Know Before You Go

Virtual Sightseeing…Until You Can Travel Live!

While you might not be able to visit the Musee de Louvre or spend the weekend in the Big Apple watching Broadway shows right now, you can still experience some of these fun activities online while housebound.

BroadwayHD, a streaming service for theater fans, is offering a free seven-day trial. With nearly 300 performances in their library, you can get couch-side seats to such big-name shows as Cats, The King and I, and Sound of Music. And best of all, you can sing along without anyone complaining.

Break out a baguette and some stinky cheese for a virtual tour of The Louvre, which offers a stroll through its Egyptian antiquities department and recently restored Galerie d’Apollon. Or, imagine you’re in Florence with an online visit to the Uffizi Galleries where you can check out Italian masterpieces by such artists as Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo.

“My garden is my most beautiful work of art,” Claude Monet once said about his famed gardens in Giverny. While thousands of travelers make their way to the picture-perfect landscape about 45 minutes outside of Paris every year, now you can take a virtual tour online.
If you can’t hit the beach, you can at least see the sea life at Boston’s New England Aquarium. Each day, the aquarium posts live presentations and videos, like a visit to the Ocean Tank, where you can spot sharks, stingrays and sea turtles, or penguin feedings, where an aquarium staffer feeds the more than 70 resident penguins.

Think of your viewing time as research for when we can all travel again!