Travel can be an escape – a chance to get away from the stress of our daily lives – but it can also be much more. Travel is about exploring a destination (new or familiar), understanding and connecting with the local culture, and seeing how people in a different place live.

Even more than the physical act of moving to a new place, traveling is about discovery, and just because you can’t get away from home at a particular time doesn’t mean you can’t still embrace that philosophy of adventure. Here are seven ways to "travel" without leaving your hometown.

You don’t need us to tell you that Napa Valley is a nice place to visit. What you do need is a way to lose the masses.

1. There aren’t that many vineyards

Although it has casually been dubbed California’s wine country, Napa Valley is hardly the state’s largest wine-producing region (that honor goes to San Joaquin Valley, 80 miles southeast). Napa’s 400 wineries produce only 4 percent of the state’s wine. The focus here is quality, not quantity.

2. A kitchen shop with character

The holidays are just around the corner, and if you’re anything like us, you’re probably hoping you won’t have to pay an arm and a turkey leg to get home to celebrate.

Happily, the travel forecast for 2009 is looking much merrier than that of 2008’s “bah humbug” holiday season, when the cost for airline travel soared in the face of the unfolding economic crisis, sky-high fuel costs, severe capacity cuts, and the introduction of a slew of then unheard-of airline fees.

PRAGUE | After a day of traversing cobblestones, what could be better than getting jabbed in the back and pummeled on the head? Prague residents with that thought in their heads are in luck: the city is enveloped in a Thai massage craze. There are more than 40 Thai massage centers in the city, about half of which opened in the last five years.

One such venture is Sawasdee, which has opened four locations since 2005, the latest in April near the Charles Bridge.