I avoided solo travel until I was thirty-one.

I thought it would be lonely. I thought it would be boring. I thought I would not know how to fill the days. I was wrong about all three, and I want to say what I have learned in case you are thinking about it.

What broke

The thing that pushed me into it was a canceled trip. A friend and I had planned ten days in Croatia. Two weeks before departure, her father got sick. She had to cancel. I had used vacation days I could not unspend. I had a flight that was non-refundable.

I thought about not going. I thought hard. In the end I went, mostly because I could not bear the thought of the flight slot empty. I packed badly. I cried in the airport. I told myself I would book an earlier flight home if I hated it.

By day three I had stopped thinking about coming home.

What I learned in those ten days

A few things, in no particular order.

The first day is the worst. This is the most important thing to know if you have never done it. You arrive, you check into the hotel, you sit on the bed, and the thought that catches up with you is: now what. No companion to plan with. No one to bounce ideas off. Just you and a foreign city.

I have come to think this moment is unavoidable and that it passes quickly. The second day is easier. The third day is fine. By the fifth day you have stopped noticing that you are alone. You are just traveling.

You become a sharper observer. Without a conversation to fill the silence, you start to notice things. The way the waiter folds the napkins. The conversation at the next table. The smell of the bakery you pass twice a day. Solo travel forces you to be present in a way that traveling with someone does not.

You make more local friends. This sounds like a cliché but I have found it to be empirically true. When you are with a friend, you have someone to talk to. When you are alone, you talk to strangers. The bartender. The woman in the seat next to you on the train. The man walking the same trail. Over a ten-day trip you will have ten or fifteen real conversations with people you would never have spoken to otherwise.

You eat better. Pairs eat at restaurants. Solo travelers eat at counters, food stalls, bakeries, and the small places that pairs find awkward. You order what you actually want, not the compromise dish. You leave when you feel like leaving.

You make decisions faster. No need to consult anyone. No need to compromise. If you want to spend the afternoon at a museum, you spend the afternoon at a museum. If you want to skip the museum and read in a park, you skip the museum. This freedom is the part most people who have never traveled alone do not understand. It is not the freedom from companionship. It is the freedom from negotiation.

What is hard

I will not pretend it is all wonderful.

Dinner is the hardest meal. Lunch alone is fine — everyone is in a hurry, you can sit at a counter, the waiters are not surprised to see you. Dinner is different. Sit-down restaurants, especially in Europe, are couples and families and groups of friends. A solo table feels exposed. There is no way around this; you adjust. Bring a book. Take a seat at the bar if there is one. Ask for the table by the window.

Evenings can be long. Most days end at six or seven, after sunset and before dinner. The hours from six to eight, alone in a city where you do not speak the language, are when the loneliness comes if it is going to come. The strategies that work: a walk through a neighborhood you have not been to yet, an aperitivo at a busy bar where you can watch people, an early movie, a phone call home to someone you love. Do not try to fill these hours with screen time in your hotel. That is the trap.

Photos. You have no one to take a picture of you. Tripods are cumbersome. Phone selfies feel staged. I have made peace with this. The trip is the trip; the photos are the photos. You can ask strangers occasionally — most people are happy to help — but I have started caring less. I take pictures of what I see, not of myself in front of what I see. This is a more honest record anyway.

Safety. This is real and worth being honest about. The risk profile for solo travelers, especially solo women, is different. I do less at night. I share my location with one trusted person back home. I do not get drunk in places where I cannot get back safely. I trust my gut. The first time it tells you something is off, listen. This is not paranoia; it is competence.

What to do on your first solo trip

If you are considering this, here is the practical advice I wish someone had given me.

Pick a city, not a tour. Stay in one place for at least a week. Multi-city itineraries are stressful even with company; alone they are exhausting. You want to be able to wake up in the same bed for several days in a row.

Pick a place where you can communicate. Your first solo trip is not the time for a country where you speak none of the language and the alphabet is foreign. Save Japan for trip three. Try Portugal or Mexico or Ireland or coastal Croatia first.

Pick a city that walks well. You are going to be on your feet for hours every day. Cities laid out around public transit and walkable neighborhoods are easier than ones that require a rental car.

Book the first two nights, leave the rest open. Have a guaranteed bed when you land. Beyond that, give yourself room to extend if you love a place or move on if you do not.

Tell one person at home where you are. Not a public update — one trusted friend or family member with your itinerary, your hotel, your phone number. Check in every few days.

Bring one book that is hard. Not a hard book like “difficult.” A book you have been meaning to read but have not made time for. Solo travel has long stretches where you sit in a café or on a train. They are not wasted hours. They are reading hours. Use them.

What you take home

I came back from Croatia changed in a way I had not predicted. I had thought I would come back having seen Croatia. Instead I came back having spent ten days mostly inside my own head, in a setting beautiful enough to make that bearable.

The friend whose father had been ill called me when I got back. He had recovered. She apologized for canceling. I told her not to. I told her I had needed it, somehow.

Solo travel is not for everyone every time. I still travel with friends and partners and family. Most of my trips are not solo. But every year, once, I go somewhere alone for at least a week. It has become a thing I do for myself, the way some people meditate or do yoga retreats.

It teaches you a kind of self-reliance that does not come up in ordinary life. It teaches you that you are reasonable company. It teaches you to want less and notice more.

If you are nervous about your first one, you should be. The nervousness is part of the gift. Book the flight anyway.