‘How I learnt to embrace holidaying alone’
Sitting down to a cheese fondue dinner and a robust glass of red in a Verbier restaurant after an exhilarating day on the Swiss ski slopes should have felt like pure bliss. A boisterous group of 30-something friends on the next table were recounting tales of derring-do from the day and taking photographs in happy groups. On the table next to them were two families: Boden parents with apple-cheeked JoJo Maman Bébé children, all of them chattering and planning the next day’s activities as they wolfed down pizzas.
Then there was me, alone, eating fondue-for-one, so embarrassed to be dining alone in this sea of friends and families that the cheese-soaked bread stuck in my throat. I felt exposed and self-conscious, convinced people were wondering why I was on my own or, even worse, thinking they could see exactly why I was alone.
I was ignored for 20 minutes, then the waiter said, “I assumed you were waiting for someone’
I was 45 at the time and on a rare solo holiday. Usually I travelled with my boyfriend or, if there wasn’t one on the scene, with friends. When I decided to book a skiing holiday in 2007, I was single and none of my pals could come with me, so I took the unprecedented step of going away on my own. It didn’t go well. I quickly learnt that skiing holidays are all about noisy people doing things in groups, so it was easy to feel I had the word ‘pariah’ embroidered across the back of my borrowed jacket.
Eating dinner alone every evening was miserable. ‘Here I am,’ my solitude seemed to say to the room, ‘lonely and unloved.’ Being hit on by an opportunistic waiter only made matters worse.
I relied on some vital tools to help me in my hour of need. My trusty book gave me a focus and stopped me searching the room to see who was giving me The Pitying Stare. I wore a resilient smile and tried to avoid eye contact with anyone: meeting the gaze of well-meaning diners ran the risk of being invited to join them, which might be worse than dining alone.
I found a way round the problem in the end, returning from a long day’s skiing with a bottle of tonic from the local shop which I mixed with my duty-free gin for a stiff aperitif on the balcony before ordering room service.
Fast-forward to today, however, and the story is very different. In the intervening decade, through trials and tribulations in Marrakesh, Nicaragua, Indonesia and remotest Patagonia, I have come to enjoy taking holidays alone. There is a freedom to travelling solo that I now find totally invigorating.
A couple of disastrous holidays with friends helped convince me that I needed to learn to love travelling alone, but it wasn’t always plain sailing.
When I sat down to have lunch at a beachside café in Sydney, I was ignored for 20 minutes, then when I asked to order, the waiter said, ‘I assumed you were waiting for someone.’ On a cruise along the Norwegian coast the following year, I ended up dining for two interminable evenings with a bickering Scottish couple whose marriage was clearly floundering.
Last summer, my partner of four years ended our relationship very suddenly, a month before we were due to spend a week in Madeira. I decided to go alone but with some trepidation, given how miserable I was feeling about the break-up.
I needn’t have worried. When I wasn’t reading my Kindle by the pool, I strolled into Funchal for an ice cream. I took a sunset catamaran trip to watch dolphins and booked a long hike in the mountains. On every foray I met lovely people who struck up easy conversations.
My explorations in the past boosted my confidence because they took me into myriad solo situations. But Madeira served as a reminder that I could holiday alone – and face the world solo. That holiday was significant, as it was the first I had spent alone after travelling with my partner for the previous four years. It proved to be a turning point, since I returned home and immediately booked a trip to South Africa. I travelled there on my own last month, meeting up with a small group of strangers when I got to Cape Town for a 10-day tour.
I left for South Africa determined to enjoy being a lone traveller but I still found solo dinners difficult. Breakfast and lunch are easy, but there’s something about the occasion of dinner that screams ‘company’. It’s a ritual that seems synonymous with sharing. Like dancing the tango or doing up the zip on a skintight dress, a restaurant dinner takes two to be viable. I made it through a few of them – uneventful but not pleasant – until I was lucky to meet two other lone women travellers in the group who made great dining companions.
Val, a retired librarian, was a divorcée from Stafford, and Sarah, 44, an accountant from near Brighton, and the three of us hit it off immediately. We often did our own thing by day but arranged to eat together most evenings, sharing a good meal and a bottle of Two Oceans sauvignon blanc. They rescued me – and I them – from the pitying looks, the well-meaning couples insisting you join them ‘because nobody should be eating on their own’, or being dumped at the table closest to the toilet.
Dining aside, I found I was happy doing most other things alone in South Africa. I took a tour to a township and to the Stellenbosch wine lands, read my book beside the pool, had a glass of wine on a sunny terrace in Franschhoek. I even got into the habit of asking strangers to take a photo of me at landmarks like the Cape of Good Hope and Table Mountain.
I realised that I have learnt to enjoy my own company on holiday since that first dreadful solo trip to Verbier 10 years ago. If I want to spend eight hours reading a novel in a day on the beach, I can. If I fancy spending tomorrow on a boat trip, why not?
I can accept or decline invitations to join other people for dinner, and chat to a stranger in a bar without consequence. I don’t have to spend time at a zoo or shopping mall because my friend wants to, or party all night when I want to be in bed. In fact, if age allows us to be more selfish, there’s no better place for it than on a holiday alone.
A survival guide | Dining alone
