The art of… travel dreaming

Big travel daydreams are back on the menu and Christmas is the perfect time to feast on them, writes ANNA HART.

- ANNA HART

The Christmas holidays are a time not exactly short on traditions, but traditions are like sea salt caramel truffles: we can always fit another one in. And one of my most cherished New Year traditions is to plan my travel agenda for the year ahead. Trust me, sitting with a pile of old travel magazines or newspaper supplements and daydreaming about holidays in 2022 is an ideal hangover pastime, an edifying and easy escape from doing the dishes or having to hear someone talk about how they used lockdown “as a great opportunity to get really fit”. It’s also a perfect slightly tipsy pastime; a Negroni only enhances our ambition and creativity. I maintain this delightful New Year tradition wherever I am in the world. I’ve had memorable new year travel vision-boarding sessions at a ridiculously hip café in Joshua Tree in California, on a beach in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, in front of the fire at my family home in Belfast and over dim sum in Singapore.