Reason's it's not so bad to travel alone

• When things aren’t going well, you may not have someone to look to for advice or to calm you down, but you also don’t have someone looking at you for the same thing.  On your own, you can make as many mistakes and have as many mishaps without anyone being there to get frustrated with or at you.  You can also sit down for a hamburger, piece of cheese, or bowl of rice (depending on where you are traveling) whenever you need a pick-me-up.  Even if it takes doing that four-five times. 

• Carrying on with the previous point, when traveling alone you can eat and drink as often and as much as you please.  Personally, eating is my main reason for traveling.  I am therefore not interested in holding off on the calories or back with the glasses of wine.  Rather, I’d like to sample as many different delicious food items a place has to offer me.  Yesterday, for example, I sat down at three different café’s for the dinner hour, trying a different cheese and kind of wine at each.  Place number 1 had the best cheese while number 2’s wine was bangin’.  Its kind of my own version of Top Chef Paris.  Or Anthony Bourdain. 

• I can blow as much or as little money in a day as I want (funding allowed, of course).  The first day I came into Paris I felt awful because I had just spent two weeks eating everything I could in America.  My stomach still suffering from this feat, I skipped the usual eating frenzy of the first day, and walked for a couple of hours instead.  That day I hardly spent any money, but the next day I woke up and had my three restaurant dinner.  When you are with someone, it’s harder to break routine like this. 

• You can avoid doing things you don’t care to do.  For me, that is anything touristy.  Sure, I’ve seen some of the famous sites in Paris before, such as the Eifel Tower and Notre Dame.  But to be honest, I’d rather spend my money on a delicious dinner (or three) than for the entrance fee to one of these places.  Perhaps this makes me come off as uncultured or unsophisticated, and I suppose that is okay.  I’d rather take the train out to a ramdom little village and walk around, enjoy a local meal, and yes, a house pitcher of wine while trying to get to know some people. 

• You can get utterly lost but still be fine because you have no one and nothing to report back to.  I do this by matter of walking.  You would think I’d have figure out how to navigate a map by now.  Or at least start using landmarks to get me back. 

• There is no pressure to stop reading.  I know that traveling maybe shouldn’t be about having my nose in a book, but I find it a very relaxing way to lose yourself.  If it weren’t for books I don’t know how I’d have gotten through these past two years.  And I still feel like I have gotten my share of conversation in.  But overall, it’s nice to have something to turn back to when you are out of things to say. 

All that said, traveling alone can be a bit lonely at times.  But I think its always a good experience and you can grow a lot from it.  Not grow in the way that I would actually check my itinerary before I left so I wasn’t stuck somewhere after a missed connecting flight.  No, no, never.