Be entertained with some great autumn reads and tours of museums, zoos and more, all without leaving the couch

Life feels uncertain, the entire family is home all the time, and all your upcoming events and getaways have been cancelled.

Sound familiar? That’s right (ding ding ding), it’s the social distancing measures for the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom (read: frustration at the kids and hubby, boredom eating, watching the entire Netflix catalogue, and a slow decent into insanity).

There are actually many ways you can enjoy local facilities and the arts without leaving the comfort of the couch.

VIRTUAL TOURS

Visit museums, galleries, zoos and the like through Google Maps and other platforms – you can even visit overseas locations!

Queensland Museum Network

From our own Cobb+co Museum to those further afield, discover facility collections, watch informative talks (like Curator Conversations), and enjoy fun activities through the portals on the website athome.qm.qld.gov.au

“Through video you can now virtually participate in science experiments, hear from our curatorial team, and go behind the scenes of the museum,” Cobb+co says.

Art and Culture everywhere

Visit artsandculture.google.com/ and you’ll find many art galleries online, as well as museums and even sporting facilities.

There’s fun activities and quizzes for the kids, history and artworks for the adults, and virtual tours for all – including one of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum with a penguin as your tour guide, or one set to music in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. You can even virtually visit the Melbourne Cricket Ground or tour around Italy!

Many galleries and museums have also instigated virtual tours on their own websites, such as the Louvre in France, so it’s work checking out.

Zoos and wildlife

From daily live ‘safari’ sessions online with Cincinnati Zoo in the US, to live streams of animal enclosures so you can get up close at the Smithsonian National Zoo, to ‘walk around’ tours of Yellowstone National Park, there’s something animal-related for everyone.

VIRTUAL FESTIVALS AND SHOWS

New York’s Met Opera is hosting live-streamed opera classics nightly at metopera.org, while many conventions and festivals are now holding their events online via video conferencing platforms and/or social media.

What‘s great about these is that now international people can participate in events they wouldn’t normally be able to travel to!