The staycation is hip

And I am in Zwolle this weekend, yay

Hey travel tiger. If you are reading this, I am away for the weekend with my lover. Off to adventure, quality time, a little de-stressing, and celebrating a mini-vacation. And um, maybe the best part: we only spent a quarter of an hour in the car.

Destination? Zwolle. A city that I already find super nice. For shopping (dozens of boutiques), the people, and the old city center where I have always felt at home. I will do some serious field research this weekend and will get back to you with an extensive hotspot list. For now, I want to talk about the staycation. Simply put, it means that you go out in your own country. Somewhere I also find it pretty cool that the Dutch are among the most travel-hungry Europeans (in 2015, 12.7 million Dutch people went on vacation, which is 80 percent of the population), but secretly I also find it quite embarrassing that I haven't even been to all 12 provinces. So we should do some more ‘staycationing’. Five super good reasons why.

1. You are tired. Want to recharge. And want to travel, but actually have no energy to travel. Enter: staycation.

2. You feel like going away for the weekend, but think it's a waste to lose half your weekend without being at your destination. Enter: staycation.

3. You have no money to spare, just like Natasja and René Froger, but you still want to get away: Enter: staycation.

4. Because you don’t speak English very well. And that is pretty easy if you can just order a frikandel in Dutch. Enter: staycation.

5. Because there are still plenty of places you haven't seen at all (even close to your home) and playing tourist in your own city can be wonderfully enlightening for your brain.

In short: discover your own city or village in a different way. Take a route you normally wouldn't take, visit cafes and shops that you might usually skip, and you will see that you don't need that airplane. A staycation is the shit. Amen.