Hello,
Blogosphere! As the title of this blog
implies, I am a single woman who loves to travel, and frequently does so
alone. This wasn’t always the case,
however. I always thought big trips,
i.e. anything to another continent, required a travel companion to be enjoyed,
hence I put off traveling anywhere spectacular for years.
I’m
going to start here by recounting my trips over the last few years, leading up
to my planning for the trip I hope to take this year – Paris! I’ll also be posting links to any articles or
tips I find beneficial to travelers. But
first, let’s start with my very first solo trip.
I
had wanted to go to Rome since my early twenties, after seeing it portrayed so
romantically in a movie called “Only You.”
This romantic portrayal, however, had me convinced I needed to go with
someone special. So I waited for Prince
Charming to show up and whisk me away on his big white horse. I waited.
And waited. And waited, but Prince
Charming was nowhere to be found. I
finally concluded that Prince Charming might just be trapped under that white
horse somewhere and might never show up, and I will have wasted my life, not
doing or seeing things I wanted because I was afraid to do them alone. Well no more!
I was going to Rome and I was going alone!
This
began probably my favorite part of traveling, except for the trip itself, the
research! I’m very Type A when I
travel. I want to know where I’m going,
how to get there, what’s it cost, when is it open, etc. My friends who occasionally travel with me
love this about me. They even said they
know all they have to do is wake up and follow me!
The
first thing I had to do was get a flight.
A few website searches and that was done. Easy peasy.
The next thing to figure out was where to stay. Any decent hotel (clean with a private
bathroom) close to the city center was going to be well over $100 a night. This
was more than I wanted to budget for accommodations (I was going to Italy, for
Pete’s sake, I needed to save money to shop and eat!). A
friend of mine years before had mentioned a website called VRBO.com, Vacation
Rental by Owner, where homeowners rent their apartments, houses, boats, etc. to
travelers for vacation stays, and I thought it would be cool to live like an
Italian, sort of, so I checked it out.
Most
of the places were as, if not more, expensive than most of the hotels I’d
looked at. Then I came across an ad for
a “flatlet” near the Piazza Navona. It
was very charming, had everything I needed, got great reviews and was close to
everything. More importantly, it was 70
euros per night. To put this in
perspective, the hotel directly across the street was 140 euros per night. I contacted the owner, and booked the
apartment. FYI, it’s still available on
VRBO.com, the price has not gone up in six years, and the owner has remodeled
the bathroom. http://www.vrbo.com/22504 When
I go back to Rome (and I will!) I’m staying here again.
There is a bakery about a block away where
I’d buy pastry every morning for breakfast, and a wonderful local restaurant at
the end of the block where I ended up eating three times. There is also an interesting little
restaurant across the street where you don’t order, but eat whatever is on the
menu that night. Beware, however, it’s
cash only!
So
now I had my flight and a place to stay.
I had to figure out how to get to the city from the airport, and what I
wanted to see. At this point, I wasn’t
very adventurous in terms of transportation, so I went straight to Viator.com
and booked transport from and back to the airport, as well as tour of Vatican,
the Colosseum, and an Angels and Demons book tour, which took us to various
parts of the city that were mentioned in the book, and a very lively guide read
passages from the book relating to those sites.
I highly recommend it if you get to Rome, and if Viator still offers
it.
So
now I had a few things planned. I scoured
TripAdvisor and the internet for the best places to shop and eat. Then I figured out which ones were close to
the tours I booked, and planned out each day of my trip. I had an envelope for each day that contained
any tickets I might need, a map of the area, and the restaurants and shops I
wanted to visit. I was ready to go!
The
day finally arrived. No flight delays, a
little nap on the plane and suddenly I was in Italy. I went to my designated spot to catch my ride
into the city, and ended up having to wait several hours. I wasn’t going to let that get me down
though. I was finally in Italy!
So I
finally get onto the bus and into the city.
The streets in the area where I was staying were very narrow, so the
driver and myself were forced to walk several blocks to my flatlet, lugging my
suitcases all the way! He told me to
meet him back at the same spot on my departure date and off he went. I met my landlord for the week, paid my bill
and collected my keys and was on my own.
I
checked out my little apartment, unpacked a bit and freshened up. Then a slight bit of panic set in. I was alone in a foreign country and I had
nothing planned for that day. The
hardest part of that whole trip was taking that first step out of the door,
into the great unknown.
But
I did it. I set out walking, and soon
found a little place for lunch. I had a
Panini and a beer, and then set off to explore Rome. I found the Piazza Navona within
minutes. This is a great place to spend
some time. The Bernini fountain is
amazing, and the people watching can’t be beat.
I
kept up my exploring, wandering aimlessly, going nowhere and loving every
minute. I was just about to turn around
and head back when I noticed a street sign I remember from hours of scouring
maps of Rome, and knew that the Trevi fountain was very close by. I walked another two blocks and there it
was. What a great moment to realize I
had wandered onto one of the great sites in this amazing city.
That
night I had a solo dinner in the little trattoria across the street, the one
and only time I’ve ever eaten veal, but when in Rome……
The
next day I started my scheduled activities, but I found the most interesting
thing happened. Once I started
wandering, I found places I’d read about and planned to see on different days,
and ate in places I’d never heard of, and found great little stores I hadn’t
read about. What it all boils down to
was except for the pre-booked tours on specific days, I did absolutely nothing
according to my plan, and it was fabulous.
By
the fourth day, I was walking around, loving being on my own, and realizing
that solo travel does not suck. I even
braved the Roman mass transit system, and didn’t panic when my scheduled ride
back to the airport never showed up. I
just lugged my suitcases down the street to the bus stop, went to Termini and
bought a ticket to the airport.
