How To Find Your Next Adventure: Using Instagram To Your Advantage
I have forever been changed and inspired after reading Melody Warnick’s, This Is Where You Belong.This Is Where You Belong, has helped me see Manila with new eyes and feel more settled and driven with the direction of my blog and workshops. I love where I live and I want you to love where you live also. When we love where we live we feel invested in our community and overall make our ‘place’ a better place.
INSTAGRAM AS A TOOL
Instagram is usually seen as a purely social platform, however, I have found its use in creating place-attachment quite profound. Beyond the grid and squares of real/fake (can we call them ‘real fake’?) smiles and filters there is a way to engage with Instagram as tool to find your next adventure and get acquainted with your place.
Instagram is a visual platform that also provides the user’s ability to geotag photos so you can gain a greater sense of what is around you physically. With geo-tags we now have a visual catalogue of what that place looks like and where it is located, or better known as an atlas.
GEO TAGS & SAVED ALBUMS
any photo can contain the geolocation
once the geolocation is added all other photos with the same geolocation will appear, this is your atlast
Here’s an example of how using Instagram as a tool can help you find beautiful places and fulfill your curiosity. I was looking for a restaurant to visit on the day we left Casa San Pablo. I recently saw a geo location tag in the area while using Instagram to plan my trip, I took a screen shot and saved it to my camera roll album “EXPLORE”. I keep an album on my phone of places to visit, with their Instagram account and geo location. You can also now save Instagram posts within the app and create a specific album of saved posts for places to visit - yay! Here’s a tutorial to use this feature. Cafe Sulyap was on my list and located just down the road from Casa San Pablo. Thank you Instagram!
E X P L O R E
i save photos of places in my album on my phone titled 'explore’. When i have a holiday or weekend without plans i revisit this album and remind myself where i want to visit.
SAVED ALBUMS WITHIN INSTAGRAM APP
You can also now save Instagram posts within the app and create a specific album of saved posts for places to visit - yay!
Another tip to help with expectations pre-emptive to a visit; find the lowest common denominator. What I mean by that is, find the most unfiltered and less fake photo (it may be the least pretty) and set your expectations there. You should always be pleasantly surprised. Instagram can be a liar so set your expectations accordingly.
CAFE SULYAP
Cafe Sulyap is a beautiful bed and breakfast in Laguna that will transport you to the past with its historical design and traditional Filipino cuisine. Since studying Interior Design, ancestral homes in the Philippines have caught my attention and I feel so fortunate to live in a place with such a rich history. You can read more about the history of Cafe Sulyap here.
We happened to visit on a rainy day and still very much enjoyed our visit. I can’t speak for the food as we only ate dessert but the house was beautiful and the desserts did not disappoint.
spanish colonial design including a fountain in the courtyard, be still my heart
al fresco dining is the way to go
i couldn’t deny this lovely stair case a small photo shoot
these sweet treats were the tipping point for our visit. the location was pretty but this mango dessert called to me!
someone else was very happy about the dessert
Technology isn’t slowing down, it’s only moving forward and I would like to engage with it more positively. I am fascinated with the intersection of technology and place attachment and I hope this approach to Instagram as a tool can help you love where you live and find your next adventure.
