South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Let it trip: A travel issue for the stir-crazy
We want out.
Out from in front of Joe Exotic and his tigers on TV. Sprung from Zoom work meetings on the computer at home. Away from all those virtual reality wine tastings and museum tours and shopping trips that were supposed to be like the real thing but – we know now – are not, really.
We want real trips.
Is it too soon to start wanting to go places again? Maybe even an adventure?
For those eager to get going we offer “Explore Florida & the Caribbean,” a 98-page version of our annual travel issue, available for the real – and virtual – traveler in a convenient take-us-alongwith-you digital format. Find it at SunSentinel.com/travel.
Yes, we know why we couldn’t go anywhere in the first place. Why we binged TV and figured out how to work from home like we used to work in the office. How we learned to clink wine glasses with friends on the internet or examine the brushstrokes of masters at virtual museums – or even buy TP online.
Oh, the skills we never thought we’d have to master. (Or want to.) We were all in, doing our part to flatten the curve.
But nothing replaces flattening the Earth.
Landing in a place we’ve never been before. Living in ways we’d never imagined. Learning to love the look, taste and scent of a place so socially distant from home we might only know it through a travel book or magazine or computer screen.
And meeting people in something less than a social distance. In the Florida Keys. In St. Augustine. In Miami. In Tampa. In the Bahamas. On a cruise … Will we ever travel that way again? Yes – and there are extraordinary efforts in the tourism industries in Florida and the Caribbean basin right now to encourage it. But things will be differ
ent, at least for a while.
Social-distancing rules will apply. Face masks will be expected to be worn – most certainly by staff and, in most locations, by guests, too – in public areas. Cleaning practices will become stricter, more routine, expected.
“Check-in times are going to take a little longer, cleaning times in the room are going to take a little longer,” says Kevin Geanides, the general manager of Little Palm Island Resort & Spa in the Keys. “We’re going to have to go through and do a process in all of the hightouch points to make sure they’re disinfected.”
Some of the things we traveled for – or were part of the travel experience – are going to be different, too. Disney, for example, will be reopening without the parades, meet-and-greets with characters and fireworks – the kind of activities that draw big crowds – that they’re known for internationally.
“That’s how serious Disney is taking this,” union leader Eric Clinton told the Orlando Sentinel
earlier this month, about the theme park employees he represents heading back to work. “That’s a very different Disney World you all worked at back in March.”
This is a very different travel issue than we’d planned earlier this year, too. Many of the places we write about here are just now coming out of pandemic-related restrictions – and each story or calendar in “Explore Florida & the Caribbean” carries a disclaimer to call ahead to confirm operating hours, social-distancing policies and efforts to keep everybody safe.
“That’s a big question,” says Sarah Baeumler who, with her husband, Bryan, had just opened Caerula Mar Club in the Bahamas in February before closing it down again in March. “We feel that for us to open the floodgates and start bringing travel in internationally, we have to be 100 percent sure we’re doing it in a responsible way.”
So we will get out again soon – just differently. Cautiously. Responsibly. It may even be an adventure.
But adventures are what we want.