Ways to Experience History on the Road


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Taking any sort of trip can be fun, but it can be even more enriching when you take time to see the sights and experience history along the way. There are many ways to learn about history while taking a trip, even if it’s just a day trip. In fact, traveling is one of the best methods for exploring, discovering, and taking in new facts about the world around you. This can be a great way to take a family trip that still provides learning opportunities for your kids or a way to enrich your own life while in transit. Here are just a few suggestions for experiencing history while on the road worth thinking about.

Museums

The age-old classic for learning about history is to visit a museum in order to look at what life used to be like. It can be any museum too, not just an art or natural history museum. Any museum is a time-honored way of learning about the different parts of history across the world. Not only can they provide educational background on the different ages of history, peoples, and cultures, but they also collect and showcase real artifacts from the past so you can visualize what the history books talk about. For example, there’s nothing like staring at a rusty sword from the 18th century to help you envision what war really looked like back then! Museums can also be treasure troves when it comes to historical records; they can provide archives of everything from genealogies to old newspaper clippings. These documents would be lost to time without a museum’s careful preservation and now they’re available for you to learn from.\

A museum is definitely worth working into your itinerary if you’re a history buff or enthusiastic about learning from different and past cultures.

Monuments

Many people think of statues or one of the seven wonders when they think of historical monuments, but the truth is that “monuments” is a broad category encompassing historic buildings, archaeological sites, nature preserves, and more. Everything from an old courthouse to the Egyptian pyramids is considered a historical monument. To learn more about monuments around the world, check out a list of official UNESCO World Heritage Sites to see if you’ll be passing any that might be worth a quick detour. They’re found on every continent except Antarctica, and knowing their exact locations can help you plan an epic journey filled with historical hot spots and great memory-making photo opportunities.

Hotels

To incorporate history into all aspects of your trip, including your accommodations, you can book a room at a historic hotel, somewhere like The Warrior Hotel Autograph Collection Hotels. Staying in a historic hotel can mean staying anywhere from a modern-looking building with historic roots to full-fledged hotels sited as historical preservations and decked out with the decor and furniture of times gone by. The latter can be especially fun if you’ve always wondered what it would be like to live in the past, or at the very least try to get a glimpse of it. Rather than just observing history like a spectator in a museum, you can live it as an active lodger in a historic building.

Depending on the hotel, there may even be displays or events to take advantage of that have to do with the history of the hotel, such as ghost tours that can add a spooky element to your stay, or regular tours that let you get more in-depth information about the place.

Tours

Last but not least, if you want to experience multiple historic locations on a single trip, consider taking a tour. It’ll let you hit the highlights of the area, and an experienced tour guide can share lots of fascinating, behind-the-scenes information that you won’t find in travel brochures. Additionally, since historic tours are often themed, you can find them for all kinds of niche interests. Whether you’re into haunted houses of the past or landmarks and locations associated with historic events such as the Underground Railroad, there’s probably a tour for it.

Even if you choose not to take a tour that encompasses your entire trip, you can still seek out tours in any historic location you visit. Bigger attractions, such as the more popular historic monuments and attractions or museums, will definitely have an option for a tour guide to show you around. This is a great way to learn even more about what you’re looking at or experiencing than if you’d decided to simply visit. You can also search out audio tours should in-person ones not be available, or you simply want to go at your own pace.

 

These are just a few of the many ways available to you to explore and experience history while you’re on the road. Whether you want to make these destination options the focus of the trip or think it would be fun to pop in here and there for a new experience, there’s something for everyone. Whether you’re interested in wars, cultures, art, civilizations, or natural wonders, there are sites out there that can inflame your curiosity and help you become smarter and more knowledgeable about the world around you. This can be a really fun way to spend the day, especially if you’re looking for something to do but don’t have any plans or need a break from being in transit as you get where you’re trying to go.