed pattern wrapping paper, and placed it under the tree.
Enjoying our stay-at-home vacation
I could hardly wait to move it from under the tree and place it in front of my mom on the floor. Before I let her open it I made her guess what it was. She had no clue, so I let her open it and she was amazed. She enjoyed it. We told her how and where dad and I got the supplies to make it happen. After, we went into the kitchen and set up the table to try some of the cookies, cakes, tea, and [a] very orange soda called Inbru.
It was interesting in a good way. The soda was orange color darker than our soda Fanta. Beware don’t drink Inbru with the idea that it tastes the same as orange because let me tell you, it definitely is not. It is made of 48 different flavors and has no reason why it is orange. As for myself who is not a soda drinker, it was good.
A Different Perspective
Not being able to travel to the destination does not mean [travel] can’t come to you. Now, it’s not the same experience as if you were at the destination but it definitely is better than not experiencing it at all and it kind of gives you an insight before you go. Since we were and still remain in a pandemic, my creativity of bringing Scotland to my house was really good. [This] led to other findings. [Including] when we went onto google earth and really saw what Scotland looks like from the street level and we found a Scottish radio station that we all heard, too. It was nice to experience in different ways and have different perspectives.
This also led to many other ideas of how we all can take our dreams or travels to us. At Look Park, there’s a bridge that I love. When I close my eyes and feel the wind and hear the water, it instantly brings me back to Norway on the ferry.
