It’s more fun than it sounds.
It was a beautiful summer night in Amsterdam, sunlight glittering off the silver waters of the city’s many canals, the streets crowded with residents and tourists alike, and the man sitting next to me on the dock waiting for the next canal cruise couldn’t understand why I had traveled there alone. It wasn’t his fault; our Instagram feeds are always crowded with pictures of our friends on vacation in groups, with their families or friends or significant others. The idea of traveling with other people is so ingrained in our culture that the idea of someone, particularly a college student, traveling alone causes at least a pause. But it shouldn’t; there are benefits to traveling alone (it’s certainly better than not traveling at all) and they’re often overshadowed by society’s constant need to be with other people.
There are a lot of reasons why one might travel alone. For me, it was because I couldn’t find a friend who could take two weeks off of work or school to travel with me to four different countries in two weeks—seven if you count day trips. I ended up staying in Ireland, where I’d spent the previous year studying abroad, a little longer than I planned and ended up having two extra weeks between the end of my internship and the day my plane took off. I decided to do some traveling in Europe since I was an easy flight away. Starting in Brussels and spending a day in Amsterdam, taking the train from Amsterdam to Switzerland, traveling from Switzerland to Germany (Munich, to be precise), and then flying from Munich to London for a concert. After a few days in London, I flew back to Ireland and then two days later caught my flight back to the U.S. While I stayed with relatives when I was in Switzerland and spent a lot of time with a friend in Munich, for the rest of the trip I was entirely on my own and I was surprised by how fulfilling I found it, and the number of people surprised by it.
A couple months earlier, I’d spent a week in Paris with a couple of friends. We had a great time wandering through the huge decorated halls of the Louvre and Versailles, climbing steps down below the earth to the Paris catacombs and up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, and leaving the city entirely to visit castles in the Loire Valley. I planned our itinerary, because I was the only one who had any strong opinions on where we should go. When my friend wanted to go to the catacombs, I was able to work that in. When our original visit to Versailles on Wednesday was canceled because of a heads of state conference due to the Ukraine crisis, I moved our tickets up to Sunday. I designed the trip the way I wanted it designed, and I’m glad that my friends were happy enough to go along with it. I had a very specific list of places I wanted to go and things I wanted to see when I was in Paris and I was happy to visit them with friends, but I realized pretty early on that even if my friends hadn’t wanted to go (to the Louvre, for example) I would have gone myself.
When I traveled alone, I was able to design the trip exactly to my specifications. When I was in Amsterdam, I was able to visit the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum and the Anne Frank museum all in one day, along with the canal tour. I’m not sure if I could have talked my friends into doing all of that in an eighteen hour period. But I only had one day to spend in Amsterdam and I was determined to make the most of it. I filled each of my days with day trips and museum visits—I visited a castle on an island in the middle of a lake in Germany, toured the Churchill War Rooms in the morning and Kensington Palace in the afternoon of one of my days in London, and spent a day walking the streets of Brussels. I was able to see everything I wanted to see and I was able to leave each country feeling like I’d done everything I could possibly do with the time I had there. Making the most of my time on vacation is always important to me, where some people might prefer to take things at a slower pace. I can appreciate spending a week lying on the beach, but when I go to Europe it’s all about the castles, museums and art galleries (in that order).
When I was traveling alone, I also felt more aware of the world around me. I had to pay more attention than usual—there was no one to organize train tickets or watch Google maps and I couldn’t miss my turn because I’d been so busy talking with a friend. I was more attuned to the smaller things around me and felt more present in the moment, more aware of the history that surrounded me in everything from the large palaces to the cobblestoned streets. But mainly, traveling alone was a huge confidence booster—I was able to get myself from Amsterdam to Switzerland even after my train was delayed so long it terminated a stop early in Germany, I was able to navigate all of my day trips, and most importantly, I was able to navigate Heathrow the day after an issue with their bag retrieval system caused hundreds of travelers to lose their bags (fortunately I wasn’t one of them). Even though I’d spent the last year studying abroad and traveling extensively within Ireland, (usually with friends but sometimes on my own) that trip felt like the culmination of my year away, like I was able to put everything I’d learned about living and traveling abroad to use, and in my opinion, I passed with flying colors.
People shouldn’t discount the benefits of traveling alone. It’s a great way to boost confidence and experience the world around you differently. Most importantly, you can tailor your schedule to your exact needs and have exactly the kind of trip you’d like to have—whether that’s hiking, visiting castles and museums, or relaxing on the beach. After all, once you’ve traveled in a foreign city or country by yourself, you realize you can do a lot more than you thought you could. It’s an affirming feeling, especially for college students. It’s also a lot of fun.