This edition of Grand Trunk’s Cabin Fever is all about expanding your mind. Being holed up in the house for so long, we’ve noticed that it’s easy to fall into a rut of rolling out of bed, working in the home office, and then retiring to the living room to watch TV for the rest of the night. There hasn’t exactly been a whole lot of cognitive development going on! That got us thinking about what resources are out there to feed our hungry brains. Here’s what we found.

Virtual Museums

Many museums from around the globe offer free virtual tours that are highly interactive, allowing you to wander as if you were in the physical building. Quarantine aside, you’d still never be able to visit all of them in one lifetime! But that shouldn’t stop you from taking in some culture from the comfort of your couch. These are a few of our favorites.

• The British Museum of the World is an incredible, expansive walk through history across every continent. The site’s interactive timeline is perfect for exploring countless artifacts that have recorded the development of the human race.
• New York’s Guggenheim Museum may be closed to the public, but you can still explore all the works of art on display in its famous spiral staircase using Google Street View. This collection spans the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Modern, and Contemporary eras of art, and is sure to provoke stimulating conversation if you choose to bring a friend!
• If you’re looking for an art experience that focuses more on the actual works, you can’t go wrong with South Korea’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Choose from a rich variety of exhibits that immerse you in paintings, sculptures, and installation pieces with well-chosen close-ups and descriptions to give context to the creation of these timeless pieces

Explore a New City

Photographer Jeffrey Martin has taken some of the largest photographs in the world. From vantage points such as the Tokyo Tower or London’s Centre Point building, he captures ultra-high resolution, 360 degree panoramic views of the entire city. These photographs are featured on 360gigapixels.com, where you can interactively scroll and zoom for days. The level of detail is astonishing, taking you from sweeping cityscape skylines right down to a cat crossing the street in Prague or a woman eating ice cream on a park bench in Paris.

Learn A New Skill, Start A New Hobby

Want to learn how to make stuff? Head over to Instructables for free classes on leatherworking, 3D printing, woodworking, sewing, circuits, cooking, even Minecraft! You can learn by reading instructional text, watching videos, and participating in webinars. Who knows, you might even be able to pick up a new skill that turns into a side hustle with its own revenue stream! There are also great classes and activities for kids, so make sure you’re sharing this awesome resource to keep them learning.

Grand Trunk has always been about exploring the unknown, and we’re not going to let this period of imposed isolation stop us from doing just that! When we can’t go out, it’s time to look inward. It’s time to get creative and explore the full capabilities of the mind.