I’d been in Madrid for four hours when it dawned on me that I would eat all of my meals alone.
I had arrived in the middle of the morning and, having slept through my flight’s breakfast round, made a beeline to the first cafe I could find within walking distance of my hostel. It was noon by the time I found a place that served a simple breakfast menu, the famous tortilla de patata served with a coffee or orange juice. The waitress sized me up in one glance — taking in my beat-up backpack and unkempt hair — and pointed to a lonely table in the corner of the restaurant where there was only one chair and a view of the street. It was perfect for a solo traveler like me to watch people pass by as I planned my route for the day.
I ordered quickly, agreeing to whatever the waitress asked so she wouldn’t sense my elementary Spanish. Once she left, I checked my phone, looked out the window, thought of places I could see later that day, and waited.
Solo travel is often romanticized. Taking long, meandering walks with no cell service, marveling at centuries-old art and architecture, creating your own schedule to be followed and abandoned at will. These are all fantasies that attracted me to the idea of traveling by myself, but they ignore the less sexy, and much more constant, truth: Solo travel is lonely.
This wasn’t my first time in a foreign country with nothing but my own thoughts to occupy my time. I’d spent a day or two in busy cities, waiting on a friend or making the most of a long layover, but I had never been faced with the prospect that I would be alone for an extended amount of time.
When I began to plan my trip to Spain, my main goal was to learn Spanish. I had the notebooks, I watched the tv shows, and of course, I spent a few minutes on Duolingo every day, but it wasn’t clicking. I knew my accent was off and I could feel myself freeze up whenever someone asked me a question in Spanish. I needed to throw myself into the deep end of language immersion, and Spain happened to be the country I picked to teach me.
I did not consider asking friends to come with me. There were fantasies to uncover, and I wanted to be selfish. I longed for the days when I could wake up and do exactly what I wanted to do without anyone else’s opinion. If I didn’t feel the need to visit that “must-see” art museum, I didn’t have to. I could order wine as early as I wanted to, I could have two ice cream cones in a single day.
I was aware that I was doing this myself. I considered whether it would be smarter to plan a shorter trip instead of the vague 3–6 month end date I gave family and friends. But that slight fear was also exhilarating, enough to make me buy a ticket, book a hostel in a young district of Madrid, and put off the rest of my planning until I arrived.
Now, two months in, I can see the pros and cons of really reflecting on what it means to be alone before buying that ticket.
The days are filled with people, especially in the larger cities I’ve visited. Madrid, Burgos, Valladolid — all full of endless cafes to try, bars to rest, buildings to explore. There’s always a conversation I can listen to and people to watch, but rarely someone to share it with. Even when I push myself to make conversation and improve my Spanish, I am aware that the person I project is not really me. How can I fully express myself to a stranger in a language I barely know?
That reality can be hard to accept at times. Sometimes I see something beautiful, or stupid, and I want to immediately turn to someone I love and talk about it. I will admit that the technology of the twenty-first century makes it easier for me to share what I see through a quick text or photo. But other times, I force myself to control that urge to immediately pull out my phone and take in whatever I am seeing for myself.
A surprising sunset in winter, a conversation between two friends: These are just some of the moments I’ve found too common to share, but they are striking to me. These are the times that I truly feel part of the places I am visiting, where I usually stand out for wearing a dress in 50-degree weather or taking two seconds too long to respond to a question. More so than any of the buildings I see or food I try, these are the memories that I will cherish because they are solely mine.
Perhaps at the end of my trip, I will agree with all of the travel influencers out there who insist that solo travel helped them learn more about themselves.
“Traveling alone made me tougher,” I may say, even as I spend every evening looking over my shoulder as I walk home.
“Traveling alone showed me that I didn’t need another person to be happy,” I could insist, pushing away the memories of the quiet nights I waited for my loved ones to call as I sat in a hostel bunkbed.
The truth is that traveling alone still fucking terrifies me. But I am doing it anyway.
