“Make sure you schedule things to look forward to upon your return.” This was the advice given to me by a dear, dear friend before Andrew and I embarked on our recent trip to the Cotswolds (If you haven’t yet, please feel free to check out Part I of my retelling of that trip). I had just been telling her that I was honestly worried I wouldn’t want to return home, and that I wasn’t looking forward to confronting that thing many of us experience once we’ve returned from a trip: The Post-Travel Blues.

This friend has known me for ages, knows me incredibly well, and has given me this advice before several trips I’ve taken over the years–and I am always grateful for the reminder. It isn’t necessarily the case that any of us are dissatisfied with or ungrateful for our lives, right? That certainly isn’t the case for me. It’s just that I love travel. I love experiencing new places, the pleasure of my brain opening new neural pathways, and being able to leave some responsibilities at home for a while. My brain and spirit crave these things as if they are necessary to my existence in this world, and I know I’m not the only one. Any time Andrew and I return home, we are fortunate to return to our beloved fur babies, our cozy home, our beautiful town, and our community of friends we adore. It is completely normal, however, to miss those days of travel excitement, of learning new things, of having a different schedule, of feeling lighter, and so on.

As I had anticipated, I did indeed have another case of the post-travel blues that began the very day we returned from England (and honestly, probably the moment I apprehensively stepped foot onto our train back to the airport). Thankfully, over the years of learning what generally fosters these blues within me, I’ve also learned a few approaches to remedying them:

Ways to Remedy Post-Travel Blues
1. Schedule things to look forward to doing upon your return. This advice from my friend is seriously so valuable. Some things I scheduled for myself after this last trip were (1) more time off in order to settle back in slowly (I understand this is an incredible privilege, and I am grateful for it), (2) time with friends (both in person and via video chats), (3) a trip to the farmers market to replenish our depleted fridge/pantry (where I proceeded to stumble upon some beautiful locally-made shortbread that allowed me to continue the shortbread habit I’d picked up in England a few more days), (4) coffee dates, and (5) celebrating my birthday (a timely bonus) in an area and with activities that bring me lots of joy. The latter was incredibly beneficial as we spent some time in our favorite town by the sea and I was reminded of how much I adore New England.

2. Send yourself postcards and purchase things to enjoy later. Our trip to England was the first time I sent postcards back to our house while we were there, but I’m so glad I did it. It gave us something to look forward to receiving once we returned home, I had added joyful memories to each postcard, and I was able to find beautiful watercolor postcards that we’ll be framing to hang as sentimental art. In addition to those, we purchased a few small things here and there that we could enjoy back home and that would remind us of our trip. We hadn’t checked any baggage and had packed all of our belongings into carry-ons, so we had to keep our purchases small, but this also helped us to remain discerning about what we brought home. I had become enamored with a hand cream that smelled like the reed diffusers in our AirBnb cottage, so my ever-thoughtful husband bought it for me and bought himself a solid cologne that now reminds him of our favorite shop in Stow-on-the-Wold. This next one is quite random, but I absolutely love jigsaw puzzles, and while we were in a charity shop (English charity shops are seriously amazing) I found a puzzle of an English garden and stone cottage. Instead of traditional souvenirs, I buy used puzzles that twelve other people have already worked in years beforehand, but I digress. Only a few days after we returned, I broke out that puzzle and felt closer to England again for a bit. And all of the pieces were there!

3. Think about what you really enjoyed on the trip and how you might be able to implement those things into your daily life. On this trip, I frequently thought about how much I enjoyed all of the hiking we were doing each day, and how I wished we had similar public footpaths in our neck of the woods in the US. We may not have public footpaths crossing through picturesque meadows and connecting all of the towns, but hey, the rural road we live on isn’t half bad, nor are our local hiking trails. We also adored spending tons of time outside during our trip and it served as a reminder to us to spend more time outside enjoying it, not just doing yard and garden work. So, even though we returned to sweltering temperatures and buckets of rain, we’ve made time over the last couple of weeks to enjoy some leisurely walks and coffee on the front porch.

4. Focus on what you love/appreciate about your day-to-day. For me, it’s not only my little family (aka my husband and fur babies), but it’s also our cozy little house that we continue to put so much love into. It’s our garden that began to produce veggies upon our latest return. It’s our friends, who I am convinced are the best in the entirety of the world. It’s my various forms of art. It’s our cute, historic New England town. It’s an oat milk latte from our local coffee shop. I devote time to savoring all of these things all over again and feeling gratitude for them.

Thankfully, 2 1/2 weeks post-trip and my blues are gone. If you too have ever dealt with post-travel blues, I’d love to hear your thoughts, as well as any remedies you may put into use.

In antidotal solidarity,
Lara