Traveling Alone

Married with teenage kids; we’ve traveled pretty extensively as a family. Always a great time.

Ended up with a job that required some extensive travel. The States, Europe, South America, Asia, etc. So I often built in an extra few days to take in the area as I was already there.

If being honest; I’ve actually really come to enjoy solo travel. There’s something magical about making memories with others; but, going solo really gives you the opportunity for a different experience.

You get to set your own schedule; see only what you want and you aren’t tied into making stops or visits that aren’t really your thing. Traveling with others always involves compromising. Wanna take a break? Nothing is stopping you. Want to freestyle a bit and go wander? Go for it. That really hard to get into local restaurant? Odds are they can fit you in when solo. Going solo forces you to talk to others/locals and I feel like that alone really adds value to getting to know a place.

Last year I had business in Latvia. I did a week starting in Helsinki, then took the ferry to Tallinn and finally a bus trek to Riga. Joined a few walking tours; many of which are free. Honestly; I had a blast. The Baltics are way underrated.

Anyhow; where to go is really up to you. IMHO; go for it.

I have been alone to Prague, Cambodia, Thailand, Turks, Curacao, and Iceland. Loved every minute of it, on my own schedule.

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Traveling Alone

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Best way to travel and explore... On your own schedule, don't have to worry about making anyone else happy.

I've known for 20 years that if you wait on other people (GF, Wife, friends, etc.) to see a movie, fly somewhere, etc., you'll probably never end up doing it.

The solo trips kicked off in 2006 with Ireland. They took a pause when I was married (I was traveling all over the globe for work solo anyway). Within 48 hours of my divorce being finalized, I booked a trip to the UK and a separate one to Barcelona, for a Liverpool match and an Iron Maiden concert. It rocks.

I would *not* use miles for trips to Central America. There are so many flights out of IAH (assuming you're in LA), it's not even funny, and they're almost never expensive.

Don't be afraid of overseas trips where you don't speak the official language. Anywhere you're likely to go while you're still wet behind the ears on solo travel is going to have a ton of English speakers around.

I’m an only child

Being alone or doing things solo doesn’t bother me at all. I’m hyper independent

I usually go somewhere in August each year for my birthday alone . The beauty of it is you get to do what you want. Eat wherever. Do what interest you and stay as long or as little as you want.

I’ve done Key west, Los Angeles, Boston, Iceland, Cancun all by myself .

Take the trip. Live your life. It’s the only one you’ve got .

Worked on a project years ago that required I travel to California, Colorado and Texas for 3 years. Yeah, I was alone each week, albeit with a team of project managers sometimes. I'd try to go out from the hotel to local sites, dinners etc., but frankly, it kind of sucked.

I did have one epic "Travel Alone" story though.

I dated this girl in undergrad for 3 years. For reasons I probably never fully understood, or later won't go into, after my graduation, we broke up. Devastated me frankly. We kind of stayed in touch here and there. Before the "cell phone era" obviously.

Found out she was going to school for a semester in France. So, I got the brilliant of idea of quitting my job (this was just a sales job prior to going to Grad School) and go over to Europe and win her back.

Now I was from some podunk town in Central Florida. Never really traveled anywhere on my own back thene.

Dropped everything, booked a ticket to London. Drove out on to Bath, toured the region, then caught a ferry to France, and later a train to Paris. Was supposed to meet her at a small hotel we'd booked. I get there early in the AM, show up at the place and they started blabbering at me in French, which I can't obviously speak. Said "frick It" and went and crashed on a bench in the park and said to myself "what they hell have I gotten myself into"?

We'd agreed to meet at Gare de l'Est. You can imagine trying to get there and look for one person in that morass of people. But by luck I did. We traveled for 2 weeks going down to Lugano Switzerland, Florence and Rome.

She was on spring break and went back to school, and I was there in Rome all by myself, so I said "what are you going to do now"? Granted, I had all the time and money (back then) in the world. Could have traveled indefinitely.

So, I decided to go to Greece. Took the train, caught the ferry then eventually ended up in Athens. Burned out, I decided to stay for 2 weeks. The hostel I was in actually paid me to go to the train station and hustle English speaking people to come stay there. It was a nice place and I did that. Could live back then on about $10/day. (Co-ed Hostel BTW. Had a group of 5 Australian Girls come into the room I was in for a few days. Just me and them. Imagine being an ol' country boy from Florida and seeing that! )

Finally met up with some people and we went to Santorini, which was really cool. Stayed there a few days. Went with one of the guys up to Florence later, then to Budapest Hungary (it was communist back then, so we had to have a visa etc.).

He left, so I decided to tour through Germany and Austria, then later met up with a girl I knew from my hometown in Bruges Belgium who was there studying abroad as well. Really cool place.

I was then going to go to the Scandanavian countries, but that point, 3 months later, I was burned out. Said "frick It", got on the train, took the ferry back to London and came home.

Strangest feeling backpacking like that on your own with literally all the money and time you'd need.

Wow, that was fun. Long winded! But. Here's the point. You'd grow as a person having to be on your own. Can suck traveling with others, so you can literally do anything you want to do. It forces you to talk and meet with new people. The "World's Your Oyster" so to speak.

Definitely do it. Ideally, maybe find an excursion, resort or tour that isn't so "couple centric" where there'd be other singles you could eventually hang out with. We used to go to Club Meds as a group, but there were single guys and lots of solo travelers. So maybe you can find a place like that. I used to scuba dive and could tell you about some great places in Belize I might go back to if I was alone.

Best of luck and keep us posted with your decisions! Love to know what you come up with.

PS: Never won back the girl if you were curious. Did see her about 30 years ago when she was in town for a conference, but that's another story!

I take at least one solo ski trip and one solo golf / beach trip a year. They're both great but I do love meeting new people, enjoying hobbies and activities I love with new people (ir getting paired up on the golf course, meeting people on the ski lift, etc).

I used to book flights with airline miles. United allowed you to say book houston to London as one leg. Then for no extra miles book a leg from London to Rome. Then the return from Rome to Houston. This allowed you to explore 2 areas for the miles of a round trip ticket. Make the most of your 200k miles.

I've done a lot of solo ski trips, only non-ski trip was to the Big Island. Which I really enjoyed since there were a lot of things you can explore there and it was nice to do whatever I wanted since I could golf one day, do some hikes another and just chill on the beach as well.

Brilliant. I just copied that into OneNote for my kids in a few years. I can't explain the kind of debauchery I did/could have gotten into with a straight face, but I can use your experience and act as a neutral party to remind them to live.