Lessons From Solo Travel - Part 1
1. Momentum – just keep going and you end up where you need to be.
The fact that I was going to go to Greece and Italy, by myself, truly didn’t hit me until I called the uber from my apartment in Brooklyn to head to JFK airport. Fear hit me for the first time. Where was I going and what was I even doing? Was this a terrible idea or was this the adventure of a lifetime? These were questions that were not to be answered in measured or considered thought, but rather simple faith in inertia. I had booked this trip and got the tickets because I wanted to experience something amazing. What would worry and overthinking buy me at this point other than grief? This journey would be a success, I just had to lean into it more and act like the trip would be an amazing time – despite this new hesitation. The feeling was placated once I arrived at the airport and boarded my flight. But once again, upon landing in a foreign land that didn’t even use the same alphabet that I was used to, that feeling was back. What the hell are you doing? Stop, take a breath and take it all in. The new landscape and the new experiences already pouring in. I didn’t know Greece basically looked like a desert and was extremely mountainous. Call the taxi because you know the first place you want to go in Athens. After that, you have an idea and the drive to do it, it will come together. If you got this far you can make it a week. But it all starts with a simple movement – you have to go and commit to keep moving forward. The feeling that something amazing is going to happen quickly took hold up the mountainous drive from the Athens airport to the city center as sun rose over the mountains. My adventure had truly begun.
2. Roll with the punches – Go to Greek Mass and pee your pants.
One major aspect of this trip I was looking forward to as a Catholic, was the rich church history and beautiful sites to visit on the trip. Because I was arriving early Sunday morning in Athens, my first stop was the Catholic Cathedral. However, for a trip like this the hits will come quickly and try to knock your whole trip off kilter. My right ear felt like it was going to explode after the flight and I was in severe pain and could barely hear out of it, probably due to flying shortly after having a cold. In addition, I arrived to the Greek Cathedral to find that the 0700 mass was entirely in Greek, in a non-touristy part of time and I would have to walk miles to the part of town where I was staying upon completion of mass. Thankfully, there was an Asian woman who spoke English that made me feel like I had a lifeline for communication. The church was beautifully ornate, and the mass was sweltering hot in the air condition-less building. My backpack weighed heavily as I pieced together the sequence of the mass while trying to massage my ear into functioning again. I was able to read along to some parts in English but was mostly aloof. Upon completion of the mass I found another English speaking who told me where the bathroom was, which was a God send. My first bathroom break in country and a much needed opportunity to change from my jeans into shorts. We would be approaching full sun and temps in the 90s soon. After digging in my backpack and equipping shorts, I went to wash my hands. Of course the water pressure was too high and shot out of the sink, splattering my pants in the perfect “I peed my pants” pattern. I laughed because that’s all I could do. So I put my backpack on and started my journey to the city center, with the Greek liturgy in one good ear and what looked like pee all across my pants. I still had faith that the journey was going to be worth it, you just have to roll with the punches.
3. Get 50% lost and don’t panic.
So, after the pee pants ordeal, I found myself in a part of town that was unfamiliar and over a mile from my accommodations. Most things were in a language that I didn’t understand and the city was still waking up as it was still before 0900 on a Sunday morning. My bags weighed heavily upon me and my lack of cell service was hindering my navigation abilities. I had an offline version of maps to use on my phone, and I decided that was enough. I set off for what I hoped was the right part of the city. It was in the beginning of this walk that fear returned as I felt like I was getting lost in a foreign land with no lifeline, however I had to stay calm and stay in control. Back to rule #1 : momentum. But I could relax – because I was only 50% lost. It was at this moment that I had another realization. The sense of being partially but not completely lost is in our DNA. The generations of nomads and explorers that came before me had entered this gene into the pool for me to use as a navigation aid across the open ocean or rugged mountains, it would suffice for a foreign city center. I leaned into my lack of bearings as a tool to expand my mental map and learn about the area. The comfort in finding my way led me right to the busy tourist part of town and to a nice breakfast spot where I could have my first meal in country: eggs with tomatoes and feta cheese. Most of the time you aren’t totally lost, just lean in, chill out and you will find your way.
4. Plan on the fly then plan again.
Much of this trip was planned the day of or maybe the night before. As I was in the previously mentioned breakfast spot after a brief stint of being lost, I utilized the Wi-Fi to look for what to do and plan my day. It would be tough because I would have to carry around my bags all day until I could check into my accommodations later in the afternoon. I settled upon hitting multiple historical sites to include the Acropolis, the mythical mount over the city center that contained so much history. After that I would see what other sites were close by and visit according to time. I began my march up the hill to get to the entrance of the Acropolis. Passing through the Greek markets in the blazing sun made me feel like a pilgrim in a strange land, I was adventuring and very proud of it. When I arrived to the entrance of the site at the top of the hill, I was greeted with an unwelcome scene. The workers were striking in front of the entrance and protesting – there would be no entrance for me at the moment. All I could do was laugh, I didn’t even know they had workers up there but that totally makes sense. What were they striking for? Who cares – myself and several other tourists had our plans thrown into disarray. It was time to look for Wi-Fi and plan again. Thankfully, the visitor station had Wifi if that I hooped onto to look for other historical sites that the strike wouldn’t impact. I planned to visit another old temple, The Temple of Olympian Zeus. It meant more walking and lugging my bags, but even our best-laid plans can be destroyed by things outside of our control, I was sweaty and the hike up the hill already taxed my legs – but it was all part of the adventure. Plan on the fly as best you can to make things great, but don’t be heartbroken when you have to plan again at the last moment.
5. Engage and Disengage
Solo travel presents a unique opportunity and challenge: you’re alone. This presents a lot of latitude when it comes to dealing with other individuals you will encounter, do you want to engage or avoid them? In many situations, depending on your experience, you will find a good mix of times where you will want to break from your solitude and experience your trip with some random people, on the other hand you will want to soak in your trip and what it means to you in a very personal way that is to be experienced alone. As I walked from the Acropolis to the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, I found myself walking next to a group of fellow young guys speaking English. Better yet, we appeared to be heading the same direction. I started to speak to them and asked who they were and where they were from. They replied that they were a group of Irish guys here on vacation. After our brief intro I asked a couple more questions about how long they had been here and how they were enjoying the trip but the group gave me short answers and vacant glances as they continued their walk in relative silence. One of them even remarked that “they were a quiet bunch.” I realized I didn’t need to sink more into this fruitless interaction than I already had. I said farewell and broke off to walk a different direction, despite them heading to where I actually wanted to go. I was going to take a break in the shade of a building and reflect on how easy it was to engage strangers when you are by yourself, but also how easy it was to disengage them when the interaction was not one that was going anywhere. You don’t have to waste your time and try to force a kinship with people who don’t want it or won’t do anything for it. Your time is better spent elsewhere. This lesson proved to be a good one early on when it came to how and when to deal with other people when you are solo travelling, engage and disengage at your own pace.
6. Respect the Sun
Travelling typically makes one engage in a fair bit more walking than they typically might, even if they are someone who averages more than 10000 steps a day. Couple this fact with the reality that many places have different levels of urban development or tree cover and you might end up in a situation where you are walking outside in the baking sun for practically all day. I did not realize that many areas around the Mediterranean can even be semi-arid regions. Greece even felt like it was almost a desert, complete with the lack of tall trees for cover. Very quickly, the sun makes it presence extremely known, high in the sky, unhindered by cloud or concrete. The power of the sun will affect your trip as it affected mine. Whether that is water intake, how much rest you need, or worrying about how much sun exposure a 12 hour walking tour of the city is going to earn you. Only a handful of hours into this hot summer day, the sun was baking my bags into me. This wasn’t enough to ruin or change any plans, but it was enough to make me realize that this was a different kind of consideration than I would have in the concrete jungle of New York or the lush tree cover of Florida that I was used to. When you are going on a trip, you must learn to respect the sun, because it will teach you if you don’t already know.
7. Sometimes, force a rest.
Pace is extremely important when you are by yourself. It is easy to get caught up in your own head and the things that you want to do and the artificial timelines that you can devise when there is no one else there to be concerned with. However – be careful to not rob yourself of the enjoyment of the present moment in a hurry to get to the next one. Also, don’t waste all your energy just getting from point to point so that you don’t have the bandwidth to enjoy what you journeyed to get to in the first place. This is the situation where I found myself in the Temple of the Olympian Zeus. I had already walked 10s of thousands of steps with all my luggage on me in the baking sun. I sped through this awe-inspiring ruin and was already looking for the next stop, too eager to realize I was actually on my trip. This was the perfect chance to do something that I need to do in my day-to-day life more, slow down and take a second to take it in. I sat at a table with an umbrella and gazed out upon the mighty columns of the great temple and the remnants of a bathhouse that had long since withered away to time. Just sitting and looking out gave me a perspective I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else, not from a picture in a book or my own camera roll. I got to ponder the great structures and land that I was in. What did it mean, what was it like? These are life enrichening thoughts that you simply cannot engage in while hurrying from point to point. I couldn’t try to share the mind of the master craftsmen from 2000 years ago when I was off running to my next attraction, but in the moments I could try to sit in silence and ponder these works, I could try. Sometimes, to truly appreciate great things, force a rest.
8. Foreigners do weird things.
Being an American is awesome. Simply put, we are the best country. This is amazing in so many ways – but one way that presents as a blind spot is our relative blindness to how other countries and people just do so many things differently in big and small ways. I still contend that we are the best but it doesn’t make others bad, just some good opportunities to laugh when people do things that you think are strange. While sitting at the Temple of Olympian Zeus, a Spanish family began to sit all around me at my table and the table next to me. They completely engulfed me, a stranger, and were talking to each other as if this was perfectly normal. This was a full family – mom, dad, son, daughter. I could understand if I was at the only table in the area but there were plenty of tables where they could have had shade and enough chairs but chose to sit with me. The dad, who was of course wearing a fedora, smiled at me to show his friendliness as the interaction unfolded. I sat there and took it all in again, this time with the Spanish family at my side. I laughed to myself. What a weird and funny thing to do, at least that is what I thought with my American brain. This one experience helped keep a reminder at the forefront of my mind about different cultures and how people will interact in ways I am not wholly accustomed to. These interactions that feel weird are part of the fun of the travel and immersion into a different. Expect foreigners to do weird things, but view it as a new experience as opposed to people behaving wrong to get the most out of these interactions.
9. God bless the bag drop.
As previously stated, trips like these entail a lot of walking around. If you are also unlucky enough to not have a place to unburden your bags before continuing your journey – you’re in luck. There is an amazing thing that a lot of sites like museums will have: bag drop. As I walked from the Temple of the Olympian Zeus to the Acropolis Museum, a welcome break to do an indoor activity, my backpack was feeling pretty heavy. After buying my ticket and entering the museum, I received the great news that large bags would need to be checked, and it was free. I was very happy to finally be able to drop the bag and enjoy the sights without getting a workout simultaneously. Now I realized very quickly that this actually made a lot of sense. A nice museum with very nice, delicate objects would in no way want someone to walk around with a roller carry-on bag or a large backpack to bump into these fine pieces of art and history. The bag drop is a win-win. If I had known this concept earlier maybe it could have helped with some initial planning rather than the planning on the fly that I was accustomed to at this point. This very knowledge about being able to stow bags at nice museums, for free, would be a sticking point that helped me on my last day of the trip in Rome. The inverse of my current sitation in Greece, having checked out of my accommodation and the next real stop being the airport. The bag drop can be a back pocket tool to alleviate the distress of having to carry around your bags while trying to experience some great things on your trip.
10. Language barriers make things easier.
Hear me out, most of the time we hear about how not being able to communicate with someone hurts our interactions and comprehension – this may be true. However, I simply contend that sometimes this can work to our advantage. After a great visit at the Acropolis Museum, it was check-in time at my accommodations. For the last time, for now, I hauled my backpack to the spot and tried to enter, only to find that the cleaning lady was late, and she was only just arriving. The room hadn’t been cleaned since the last tenant, even though it was 3pm in the afternoon and beyond check-in time. She spoke no English; I spoke no Greek. We both knew the situation but didn’t know how to proceed. She fumbled with her phone to produce a translation app and would show me the translations of her desire for me to “go for a walk for 20 minutes.” At this point, I may have broken 20,000 steps. I wasn’t going anywhere – especially at the time when I should be able to be in the room that I paid for. I used her translation app to say “thank you I will sit on the couch.” She protested, but thankfully our language barrier was perfectly adequate to prevent her from expressing her thoughts anymore clearly, and the barrier was an adequate shield for me to smile and nod and proceed to sit on the couch. It was 3pm and I was feeling beat, the lady cleaned the room from the last tenant while I finally spent some time to just sit down inside and chill out. I couldn’t imagine being forced back out onto the street at that moment, and I have a language barrier to thank for making that interaction easier.
11. Plan to hang.
After a day that already felt so hectic and action packed. I knew exactly what I needed. I was going to sit on my patio, get a tan, and look out at the Acropolis. Just hanging out is an activity too, if done right. There is a lot of pressure to spending every moment in action, as already stated sometimes you must force yourself to rest to allow a reflective and observant state to take hold. This is a similar situation where you can really soak in and enjoy what you have by just hanging. I wasn’t sitting on the balcony reflecting on the merit of this ancient society or the birth of the democracy. I was letting the sun bake my skin while I looked out at a super cool thing and took in the noises of a new and novel place. This was a great liminal space. I’d reassess how I felt and see where I should eat soon. This rest was here to enjoy and rejuvenate me. It was purely time to enjoy – no agenda – but if an agenda arose, that was fine too. I took it all in and decided I was starving. It was time to get lunch, but not too quickly, I had to finish hanging out.
12. Read a book that makes you feel smarter, at a café.
Heading to a café to have a meal by yourself can feel daunting. It is easy to get into your own head. Should you scarf down your food and dip to the next activity, should you scroll on your phone, should you just look around in silence. It can feel isolating to be eating alone next to tables of folks on dates or families on vacation. It is important to not let those impulses get you down. This is a perfect opportunity fot another chill experience. I brought a classic little book, Beowulf, and I intended to read it at cafes to pass the time in a more constructive way than scrolling on my phone. Truth be told I thought about bringing The Odyssey but thought that would be a little too much so decided against it. I ordered and cracked open this classic work that I was wholly unfamiliar with. Upon looking into this book in this café in a foreign country, it instantly connected with me on a deep level: man’s heart yearns for adventure. Not only was I on my own quest of something that I didn’t know,m but I was tied back to this great epic of another quest that I could share in. I felt my quest grow larger even, somehow. I felt more alive. Certainly more alive than if I was scrolling my phone and was seeing memes that made me laugh. The food came out and I was now chewing on delicious lamb as I read about a great warrior slaying beasts. I felt unstoppable somehow, I felt smarter because I felt like more than just myself, I felt like BEOWULF even! Always take the time to go to a café and read a book that makes you feel smarter or really makes you feel any type of way that enlivens your soul!
13. Pay attention to the stray cats.
A lot of places have stray cats on the streets. In New York, we only have rats. These cats are even pretty cure, and they just run around the city and act like normal cats for the most part. They lounge around and purr and follow little animals and play. After my delicious meal at the café, I walked outside to see the cats that I had noticed through the window during lunch. The cats made me smile and I was in no rush to do anything, so I spent about 10 minutes watching this one cat prowl around like a lion though a planter of grass and trees. He’d occasionally get distracted by a bug. This was one of the more ridiculous things I found myself doing that I still found to be a great use of time. It made me happy to take the time to watch this little guy, I thought about petting him but wasn’t sure how clean these cats were. Every time from this point on, I made sure to give a little attention to the stray cats I’d see on this trip. Pay attention to the stray cats, but maybe don’t pet them if you don’t want.
14. Quit while you’re ahead.
My first day in Europe was coming to a close and I was exhausted. I had maybe broken 25,000 steps by this point and many of those were done while carrying my backpack. I had battled with the sun and a rapidly changing itinerary, not to mention getting practically no sleep on the flight over. But there was still so much to see! I thought to myself that it would be impossible to see everything and I would have to spend the whole night out trying to see great things in Athens. Now it was night, I wanted to see the city scene and go to a bar. But something dawned upon me, the truth. I was dead tired and would be no good to try to spend this night out. I had a great day and was planning on starting early again tomorrow. What I needed was not try to push it with more exciting and novel experiences this evening, I needed to grab a little food, some gelato, and go to bed. That is exactly what I did and boy am I glad to have done it. That shower washed more dust and sweat off of me than I care to admit. When it was time for bed, I was out quick. How much better would my night have been by forcing a drink at a Greek bar? I was so tired I had practically sleepwalked back from my gelato that night. Quit while you’re ahead, even on vacation!
15. The schedule you have is the one that works.
My first thought as I woke up at 8am the next morning was a quick jolt of unease as I looked at the time and realized it was already so late. It was already 8am and I needed to be up to the Acropolis for my 9am ticket, but I wanted to get up even earlier so I could have breakfast and espresso. Everything was ruined I guess, right? Negative, in short order I realized the error of my thinking. I am here on vacation. What I had in mind didn’t pan out, but I truly did need that extra sleep. I would worry about the great Greek breakfast tomorrow and still have a great lunch after the Acropolis today. Not getting too hung up on the schedule, especially when it was because something had not gone the way I had planned it, truly helped me enjoy this trip more and stay more relaxed. The schedule you find yourself in is in fact the best one, because it’s the one you have. Don’t lament and make it work.