‘It’s all about getting out of your comfort zone’: 10 tips for solo travelers | travel alone

YYoung adults, new remote workers and empty nesters on “sabbatical” years are fueling a post-lockdown boom in solo travel. Figures from the Solo Traveler website suggest that the majority are women and quite a few are in a relationship: solo is not the same as single. Solo travel Google searches have quadrupled since 2020. Going on vacation just means you’re in charge of the schedule and more likely to make new friends. Here are 10 things that can make travel more fun, offer structure, security, and companionship (for those who want it).

Stay in a hostel

YHA Stratford-upon-AvonYHA Stratford Upon Avon is in a splendid Georgian mansion

Hostels range from budget to luxury, but generally have common areas like bars, kitchens, and living rooms, where travelers can exchange tips, food, books, anecdotes, and even agree to team up for a while. At the lovely Dolphin Inn hostel (double rooms from £44) in Dunbar on the East Lothian coast, I shared a packed lunch with the woman on reception. Klara Zhao from Sydney, who has traveled solo to a dozen countries, says: “In Helsinki, I stayed in a forest-side hostel with a cafeteria where guests ate breakfast. I met a nice German family and another girl my age and spent a couple of days traveling around the city with them.”

Hostels don’t have to mean sleeping in a dormitory; many now have private rooms. Some hostels in the city are famous for their parties, with happy hours and DJs. But the hostel could also involve board games in a Georgian mansion at YHA Stratford-upon-Avon (private rooms from £29), communal saunas at 7 Fells hostel in Finnish Lapland (private room from €65) or surfing and yoga. at sunrise on the beach at the Salty Pelican in Portugal (3-night package €349).

stay in a house

Klara also recommends staying with a family (good for “cultural and language immersion”) through homestayin.com, or booking an Airbnb room where you share the rest of the place with a resident host, who will often be “a source of lots of locals.” tips.” Couchsurfing is a well-known scheme to sleep in free beds and couches around the world for free, and many cities have weekly meetups in coffee shops for people who want to connect. Nomad Sister is a couchsurfing community for women.

urban exploration

Toronto-based Janice Waugh, founder of Solo Traveler, has plenty of tips on planning and safety (prevention is key). She recommends booking a tour with Worldwide Greeters, which offers free introductory tours of 130 cities around the world.

Tours of all kinds are great for solo travelers. Tip-only tours, like those on freetour.com, can often be more exhilarating than a prepaid guide to historical sights.

On a recent free walking tour of Amsterdam, anthropology student Katjalisa (who has since joined sustainable guide company Tours that Matter) used Amsterdam’s cityscapes to introduce tourists to Dutch concepts like gedogen (illegal but officially tolerated) and gezellig (friendly). There were three of us on the tour traveling solo and then joined forces for a pub crawl.

ride the tram

Helsinki's number 2 tram runs through many of the city's sights.Helsinki’s number 2 tram runs through many of the city’s sights. Photography: Taina Sohlman/Alamy

One of the best ways to get a feel for the layout of a new city is to spend time exploring on public transport, where traveling alone is the norm. Instead of wandering down dark alleyways on your own or navigating a strange one-way system in a car, sitting on a bus or tram can be a relaxed and affordable way to see the sights.

Traveling by tram in a new city is often a mini adventure in itself and there are always routes that pass through the main attractions of the city. In Helsinki, for example, tram 2 is the best tourist route and a day ticket is also valid on the ferry to the fortress island of Suomenlinna.

Great routes in Amsterdam include tram 14, which runs past the Hortus Botanical Gardens and into the reeds and willows of Flevopark. On the way, pass one of the old city gates and a huge octagonal wooden windmill that stands at the junction of several waterways.

Go for a walk

Descending Graig Fawr, Swansea.Descending Graig Fawr, Swansea. Photography: Dominic Vacher

The Ramblers, Britain’s brisk walking charity, offers free wellness walks as well as longer guided walks for members. Non-members can try three of the wellness walks for free before joining (from £38.50 a year). For members, there are 50,000 group walks each year in Britain. Director of public relations Jardine Howlett says they’re a great choice for solo travelers who want to explore spectacular off-the-beaten-path scenery with confidence.

In Carmarthenshire, Lisa Denison runs a company called Quiet Walks (from £10 per person). It is aimed at less outgoing walkers who may not want to socialize all the time, but prefer to be in a small group. “Most of my clients come alone,” she says. A favorite is the five-mile round trip walk to Garn Goch, one of the largest Iron Age forts in Wales.

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find your tribe

The Meetup website is a great source for group walks around the world, and can include winter walks but also skating in Stockholm’s popular Hellasgården park and year-round sea swimming in Barcelona. Enthusiasts will be able to find like-minded friends in activities ranging from chess clubs and rock-climbing walls to jazz bars in many cities.

Eat and drink

Deanston Distillery.Deanston Distillery. Photography: Go Cotswolds

Eating and drinking together is often a shortcut to friendship. Cooking classes are always a good bet, as are foraging courses. Foraging Course Company’s Kerry Bowness leads lively walks, complete with samples of hawthorn ketchup or elderflower jelly, in areas from Norfolk to Gloucestershire.

Food walks have sprung up all over the world. Tours of breweries, distilleries, and vineyards are also fun, especially once the tasters start flowing. There are hundreds of these to visit in the UK alone, including the friendly hydro-powered Deanston Distillery near Stirling (£15) or entertaining year-round tours of Yorkshire Heart Vineyard, in the countryside between York and Knaresborough (from £15). 25).

minibus views

Sharing a 16-seater minibus, Edinburgh-based Rabbie’s Tours makes trips affordable and sociable while taking guests into spectacular scenery. Among its many tours is a 12-hour round trip from Edinburgh that takes in a wealth of spectacular scenery, including Glencoe and Ben Nevis, the UK’s highest mountain (£59).

Cotswolds in a Day (£55) is a small-group minibus tour that picks up at train stations and starts with a great view from Dover’s Hill, followed by towns and villages filled with old stone bridges, rose-crowned cottages and beamed pubs. . Lisa and Tom Benjamin, who founded the Go Cotswolds company, met while each was traveling solo in South America. Lisa says, “When we later established our business, it was very important to us that our tours be welcoming and affordable to independent independent travelers, because that’s where we came from.”

be a pilgrim

The road to Santiago.The road to Santiago. Photography: Guillermo Casas Baruque/Getty Images

More than half of the 350,000 annual walkers on the Camino de Santiago are women. Many of them set off alone and make lasting friendships along the way. Carolyn Gillespie is the author of Pilgrim, a book about walking the Camino. Many pilgrims, she says, are walking through a transition phase in their lives, and going alone is part of the plan. “It’s about getting out of your comfort zone and seeing what you’re made of.” At the same time, it is reassuring to be part of a “traveling caravan of people”, all bound for the same destination. “We laughed, we talked, we made the world right, but we were equally satisfied with the silence, listening to the cuckoo,” she writes. Camigas is a Facebook page that connects the women of the Camino.

keep a journal

This will not only help you remember the details of all your experiences, but also give you something to do when you’re alone in a restaurant. “I always keep a journal while I travel,” Zhao says, “as a means of jotting down impressions, observations, little sketches of the moment. It is also a good memory of trips to remember.

Source: news.google.com