So You Want to Start Solo-Traveling?

One of the best things I did for myself, that boosted my self confidence, my decision making, situational awareness, and social skills, was solo traveling. I had the travel bug and couldn’t find anyone to go with, so I decided, why not, and went myself. At that point in my life, I had only been on trips with my family. I had been on one with my university, and one with just myself and two friends. I thought it would be the same, just alone. It proved to be an entirely different addicting experience which I LOVE. Traveling alone is both insanely fun, while also growth inducing. If you want to start traveling alone, keep reading this post for the best solo travel tips for beginners.

Solo Travel Tips for Beginners

Finding the cheapest flights

The BEST way to find flights is to use a website that gives you all the options. These two options scans all of the airline websites and compiles them in one place. Of course, you should put your browser in “Incognito” mode while you use either. That way, the airline can’t tell that you are looking at it and they don’t jack up the price! This can be vital information for buying really anything online.

There are two scanner websites which people use, one is decently well known, one isn’t as much. Google Flights is probably the most well known website that you can search for cheap flights on. You can also click “anywhere” as your arrival location. You can see a whole map of the world and how much it costs to go to any country. It’ll compare many different airlines, show what the “best” deals are, and show their price point and if a carry-on is included. If you are trying to figure out where to go or what month to visit, Google Flights is a great tool.

Skyscanner

I personally swear by Skyscanner. They have a similar “everywhere” feature which isn’t as good as Googles since it doesn’t have a map. When your picking dates, I love how each day is color coded. This shows how expensive it is compared to the average cost of a flight. That way, if you have more flexibility with the days you are traveling, you can get the best deal. I find better deals and cheaper flights on Skyscanner, but it also does one thing that Google does not. With Skyscanner, they will look for THE cheapest possible way to get you to your destination. Sometimes, that means booking two separate one way flights. Sometimes, two one way flights are cheaper than any round trip flight out there!

To me, Skyscanner is a hidden gem and one of the best solo travel tips for beginners that I can give!

Booking Social Accommodations

In the solo travel world, many people are on a budget and simultaneously want to stay somewhere where they can meet up with other travelers to do things together. The best website is the one and only https://www.hostelworld.com . While you can book any hostel through its own website, hostel world has some advantages.

With Hostel World, like a search engine, you can see the availability of every hostel in the destination you choose. You can compare prices and how far they are from the city center. The BEST feature, and a solo travel tip for beginners that you need, are the HostelWorld World group chats. 

After you pay for the hostel of your choosing on HostelWorld, you get added to a group chat with ALL of the other travelers that are in the hostel. You’ll be added a week to a few days before you arrive. That gives you time to get to know and talk with other travelers. That way when you arrive, you can easily find people to spend time with. For instance, I often send out a message to the whole hostel in the morning to see if anyone wants to meet in the lobby to get dinner together at 7pm. This way, I can find people super easily to get a meal with. When I solo travel, I try to do one social activity a day so I don’t get too lonely, and this is normally what I do to get my fix.

Booking Dorms vs Privates

When you are looking at hostel rooms, you have two options, dorms or privates: 

Dorms

A dorm will typically consist of 4+ people in a room together. On average, you’ll see 6 or 8 person dorms, but the number varies from hostel to hostel. Normally you’ll be in bunk beds, but it depends on the place when it comes to how nice they are. The best hostels have bunks that are built in, with outlets and blackout curtains.You get a big drawer or locker to put your backpack or suitcase in too.  These should all be the standard and since they make living in dorms pretty easy. As you may guess, dorms are the cheaper option. I’ve gotten a bed for 30 euros a night! For me, this keeps the cost of living cheap, since when I’m traveling I’m really only in the room when I’m sleeping, and also helps me stay social on the go.

Privates

A private room is as it sounds, private! If you are not a fan of sharing rooms with people, you might want to consider booking one of these. It’s basically like a hotel room, but depends on location if you have your own bathroom attached or not. Privates are great because you get almost a hotel experience with a more social atmosphere. Unfortunately, you won’t get the same level of socialness since you will be separated from most people, but for an introvert who doesn’t need to talk with people all the time, or an extravert who knows they’ll make friends, this is a great option

Hostel’s are great not only because of the group chats, but if you book a good one, they plan activities as well! I’ve been to a few that don’t plan too much, but more than not will have a myriad of things to do. Lots of hostels generally host city tours, which are great to do on your first day to get to know the area and some of your hotel mates. Many host bar crawls at night, or activities related to your location. I highly recommend checking the reviews of where you might stay to decide if the activities and party levels match what you want out of your vacation.

Doing Things Alone

Something that made me grow significantly as a person, was doing things alone while in a foreign country. I do things alone in the US as well, but being alone in a country you don’t know, that speaks a language you don’t know, is the most strange and foreign feeling. 

Nothing has made me feel more lost at first, but quickly turned into this unbreakable confidence very quickly after. Having to make all decisions yourself for your own safety and well being in such an environment is anxiety inducing to say the least! It’s not something for everyone – for most people really. But to get settled into this feeling, get stressed when you’re about to miss your flight and you don’t know where you are, but then you figure it out, it’s this huge release and confidence boost. 

As you do more and more hard things, you learn that you eventually, always, figure things out. You learn quickly to trust yourself to a level you didn’t know existed. That’s the type of growth I found addicting while solo traveling. Every new challenge I face, I’m like, ok what’s next? It feels like there’s nothing I can’t handle. 

Activities to do alone:

If your hostel doesn’t offer a city tour, check out https://www.getyourguide.com. There’s always a tour you can book, and you can get a sense of all the options of things to do while in your travel destination. While there are lots of groups that book these tours, you can normally find someone to chat with and get your socializing in for the day. I booked a Colosseum tour myself and made a friend to chat with and also so I could get a picture taken of me while inside. Tours are one of the best things to do since it gives you a few hours to do something with others.

Restaurants

Eating by yourself is an acquired skill. In the US, it’s not something I do often besides when I was in college or am in the comfort of my own home. I’ve noticed in other cultures, it’s super normal, while in others it is the strangest thing to the locals. In Italy, eating alone is seen as not normal. I often got free food or drinks while eating alone there. I learned from a local, they either felt bad for me or were trying to hit on me. That honestly didn’t matter to me since I felt safe and benefited from it! I have a few go to ‘bits’ that I do to entertain myself while eating by myself.

My bits

This is probably my one of my favorite solo travel tips for beginners, because you can make the experience what you want! If you want to do something safe but a little boring, you can scroll on your phone. I think this is what most people do when they eat by themselves the first few times. One of my favorite things is to bring or buy a journal on your trip, then write about your day. You forget how many tiny details you won’t remember after a week, two weeks pass. I love writing about every little thing that happened so you can truly relive it after the trip ends. 

If you don’t want to write about your day, or have finished that, pretend to be a food critic. I love to pretend to be an actress and judge every single detail of my experience in the restaurant. How is it decorated? How would you describe the vibe? Did you try to order in the local language? How was the wait staff? Were there lots of things you considered getting or not really? Was your food good/worth the price? Giving myself a false sense of importance to write these things down is so much fun. I recommend it!

If you aren’t into writing, you can bring a book to read while enjoying your dining experience. If you don’t like to read, you can bring a book to distract from the fact that you’re eavesdropping on everyone. You can always simply be mindful. Challenge yourself to how long you can go without looking at your phone. Memorize the room and experience.

Other

Museums are another great way to get to know your destination by yourself. While some may find museums boring, there’s normally at least one interesting one in every city. In Amsterdam, I went to a cat themed museum called Katten Kabinet. It had only artwork with cats, and there were cats walking around. There were a ton of museums that I wanted to visit during my trips, but didn’t book them far enough in advance. If you are a museum fan, definitely look up options in advance – one of many super important solo travel tips for beginners!

Another thing I thoroughly enjoy doing while traveling alone, is pretending to be a professional photographer! I run around trying to get the most perfect pictures. I plan out content in advance to make my instagram even more beautiful or a video I have to make for Tik Tok. Dedicating time to getting the perfect content to look back on your trip with is something that makes me happy. I love wandering through a new city, using only my memory to get around, and taking pictures of beautiful places and things.

Things you need (for the solo AND hostel life)

If you are staying in a hostel and you want your things to fit in the locker, you should travel with a backpack or small suitcase. If you are traveling for a long time, a checked bag might be inevitable. But I always see people with large suitcases who just leave in the dorm room since there is no locked space for them to go.

Since I’m out of the room most of the day, I want to know my belongings are safe. If I’m staying in a hostel, I will only bring a bag that I know will fit in the lockers. Most of the time, I bring a backpack. Mine is pretty heavy duty. I stuff that thing to the brim and the seams seem as strong as ever. There is great padding in the straps, so no matter how heavy, it is comfortable. Mine is from Cabin Zero.

If you are going to use the locker, you need a small lock to go with it. I have a small three digit combination lock from Samsonite that has never steered me wrong. On that note, if you are using the hostel showers, like if you were in a college dorm, you should wear flip flops!

Phone service

As a solo traveler, it’s essential to have cell service and battery life while you are exploring. I always have a portable charger with me and recommend that you look into getting an e sim card. If you have international included in your phone plan, you can skip this, but if not, you should check this out!

I had a friend who studied abroad and paid $10 a day for FOUR MONTHS to have service. Don’t be that person! The majority of the time, you can buy an electronic sim card that’s cheaper + works better than yours if you pay for international service with your plan. You can buy an e sim for the country or region you are visiting, for a day, week, month, really any time frame. I think I paid 20 euros to get unlimited service in Morocco for a week (here’s a link to my Morocco post if you are interested in going). There are tons of apps to buy them, Nomad, Airlo, and Holafly are the most commonly used ones. This is one of the most important solo travel tips for beginners!

Two really important things that you should download before getting to your destination are the local language on Google Translate, and a map. With the Google Translate app, you can download an entire language, so with or without service, you can translate anything to English (or your native language). On that same note, downloading a map will allow you to find your way around even in spots where service is spotty. You can do this on both the Google Maps or Apple Maps app. I wish I knew about this so much sooner.

Conclusion

These are all of my top solo travel tips for beginners! I hope this post made you feel more confident in just going for it. It is honestly so freeing to realize you can do literally anything you want yourself. I hope you book that trips you’ve been thinking about. Happy travels!