Boldly Go Solo

How to set out solo, but not travel alone: Trips, tips and ideas for the active traveler.

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Category: Travel

  • Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, and the Northern Ireland connection

    Mary, Mary, quite contrary, is alive and well and living in a neo-classical house in Northern Ireland. I couldn’t believe it either. There really is a Mary! Actually, there’s a Mairi. As in Mairi, Mairi, quite contrary.And her garden still grows. It’s landscaped and huge and filled with silver bells (campanulas) and Pretty Maids (saxifraga)…

  • Loving travel, despite the pre-trip anxiety

    If you love to travel and do it a lot, it should be as easy to get on a plane as venturing out for a quart of milk, right? Wrong. A few months ago, I wrote about the difficulty many travel writers have before every trip. They poured their hearts out on a thread on…

  • When traveling, strike up a conversation whenever possible

    If I'm ever in Chile and need a place to stay, I am welcome to stay with Mauricio. He just emailed me the other day extending the invitation. That made me really happy. Even if I never go. I met Mauricio and his sister, Paola, in Spain last June. On a train ride from Madrid…

  • How you say dees een French?: “I had a great time being on my own in Paris.”

    I went to Paris alone. I was in my 20's and I wanted to learn French. Classes at the Alliance Francaise would be my ticket to fluency. But I knew no one in Paris. I spent the first few nights in a cheap hotel, sharing a hall bathroom. I wandered the streets in wonder. I practiced…

  • Anatomy of a solo trip, day six. All done.

    Due to high waters in the nearby canyons, we do loops around the hotel instead of going out to do a breakfast hike. We end up eating near a waterfall. Since this whole trip is about healthy eating, breakfast "on the trail" consists of fruit, peanut butter, cottage cheese, fruit, whole grain tortillas, nuts, fruit…

  • Anatomy of a solo trip, day five. Pain.

    I wish it hadn't taken me slamming into a prickly pear cactus to make a great point about traveling solo, but it did. Here's the sad tale. In heavy hiking boots, on a trail marked "difficult," I tripped and pitched forward. Under normal circumstances I think I would have been able to right myself. But…

  • Anatomy of a solo trip, day four. Laughs.

    Bridget, a fellow hiker, had some of us laughing all morning, after she showed us the "Michigan mitten" at breakfast. Someone asked her where she grew up and she held up her right hand and pointed to one side of her palm. "Right here." Huh? Apparently, Michigan children learn that their state is shaped like…

  • Anatomy of a solo trip, day three. Rain.

    Yesterday’s hail dusted the mountaintops here in Tucson, changing the desert palette. By this morning it was raining. If I had been out West hiking on my own, I might have spent a lonely day in my room, or hanging around the hotel, today. Maybe I would have gone shopping or to a movie. But…

  • Anatomy of a solo trip, day two. Hail.

    Tucson in December has its surprises for an East Coast girl: A loud, heavy hail storm has left quarter-inch balls of white ice on the hotel's lawns and sidewalks. An old water tank for cattle, which are no longer allowed where we're hiking, is filled with plump, healthy goldfish. Goldfish! In the Sonoran Desert in…

  • Anatomy of a solo trip, day one. Apprehension.

    9:30 am, Houston. Having one of those "poor me" moments while rushing to make the connection to Tucson. Why was I going to all this trouble, flying to join a bunch of strangers at a spa? All alone. I think about home and it seems so cozy and inviting. Typical day one for me. Just…