Travelling with yourself.
I love travelling alone. I love the exciting fear, the euphoric adrenaline rushes, the new adventures around each new corner, the people I talk to, the stories I hear. I love the homely apartments, but most of all, I love the warm frangrance of freedom.
It gives a chance to slow down and take an outside viewpoint on your life/health/family/work/finances at home. It gives you the chance to break it all down and rebuild it with purpose and direction, to set goals whilst being free from all life's scrambled egg chaos. I believe this self reflection helps you decide what you like and don’t like about your life, it's a time to make plans and decide on the dynamics of your life that you need to change and some, to be free of, to move myself forwards.
Travelling alone looks hippyish - easy peasy? Is it?
If you are healthy and are surrounded by beautiful views, the scent of figs in the air, listening to the cicadas mating, foreign birds chirping but you cannot trace them, or trying to break the language barrier with lovely new people, whilst looking up at different architecture and trying to remember streets etc, you automatically have to become a different self.
Not the self who struggles with negative loneliness and self talk, who tries to maintain identity throughout dark days of loneliness. No - you are with the inner child who thrived on new adventures/sights/tastes/new experiences, who risked and lived each day as if it were their last.
Then afterwards you go home with secrets and stories, some are so hard to describe because you don't return with victim mentality, you are of a victor -who survived alone in a different county. You have a new found resilience and should be internally wearing a badge of strength and honour, that only like minded hippy looking travellers could guess as it came out of your adrenaline fuelled adventure, as others judge from armchairs,
'You went on holiday alone!’
https://youtu.be/P14oCv5aYyM Alone and limitless
Loneliness, away from home.
There will be times where you feel alone and don't fit in, where you will ache for someone to talk to or debate which way to turn, left or right, or whether to talk to that person or not.
https://youtu.be/WQX0xNrbOps google maps for dummies
After 35 trips alone all around Europe, in dark times I pull on these memories for sanity and self confidence, strength and remind myself not to feel sorry for myself. However I have had to learn a few boundaries. These have kept me safe time and time again.
I am not an expert in avoiding issues when I am away.
Lots of amazing positive and negative memories
today fill my mind.
1 Trust yourself as far as you can go and if you feel uncomfortable/nervous/anxious turn back. That's the brain in my gut telling you of potential danger.
2 Don't drink alcohol in strange company or places. Better to be nervous than sedated.
3 Choose and airbnb apartment, as I feel extra lonely with couples and groups. I'm ok joining them at my own pace.
4 Don't post photos on social media. It's your holiday and you want to keep your home safe and private.
5 If you get a bus from the airport, get a taxi to the apartment. This part of your journey is so stressful with Google maps.
6 Daily find quiet places to sit, read, write poetry, draw pictures etc. This really helps you be 100% present with yourself.
7 I go out around 10am and return about 9pm, then I'm happy chilling in the apartment. Don't ask me what I do all day, but if I decide to go left in the morning a lovely day unfolds, if I decide to go right, a different lovely day unfolds. (Parallel doors)
8 I have never gone on a cruise but if your finances allows this, I believe you can meet all the other singles on the first day or avoid them all week if you like.
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