I am on my way home from Barcelona after a week visiting my son, whose been living here for the past 12 weeks. I’ve traveled alone many times, but it’s almost always for work, with an occasional day tacked on to see a museum. I’ve never traveled abroad alone and I was excited beforehand to have the experience. I know there are a lot of people who love to do it, and although I hope I never face it as my only option, I was curious about whether I’d like it.
Answer: Mixed feelings.
What’s better about solo travel
Barcelona and Madrid are teeming with tourists even before summer has begun. The museums in particular are packed because it’s school trip season, and there are dense packs of adolescents everywhere you go. Being alone means I can go faster through crowds. I don’t have to keep track of anyone else, and can weave around the edges of the crowd easily.
Being alone meant I could also do what I wanted. Not that my usual traveling companion is unwilling to follow my lead but he often wants to see so much that it can be a marathon keeping up with him. Traveling alone, I could go back to the hotel and recharge (me or my phone), leave when I wanted, eat when I wanted. I could even go back to places I have been before without boring anyone else.
Similarly, I never felt guilty for random downtime or naps. Again, my travel companion loves naps, so that’s not a big hindrance, but there was a day this week when I took a morning nap and an afternoon nap. Did not feel bad about that at all.
Here’s something that I think is a sign of why traveling alone is a mixed bag: I only do what I am personally bold enough to do. In a place where there’s a language barrier for me, I sometimes find it hard to take risks. My son can now speak Spanish well enough to navigate all cultural experiences, so when I was with him, I could do whatever he was personally bold enough to do.
What’s worse about traveling solo
The service was definitely worse. This may be a Spain thing; I don’t know. Restaurants are geared toward groups, and the servers favor groups over individuals. They took longer to give me a menu, take my order, and bring my check. They did not ask if I wanted refills. Maybe this is a solo woman problem. I don’t know. I didn’t seem many other solo travelers.
Similarly, portion sizes in Spain are meant to be shared and if you are alone, it’s hard to tailor a just-right meal. At one restaurant, the server literally would not let me order something on the basis that “it’s too large for you alone.”
The loneliness. I wasn’t totally alone, of course. I hung out most days with my son for at least few hours and he is good company. He was very happy to share “his” Barcelona and his newfound language skills. But when I was alone, I occasionally felt lonely. I wanted someone to talk to and I was shit out of luck.
In that vein, having a solo cultural experience means there is no one to process with. I had questions, I had ideas, and there wasn’t anyone but myself to share them with. I am not so awesome that I loved my own answers.
When you travel alone, no one else has ideas about what to do. I had to come up with stuff on my own. I did, of course, but it can be fun to do what other people like to do, even if it’s just so you can complain about it later.
Just as I could only do what I was bold enough to do, no one else was around to suffer the linguistic embarrassment. If I misspoke, that was on me, feeling like a dork by myself.
To reward you for getting to this point in this post, here’s a photo of my cute son and me.
More Games People Play
I got some really funny responses from people about the games I play. One friend wrote: “Uh this is me down the puzzle rabbit hole. AND I have it so bad that I actually change the Date/Time on my cell phone to Hobart, Australia so that I can get the NYT games early AND wait up until 1:10am so I can do the Apple News Quartile puzzle as soon as it's released. HELP.”
Personally, I think that’s amazing. To reward my friend, here are some more games that I have found. Trainwreck Labs has a huge line-up of games, including Metazooa and Metaflora, where you have to guess the animal and plants of the day. I haven’t tried all the others yet, but I plan to tackle them soon. Also Order Up is working on my phone again (but not my laptop), and (drum roll, please) I got all of the chickens so thank the goddess I am relieved of playing that game ever again.