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| Solo | 66% | 386 votes | Total: 582 votes | |
| Guided | 34% | 196 votes |
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Add to FavoritesTraveling Alone: Tips for Traveling Alone
Traveling alone does not have to be a lonely experience. It can be the most exciting travel experience of your life. Here you can find solo travel tips that will help you make the best out of your individual traveling experience.
Before You Travel
Planning a vacation where you will be traveling alone is not much different from planning a family vacation. It is even easier because only one persons preferences and interests have to be taken in consideration. However, here are a few do's and don'ts for traveling alone.
Do your homework so you will have at least the basic knowledge of the area you are traveling to. Read about your destination; learn about its culture and what the area offers to tourists.
Do include in your plan going to tourist centers where you can meet other individual travelers like yourself. Even if you are not looking for traveling partners, it is always nice to share your experience and learn from others experience, and at the very least it can offer some company for a short while.
Don't include places described in guidebooks as the ultimate honeymoon getaway or the best place to travel with young children. You are most likely to feel awkward surrounded with honeymooners and or families.
Make sure to carry a book and a notebook. A notebook will allow you to write down all the different things you see and experience during your vacation. You will appreciate their company in airports, train stations, restaurants, etc.
You may think it will be cool to not make any plans for where to stay and just "wing it", but it is highly recommended that at least for the first night you should have a reservation someplace for the night. Landing in a foreign country is strange enough without having to wander around with your bags in search for accommodation.
Do prepare a basic schedule for the first days. You can always stray from it, but it will provide you with some peace of mind knowing what the activities for the first day or so will be.
While You Travel
So, you woke up in your hotel room, had coffee in the coffee shop that was highly recommended by the Lonely Planet, got lost while looking for the museum and when finally found it you discovered it is closed on Wednesdays. What is next?
One step at a time: start by talking with the hotel staff. Ask them for recommendations and guidance. If you are very nice, they might even take you to cool local hangouts that you will not find in a travelers handbook, and in my experience usually lead to a better time.
Dormitories style housing, like hostels are better places to meet individual travelers than luxurious hotels. For example, tourist information centers, Internet cafes, restaurants and bars will also provide you chances to meet other travelers.
Don't be antisocial talk to strangers. Try out this simple trick: when you are having your breakfast, approach the tourist next to you and ask him or her about their plans for today. In the worse case, you would be rejected, hopefully in a polite manner. In most cases, you would get an answer and maybe even find a traveling partner.
Go to local travel agencies; see if they offer day trips or special packages.
If you are embarrassed to dine out alone, get over it. Skip the candle light restaurants and go to travelers cafes where you will not be the only guest who sits by himself and there will sufficient light to read or write in your journal.
Do not be afraid to approach other solo travelers and ask them to join you at your table. Again, they might refuse and they might gladly agree. However, even if it turns out like a big mistake and you can find yourself spending an evening listening to the most boring travel adventures you have ever heard, chill, you will not hear them again.
Learn more about this author, Ellie Schneider.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Guided
I think a person might be wise to take advantage of a guided tour when first visiting an area. There are so many things you might miss if you try going solo. Why not learn from the pro's? Tour guides are "in the know" about points of interest to tourists. It might cost a little more to get your tour guided, but the information you could glean from a proffesional might turn out to be invaluable. Tour guides are often knowledgable about things that can save you money, time and stress.
So, my advice ... First time, use it as a learning experience. After that, you are the pro in the know. You will be ready to go solo the second time around.
I am a tour guide in the Pacific Northwest. I have been doing this for 15 years, but I have been a traveler all of my life. Traveling is a subject I have a passion for. Because guiding tours is my profession, and I feel what I do is providing a genuine service to the public, I would have to say that there is definately a need for guided tours.
If you are planning a trip, and you have never been there before, it only makes sense that you get a guide who has been there and knows about your destination. Your guide will make special effort that you see everything there is to see. It is simply folly to stumble through your destination, only to find out later that you missed something really cool.
Not to say that you can't have fun just exploring and happening upon things simply by adventure. You are likely to see much more if there is someone with you who knows more.
For instance, I have guided tours to the Oregon Coast over 100 times in the last 14 years. I can take you to the very best restaurants where you will get the very best food and the very best service. I can tell you about some bad experiences too, and save you the heartache of learning for yourself an expensive lesson. I know who has the best clam chowder, and it isn't Mo's like the billboards say. I know where the best salt water taffy is. I know the tide tables and where to view a starfish up close. I can tell you the difference between a friend and an anemone.
If you go to the Oregon Coast on your own, you might have a fantastic time, but you may stumble into some of the pitfalls I could have steered you away from.
The key is to find a guide you is friendly and fun. Someone who you have a good sense about. They have to enjoy what they are doing, or they have no business guiding tours.
My Mother always told me to find something I like to do, and then find a way to get paid for doing it. That is why most tour guides do what they do. They get paid to have fun. I love taking someone into their first time of an experience. I get to experience their excitement right along with them, and it renews the memory of the first time I did it myself. I see the wonderment of it all through their eyes, and it becomes new to me again through there experience. In sharing their excitement and enthusiasm, we all get an enhanced experience.
By all means, if no guide is available, do explore. But if you can get someone to show you around, you will have a more enriching experience.
If you go to Disneyland without having someone who's been there with you, I think you will be so lost, miss so much of the adventure, possibly get taken advantage of, and you won't benefit from the experience of a pro.
As my Disney friend Buzz Light Year would say, " To infinity and beyond ." Get the travel bug and go. If I take you to Disneyland, you will go on a weekday, while the kids are in school. I will show you how to ride the most rides in the least time, while avoiding the longest lines.
If I take you to Shore Acres Park, I will take you at high tide, after a storm, nearest the cycle of a full moon. This is the formula for seeing waves that crash against the cliff wall splashing hundreds of feet in the air.
If you go on an overnight trip that involves motel/hotel stays. I will carry your luggage to your car. I will bring fresh towels to your poolside. I will bring ice to your room. I will bring newspapers to your door in the morning, along with fresh baked pastries for your coffee.
There are a lot of "Benny's" to taking a guided tour. Why would anyone suffer themselves to do it the hard way?
Learn more about this author, Michael Mccormick.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
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