How we Planned a Practical, Covid-Cautious Vacation

If you are traveling freely, unconcerned about Covid, today’s post is not for you. Come back next week for more grandkid-friendly things to do.

But if you are grappling with age and comorbidity issues, here are some ideas for planning a Covid-cautious vacation.

While we are mostly armchair traveling these day, Steve and I yearned to go somewhere–anywhere. So, we took an art-museum-focused, driving trip to Los Angeles last week and we seem to have returned unscathed.

Here are my tips for planning a practical, Covid-cautious vacation. Obviously, I’m no infectious disease expert so I can’t recommend what you should do–I can only tell you what we did.

Timing for a Covid-Cautious Vacation

By traveling before Memorial Day, when the travel season kicks off in earnest, we encountered fewer crowds. If we do another trip, it will be after Labor Day.

It helps if you get to the venues early. For example, instead of heading for the galleries of Getty Center, we started at the gardens and had it all to ourselves until the others descended, much later.

Driving Instead of Flying

Both Steve and I like watching the scenery fly by, so driving anywhere is fine by us. By driving, we avoid the crowds in airports and worries about being jammed with others in tight airline seats.

If you are planning a prolonged car trip or a camping vacation, check out the best gear for your road trip from Wirecutter.

We Stayed at a Vacation Rental

We love vacation rentals and have rented apartments in Paris and many parts of France, as well as in Hawaii. On our covid-cautious vacation, it was another way we could control our environment better than we could staying at a hotel.

Our Airbnb in the hills of Los Angeles was a self-contained studio apartment with an outdoor deck and free parking space. It was comfortable, conveniently located, and perfect for our needs.

We Dined Outdoors–and Early

We dined at restaurants that had patios, decks, or other alfresco options. On one unusually drizzly evening, the restaurant staff unfurled their sun umbrellas and fired up their heaters and we were fine.

Pre-Covid, we always made dinner reservations for 7:30 or 8 o’clock, but for our covid-cautious vacation, we resorted to dinner as early as 5:30–not our favorite time, but we encountered fewer diners and didn’t have to compete for an outdoor table.

Sometimes, if we happened to be at a place where we could get a really good lunch, we’d have our main meal at noon. For example, The Restaurant at the Getty Center is a truly exceptional museum restaurant. It’s on the pricey side for lunch, but well worth the money.

We Sought Out Open Spaces

This was a museum trip, so we hit all the major ones in LA: the Getty Center (Middle Ages to present day), the Getty Villa (Greek and Roman antiquities), The Broad, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Grand Avenue, and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.

At all the museums, masks are strongly recommended, but about half the visitors went maskless. We just kept our distance from unmasked people. Masks are required at the LA County Museums, as well as proof of vaccination or proof of a negative Covid test.

Museums were mostly high-ceilinged, with large, open galleries. On the rare occasion when a room was too small or too crowded, we’d skip the gallery and return later.

Some museums had extraordinary gardens–especially the Getty Center and Getty Villa. Spending time enjoying the landscape and sculpture was a good, safe way to enjoy art outdoors.

What to Pack for a Covid-Conscious Vacation

Our last trip was in the fall of 2019. By the spring of 2020, a time when we would normally go on vacation, we were in lockdown. So Steve and I were a bit rusty, packing a bag for a week-long vacation. It’s good practice for a major trip, when we feel more comfortable traveling again.

Essentials for Covid-conscious traveling:

• Small bottles of hand sanitizer and extras to keep in the car and in purse and pocket.
• N95 and KN95 masks (we used the ones with the double head loops for museums and longer indoors stays; the ones with ear loops for going to restaurants, since we would be unmasking at the table anyway. It’s a good idea to bring extra masks and also keep some in the car, since masks are so easy to misplace.
• Clorox Disinfecting Wipes to sanitize any suspicious, well-touched surfaces.

It was wonderful to go on a trip after nearly three years–no matter how cautiously. We’ll stay put for now, enjoying our garden that we landscaped last fall, taking short day trips, and armchair traveling the rest of the summer.

Whether you’re a fearless traveler or Covid-cautious like us, I hope you have a wonderful, safe summer!

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