So the actor Elijah Wood of Lord of the Rings fame sent us these five staycation ideas totally unsolicited. Absolutely no disrespect to Elijah, as we are fans of his work and also appreciate his contribution to our site, but we have no idea why he did that. Anyway, we figure he’s a famous guy with a lot of pull and maybe the ideas he came up with will be interesting to you, so here they are.
1. Plan a “world cuisine” tour in your own town.
According to the PDF titled “CLICKHOLE-STAYCATIONIDEAS1-E.WOOD” we received in a 5:57 a.m. email from [email protected], one great way to get a taste of travel without paying for airfare is to spend a week sampling all the different types of foreign food your area has to offer. Elijah typed his ideas up in bullet point format, where he specified that the restaurants could include “Indian food, Peruvian food, Ethiopian food, WHATEVER!!” and suggested that bringing “playing cards and/or dice and/or marbles” to dinner might enhance the staycation experience. Thank you for the idea, Elijah!
2. Apartment-swap with a friend for a fun change of pace.
After writing “TTYL—shooting w/Peter Dinklage atm” and hitting enter dozens of times below his first suggestion, Elijah Wood went on to detail his concept for a hometown apartment swap between friends that would “provide the ultimate AirBnb experience with all of the comfort and none of the cost.” This one was at least three pages long, as Elijah detailed hundreds of things one could do in a friend’s apartment for fun, such as “practice singing,” “dust,” and “look thru medicine cabinet and bedside table w/o permission.” We honestly don’t think the swap idea is a bad one, but once again, not sure exactly why it’s coming from Elijah Wood.
3. Create an at-home spa experience.
Elijah specified in his email that he didn’t want to be paid for his ideas and was just sending them to be helpful, but then in his at-home spa idea he recommended that people purchase something called “Elijah’s Holistic Bathtime Tonic,” which is apparently a bath blend containing essential oils, flower petals, and “secret medicines” and is made to order by the batch in Wood’s Los Angeles garage. The write-up states that a bath with Elijah’s tonic is “the perfect way to kick off a staycation weekend that will leave you refreshed, rejuvenated, and re-Elijah’ed!” So this one was pretty clearly a sneaky way to promote his side hustle.
4. Hit up Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
This one is straight up not a staycation. It seems like Elijah Wood was running out of steam when he got to number four, as it only contained two clipped bullet points, one reading “rides” and the other reading “vacation.” We guess he thought he could phone it in and we’d fill in the blanks, which is honestly kind of true. What are we going to do, not publish a list of staycation ideas by a famous actor from one of the most successful film franchises of all time? So, yeah, pack your things and enjoy a “staycation” in the happiest place on Earth, we guess. Elijah did also include this crude illustration if that helps sell you on the idea:
5. Make a fort.
Again, it seems like Elijah was a little burnt out by this point, but he clearly wanted us to end strong with his idea that people make a fun fort in their living room. He wrote “**EMPHASIZE FAMILY FUN POTENTIAL**” in bold 72 point font under the heading, probably not realizing or maybe not caring that families are not a major audience for our website. It’s a fine idea, albeit one we could’ve come up with ourselves, but we nonetheless appreciate his effort and how earnest he is in wanting people to have nice staycations. At the end of his email, he wrote “hope this helps keep the site running! XOXO ‘Lijah,” which was very sweet. Thanks, Elijah, and feel free to send us staycation ideas whenever you’d like.
