Boldly Go Solo
How to set out solo, but not travel alone: Trips, tips and ideas for the active traveler.
Category: Trip Tips
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Seeing the flashes going off at the bottom of a Metro escalator the other day reminded me of two things: what a big tourist attraction my home town is and how hard it is to capture an escalator on "film." (At least for us amateurs.) The reason people try to capture our escalators for posterity…
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"Tourist cities are useless with single diners, especially women of a certain age." This is a line from a funny article by a woman who shares her strategy for a "successful dining-alone experience," in a Mail Online (British) story. First tip. Have a drink before going out. For confidence. Okay, that cracked me up. But…
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"Solo travel can be inexpensive." This is not something you hear often. But Janice at Solo Traveler writes that it's easier to book hostels, hospitality stays and cheap flights when you are a single traveler rather than part of a couple. Makes sense. It's easier to snag the last bed in a hostel if there's…
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A couple of weeks ago, The Washington Post explored the offerings of booking an Airbnb, that is, a cheap bed in a home in one of thousands of properties around the world. Now, this is where it pays to arrive alone. In many cases, you'll be sharing with the owners or renters of the places,…
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I enjoyed this story by a woman named Marina who talked about the joys, as well as the loneliness, she experienced while traveling alone in Vietnam And Cambodia. And the stares. And the eating alone. And the precautions she felt she had to take. And the people she met. And the locals who helped her.…
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"Staycation." It's a crock. If you're home, you're not on vacation. Maybe you're using vacation days. Maybe you're relaxing and clearing your head. Maybe you're eating up "use or lose" days. Maybe you're taking off so you can visit local museums, restaurants and galleries because you never have time on the weekends. Nothing wrong with…
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Last weekend I did a 9-mile hike in the woods, along a creek for much of the way. I heard woodpeckers and the rustle of small four legged creatures scurrying away at the sound of footfalls. And the entire hike was in Washington, D.C. What a lot of people don't realize about the nation's capital…
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Travel + Leisure's July issue describes the "world's top biking cities" Three are in the U.S.: Minneapolis, Portland (Oregon) and Seattle. The others are Amsterdam (of course), Bogota (who knew?), Copenhagen, Montreal, Munich, Paris and Perth. The site offers a slide show of the various cities. There's a great photo of a four-story parking structure…
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As an update to yesterday's post, I direct you to Fodor's 10 tips for becoming a carry on traveler. The absolute hardest one for me is the advice to carry one pair of shoes. How do you DO that?? I find that if the shoes are comfortable, they're generally not pretty. I like sneakers for…
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Every now and then I like to point to someone else's list of good reasons for traveling alone and tips on how to do it, since I don't make those lists. But a refresher course is handy every so often. In this post, "Travel Alone and Love It" the writer offers common sense advice and…
Boldly Go Solo 