Actually… Solo Travel Kinda Sucks

Many tout the merits of seeing the world solo, but here's why it often adds up little more than unfulfilling fantasy.Solo travel has a so-cool image. Picture Stanley Tucci at a Florence restaurant, sipping a Negroni, admiring the Arno River while awaiting lasagna bolognese. Or the late Anthony Bourdain, striding past stray dogs and smoky food carts, exuding a confident, maps-are-for-pussies cool. No kids. No spouses. No stress. Living the go-where-I-want, do-what-I-want, eat-what-I-want travel dream.That’s the fantasy. Here’s the reality. On a recent solo trip to Lugano, Switzerland, I wandered into an Italian restaurant for dinner, and the host led me to a side room filled with empty tables. Inside, one diner, also alone, stared at his phone, robotically eating pasta in a doomscrolling trance. And I knew, instantly: This is the loser room, where they stash solo diners lest we sadden the other guests.I’ve traveled alone many times, so take it from me: Solo travel ain’t as cool as it seems. And I make that statement as a people-avoiding introvert who relishes solitude (if I were imprisoned, solitary confinement would be a reward instead of a threat). But traveling alone is like drinking alone. Travel is waaay better as a social experience. Continue Reading Article After Our Video Recommended Fodor’s Video When you take a trip with someone, you’re bonding, you’re seeing the world through their eyes, you’re building mutual memories. When you take a trip with someone, you’re bonding, you’re seeing the world through their eyes, you’re building mutual memories. The most gratifying travel tales, I find, are “We” stories, not “I” stories; when you reminisce with family or friends and say, “Remember that time when we…” I traveled with three buddies to Garmisch, Germany, and our favorite moment was a serendipitous lunch at a rustic mountainside restaurant while hiking. Now, whenever we meet, the mere words “Garmisch” and “lunch” transport us to the Alps and a precious time in our friendship. The power of that meal and that scene—grazing cows with clanging bells, the clinking of beer glasses, the devouring of gulasch mit knöbel—comes from sharing the experience.So why do social media and pop culture continually glamorize solo travel? Tucci and Bourdain aren’t the only culprits. On Instagram, travel influencers post gleeful solo selfies, the scenery unspoiled by other humans. On the big screen, James Bond wins at baccarat, alone, a martini his only companion (though he won’t be alone for long, wink wink). In her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert pursues pasta, spirituality, and romance in a by-herself global journey, inspiring thousands of women to pack a suitcase and seek personal reinvention. The allure of solo travel is so potent that even gruesome experiences seem exotic. In an IMDB list of “Films That Will Inspire You to Travel,” the top choice is the Alaskan epic Into the Wild, even though it’s the real-life story of a man who DIES ALONE IN A BUS.Group travel, meanwhile, is fodder for what-else-can-go-wrong comedies. Think the Griswolds bumbling across America and Europe in the Vacation films or Steve Martin plagued by John Candy in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Pop culture’s most positive tale of group travel, I suspect, might be the two-episode Brady Bunch trip to the Grand Canyon in 1971. Even then, the family is imprisoned by a mangy prospector, played by Jim Backus, best known as Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island, another tale of group travel gone wrong (and let’s be real: Most of us would prefer intestinal parasites to eight hours in a station wagon singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” with the Bradys).The appeal of solo travel is that you’re not trapped with Peter and Bobby. It’s all about image. James Bond roaming Monte Carlo alone in a white dinner jacket: Cool. James Bond dragging Jimmy, Jr. mid-tantrum from the hotel pool and bribing him with ice cream cones and Hot Wheels if he’ll for the love of God stop screaming: Not cool.The unaccompanied traveler, unchained from the anchor of another, evokes the tantalizing promise of freedom, transformation, adventure, indulgence, and glorious independence. I’ve succumbed to those same desires. In my 40s, I embarked on a hairy-knuckled Elizabeth Gilbert midlife-crisis journey of my own. My father had recently died from a sudden heart attack, and I was struggling to accept that my first wife and I wouldn’t have children. I volunteered in six countries in search of meaning and on three of those trips—to New Orleans, Ecuador, and Palestine—I traveled solo (my memoir, The Voluntourist, was like a male version of Eat, Pray, Love that sold 12 million fewer copies).I had profound experiences alone. In Quito, I entered the 350-year-old San Agustín church and was moved to pray, unexpectedly (I’m not religious), for the people I love. But being alone gets old fast. In the hours following my church visit, after a day of walking, sightseeing, eating, drinking, thinking by myself, I returned to my hotel room, flopped on the bed, and thought… Wow. I’m REALLY sick of being with me. Dinners are the worst. Breakfast is fine—most of us can’t form complex sentences until our third cup of coffee—but dinner is a social meal Dinners are the worst. Breakfast is fine—most of us can’t form complex sentences until our third cup of coffee—but dinner is a social meal. And when you’re traveling, it’s a time for reflecting on the day; for reliving what you saw, learned, smelled, felt; for laughing at your mistakes (I laugh a heckuva lot less when I’m alone); and eagerly reviewing the next day’s plans. After my “loser room” experience in Lugano, I never ate dinner out solo again. I instead bought pre-made sandwiches from Coop, a Swiss grocery store chain. I would find a bench along the city’s lake, or a table with a view in the hotel courtyard. Eating alone on a park bench was better than eating alone in a restaurant.Companions are also invaluable for helping you not, you know, die. Or get hopelessly lost. Two brains are better than one for managing the complexities of travel: unfamiliar train stations, indecipherable bus schedules, unknown city blocks, different languages and etiquette. When I was alone in Jerusalem, I walked the Via Dolorosa, Jesus’s route as he carried the cross. I strolled through ancient, narrow, maze-like passageways, armed only with a Rick Steves guidebook, and by the eighth station of the cross (which “can be easy to miss,” Steves wrote in a gargantuan understatement), I was so lost that I shadowed a Japanese tour group to escape, lingering 15 feet behind their collective backsides until we reached the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and I could breathe again.Criminals notice that by-yourself bewilderment. My spider sense tingles far more intensely when I’m traveling alone, because solo travelers are targets. In Ecuador, I met a fellow solo traveler who was victimized in a two-person pickpocket scheme. One person “accidentally” spilled a funky liquid on him, then vigorously apologized and supposedly helped to clean his pants while the other went for his wallet.This never happened onscreen to Anthony Bourdain. And lest we forget, when we watch the badass Bourdain saunter through bustling alleyways in black shades in old episodes of No Reservations or Parts Unknown, he’s not really alone. Bourdain relied on a six-person production crew to film his show. That’s six more people than I had when I bought pre-made grocery store sandwiches for dinners.I don’t regret traveling alone. There were upsides. But I don’t romanticize it, either. When I left Lugano (my new wife was supposed to join me at a conference but had to cancel due to a recurring heart issue), I had about 24 hours in Zurich before heading home. I turned off the GPS, explored the city, and I gotta admit, I felt a little Bourdain-ish, albeit with man boobs instead of tattoos. But as I strolled the old town guided by serendipity, as I window shopped and people watched and sipped coffee at an outdoor café in a centuries-old square, I kept thinking… I want to come back with my wife and grandson. I want them to see this. And that, for me, is the lesson from solo travel. It’s not where you go or what you see that’s important. It’s who you see it with.