Yesterday I read this beautiful T Magazine article all about solo travel. I’ve had vacation and traveling on my mind and certainly want to do much more solo travel in the next couple of years. Traveling with others can be lovely, but also – a complete disaster. What I love about exploring cities and beaches and new places by myself is that I can do everything on my own pace. I can take every sound and scent and moment in on my own terms, without feeling like I’m holding someone else up. Here’s my favorite parts from the T Magazine article:
I want to think new things on holiday and the best way to do that is to go it alone, allowing yourself a space — a beautiful space, with any luck — that is circumscribed neither by your need to perform nor your need to blame. Get up when you like. Skip as many museums as you like. Eat or don’t eat. Dance or don’t dance. Swim far out if you want to. Drink Champagne at breakfast. Write a paragraph if you have one to write. Say nothing for days and dream of home. Keep the light on all night.
I love a solo holiday. It tends to refresh the part of oneself that is most depleted by modern life — patience.
The wanderlust of the solo traveler doesn’t kill homesickness, it partners it, making the vacation all the better for involving one’s profound wish to go home to normal life a little changed.
The article reminded me of something I read in Shauna Niequist’s Cold Tangerines.
There are only two things I like to do alone: reading and traveling and for the same reason. When you travel and when you read, you are not actually alone but rather surrounded by other worlds entirely, the footsteps and phrases of whole other lives keeping you company as you go.
Now you tell me – would you travel alone? Happy Friday!
