Travelling Solo - life’s biggest gift
It’s 7am and I sunning my face on the Italian shoreline. I hear “Che ore sono” said in my direction to which I go “Scusi, I’m Australia so little Italian.” The older woman goes “Ah! Time please?” and we both giggle as I pull out my phone to show her the clock. We proceed to have a small conversation (mainly of charades) and then she beckons me to join her in water - which of course I do. One thing about my travels, and my inability to sleep in whilst on holiday, is that I always find myself swimming with the oldies in the early hours. Whilst the rest of Italy/Greece sleeps, you’ll find the older members of society taking advantage of the cool and quiet parts of the day, which has become my standard practice too.
Before she grabs her things to leave, she comes over to me and passes me a tiny shell and says “See you tomorrow Bella?” to which I beam a big smile and say “SI!!! I’ll be here!” We both say Ciao, wave and off she goes. I lay back down to close my eyes for a bit longer before off to have my first espresso, and immediately start smiling about our little interaction. This thought process then leads me to start thinking about all the tiny moments I have with strangers when I am travelling solo.
I have noticed forever, that when I am alone and by myself, I have the sweetest interactions with people, the ones that take your breath away with cuteness. I then thought about how these moments very rarely occur when I am travelling with friends or even just with one other person. There is undoubtedly a significant amount of less of these moments when you are with other people. As if the image of just you alone opens up the floodgates for other people to approach and connect.
On the other side of this cute coin, are the people who are shooketh that you are travelling alone. Especially the restaurants when you ask for a table of one. I meet so people who profess “oh my god I could never travel alone” to which I normally reply “oh god I could never travel with a group!” Different folks, different strokes. Just days ago in Rome I was solo seated next to these two couples from New Zealand and we struck up the best conversation over our bowls of pasta - this would have never occurred if I wasn’t alone.
I get lots of DMs and messages asking about the solo travel vibe and so after my cute Nonna+Shell moment this morning, I thought a blog post explaining the wonderful parts of travelling alone was due. Of course it would irresponsible and untrue to say that it is wonderful for 100% of the time, but honestly - its pretty fantastic for about 92% of the time, for me at least.
There is definitely an equation to my travelling, and there is always some bout of time that I am with friends for it. The standard practice is to do 1-2 weeks alone, then meet up pals for a week and then go again alone for 1-2 weeks. This allows me to get in my time to think, write, explore, create and be silent as I go inside of myself and think about things, then I get together with good friends and laugh, eat out and spend some quality time together as I fill up the social tanks…with the right people. For instance, I just spent two and half weeks in Greece on my own and now I am in Italy where I have two groups of friends staying on the same island I am. We are staying in separate places, however we will spend the week going to beaches, restaurants and bars together - which I love!!
The thought of travelling solo scares the absolute shit out of lots of people and I think I find this way of travelling so easy because at heart and in general, I am loner and always have been. Don’t get me wrong, I have lots of wonderful and high quality friends that legitimately keep me alive with their greatness, but since I was a kid in primary school I have always been a person who is alone, and therefor extremely comfortable with being alone. So much so, that I could admit it might be a problem. I always joke that I could be on a Greek island for 6 months with my dog and no one else and be very happy. I think when you are a creative person with lots of thoughts, ideas and thinkings - you never really feel alone because there is something always to do or explore. Thats how I feel, and sometimes I find being around people and even more so travelling with them, very exhausting.
The concept of travelling alone may scare many of you, and it may thrill the other lot of you. However I think we should all experience the wonderment of travelling solo and alone once in our lifetime, just so you can experience these ‘connected’ moments that only occur when you are by yourself. When you rely on having someone beside you all the time, you miss the opportunity for kind strangers to approach and impact you. I guarantee that at least 90% of my ‘cute’ occurrences would have never happened if I was with a friend or with a group.
There is also an ‘ego’ side that must be let go when you are on your own, as there is a perception you can build around yourself that ‘others around you mean you have value’ which is in my opinion - not the case. The fact that you are doing it all on your own, the moving about, booking accomodation, driving yourself around the Greek hillsides - is proof that you don’t need anyone else to maintain that value of self. That you can do it on your own and believe it or not, still have the best time with yourself!
So, for all my pals out there thinking about travelling solo or are wanting to dip thy toe into this adventure, let me share with you the wonderful parts of travelling alone with you:
Everything is done on YOUR TIME ONLY. You have no one else to consider, which is so freeing. Want to skip breakfast? You can! Want to nap at 3pm? You can! ALL DECISIONS ARE ABOUT YOU AND YOU ONLY. It’s a real real holiday where the centre of the world is: what YOU want to do.
No wasting time on QUESTIONS. Similar to the above point, you waste no time on asking questions of others about where should we eat, what do you want to eat, what do you want to do today? When both parties are paying good money to go on holiday, each of them want to make the most of those spendings which means at times you have to do things you don’t want to because its about negotiation. There is no negotiation when you are alone, you do whatever the fuck you want.
You learn resilience and how to be SELF RELIANT. When a problem occurs and you can’t pass it onto your husband to solve (like a busted tyre in Greece), you put your big girl panties on and SOLVE IT YOURSELF. There is tremendous growth when all of the onus is on your shoulders to figure the problems out, and when you solve the problems, a big great wave of “I can do it” will come over you. That’s because you always have been able to do it, you just forgot by relying on others to always help you.
Strangers will approach you for CUTE MOMENTS. There is something about seeing someone alone that opens the floodgates for connection. Of course there are moments that can be terrifying whilst being alone (like walking home from a bar late at night - which I don’t do), but more often that not you will strike up a conversation with someone that will impact you in ways that would never occur if you had a pal beside you. I could give you a long list of examples of the moments and convos I have had whilst alone, but I will just keep them in my own memory bank.
The time for REFLECTION and THINKING is so gnarly, it’s beyond beautiful. The most important part of my holidays is the rejuvenation aspect. The reason I drag myself every year over to Europe to relax is because I find my life and work so intense and busy that I need to physicallybe removed from the timezone and space in order to build myself back up for the next year of work. The silence and the internal reflection from not conversing or being around others is truly magical. It allows all of the energy that you would normally spend talking or being with people, to directly be fed back into yourself. It is the ultimate rejuvenation.
I could continue to go on about all the great points of solo travel, but I think I have hit the main points. If you are reading this and you are ready to try some solo travel, just remember you don’t need to book an overseas trip to start this. Maybe you live in Brisbane and you book a weekend to Melbourne solo, wandering the streets of Fitzroy alone with headphones in and taking yourself to a lovely lunch at Florian in Carlton.
Don’t spend anytime thinking about how others will view you as a ‘loner loser’ or that being solo is a reflection of your value. Once you realise that your strongest self is the one on the inside who can attack any expedition or problems alone, you’ll see that you don’t need anyone else to have an incredible adventure and connect with others, and that the right people on your travels can be an extra gift if you are able master the journey in good company with yourself.
MAY YOU TAKE YOURSELVES ON WONDERFUL SOLO TRAVEL DATES!
With love, chaos and rigatoni -
PM xx
