SoloFriendly.com

In this week’s collection of recommended reads, we have solo travel articles that describe making friends on the road, overcoming our fears, and appreciating solo travel when it comes our way.  The round-up is capped off with an inspiring destination post on Paris. Enjoy!

Travel Solo for a Rocky Mountain High - People who have never traveled alone are often afraid to try because they think they’ll be lonely, but new friends and acquaintances seem to come into our lives quite readily when we travel solo–as is the case in this personal story byJanice Waugh at SoloTravelerblog.com. If my stories about meeting people on the road haven’t convinced you to give solo travel a try, maybe Janice’s story will.

Solo female travelers shouldn’t let safety concerns put the world off limits – Ellen Perlman of BoldlyGoSolo.com tackles the subject of how solo female travelers sometimes allow their fears of particular places (usually based on media perceptions) prevent them from traveling to those places.  How much of our fear is real, though?

“Finding Myself” as a Mother on an Airplane - by Mona Shand at AnnArbor.com.  Mona’s first experience traveling solo with her baby leads her to some revelations about herself and her prior life as a frequent solo traveler.

Touching Air in Rio – This article put a big grin on my face from start to finish.  Just because my attempt to go parasailing last spring was thwarted, doesn’t mean I can’t live vicariously through someone else’s airborne adventure.  Jeannie’s (Jeannie Mark of NomadicChick.com) motivation to go hang gliding was to face her fear of heights.  I love the idea of taking advantage of travel to face our fears.

5 Picnic Spots in Paris -  I am starting to plan a trip to Europe for the fall, including Paris, so the timing of this article by Robin Locker at MyMelange.net could not have been better.  If you, too, are planning a solo trip to the City of Lights, why not incorporate into your days a lovely picnic in one or more of these suggested locales?  It will undoubtedly be cheaper than dining in a cafe, and you can soak up the view and the local culture at the same time.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who read my blog regularly for helping to catapult me to fame on Twitter this week when @travelpod announced that I was the week’s fastest riser among their Top 100 Travel Blogs.  I went from #96 to #85 in one week, which was fairly dramatic.  It was definitely the high point of an otherwise sucky week.  So THANK YOU.

Photo credit:  Photo of cat reading by Trinity at Creative Commons.

Here at SoloFriendly, you generally get the point of view of one type of solo traveler (me). I’m a short-term traveler, a vacation traveler if you will. Tuesday, I introduced you to my friend Danielle Johnston, a radically different type of solo traveler, and noted some scary travel episodes she has experienced. If what had happened to Danielle had happened to me, I’d be rethinking my future travel plans. After all, those are not exactly the experiences most of us hope for when we travel the world solo. But Danielle keeps going.

She thinks you should go, too.  So do I.  In part two of my interview with Danielle, she offers her advice for solo travelers.

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Danielle Johnston

Imagine you are a U.S. citizen in Ghana doing volunteer work and you are awakened to screams and the pounding of running feet.  When you look outside, you see hundreds of men–your neighbors, people you’ve come to care about–running for the bush, running for their lives, as the women of the town scream for them to “run faster”, their faces wet with tears.  Imagine having to watch helplessly as armed Ghanian policemen roam through the town, arresting every man they can find, breaking into homes and dragging them from churches and even public bathrooms, while your embassy tells you to get out of town for your own safety.  Now imagine a few months later, you return from Africa with a deadly form of malaria that causes your liver to start to shut down and puts you in the hospital for a week of blood and plasma transfusions. Your family doesn’t know if you’re going to survive.

Danielle Johnston doesn’t need to imagine these things; she’s lived them. Danielle has been to 20 countries and speaks four languages (English, Spanish, French, and Arabic), two fluently.  I first met Danielle several years ago and have followed her travels on her personal blog with interest ever since. Danielle was kind enough to allow me to interview her recently, as I wanted to give you a different perspective of solo travel than the one you normally get from me.  I hope you enjoy getting to know her as much as I have. Continue reading →

There were some good contenders for this week’s Recommended Reads.  Whittling it down to just five every week is going to be tough.  Here are my choices this week.  There’s a little bit of practical here, a little bit of funny, some thought-provoking and some daydream-encouraging.  Enjoy!

Going Solo to Mexico and Loving It - By Sarah Treleaven, published at the Vancouver Sun website in December 2009.  Sarah spent a week at a romantic, all-inclusive resort in Cancun. . . by herself.  And had a great time.  So there.

Damn Right, It’s a Table for One – This is a hilarious piece by Geraldine at the Everywhereist. Thanks to JoAnna Haugen for bringing it to my attention.  I read the post Geraldine is responding to, and I agree with her that the title is pretty appalling. The rest of the article is not bad–just standard suggestions to help people who are uncomfortable with the thought of dining alone.  But the title deserves some mockery, and it gets it from Geraldine.

Q&A with 20-Something Travel - Heels and Wheels interviews Stephanie Yoder of 20-Something Travel about her solo travels–in particular what it was like to move to London alone and her future solo travel plans.  Good stuff.

The Dirt on Experiential Travel – This is a marvelous post by Keith Savage of Traveling-Savage.com.  He discusses the difference between just “seeing” a place versus “experiencing” it.  Lots of food for thought here, and do be sure to read the comments section as well, as there’s a good discussion going on there.

Searching the World for Pearls - by Andy Hayes at Sharing Travel Experiences.  STE aims to inspire people to travel more, and this article just might do the trick.  Andy cleverly chose some particularly tempting photos to accompany the article.  The minute I saw them, I started daydreaming about new trips.  Do you need some inspiration to get you off your duff and planning a trip?  Then check this out. Especially if you’re a woman.  You know what they say: “Girls love pearls.”

Photo credit: alicejamieson

On my first morning in San Juan, I was walking down Calle San Francisco in search of breakfast, and heard motorcycles revving their engines up ahead.  I looked down the narrow, cobblestone street and saw a pack of motorcycles and a truck with a loudspeaker on it.  They were blocking the street and moving my way.  I could see I wouldn’t be able to get by until they passed, so I tucked myself into a doorway to watch.  Since it was Martin Luther King Day, I thought perhaps it was a parade.  As they grew closer, though, it became obvious it was a demonstration of some sort.  That immediately gained my interest, because I come from a pretty political state.  We’re always marching or demonstrating about something here.  A man yelled in Spanish, his voice magnified by the loudspeaker to teeth-rattling levels.  Even if he had been speaking English, I wouldn’t have been able to tell what he was saying, because I  had to clap my hands over my ears as the speaker passed.  Following behind was row after row of (mostly) men wearing green tee shirts, a banner stretched out in front of them and picket signs bobbing over their heads.

I could tell from the lettering on their shirts that it was a labor union (the Independent Union of Employees Aqueduct and Sewer Authority of Puerto Rico, aka UIAEAAA of Puerto Rico, as it turns out).  I became curious about what they were protesting (or advocating).  With my limited Spanish, I couldn’t figure it out.  I assumed it was fair wages, safe working conditions, that sort of thing.  I asked an English-speaking local about it later, and he had no idea.  So I looked up a translation of their signs when I got home.

Their signs read “no mas despidos empleados transitorios queremos paz laboral negociacion colectiva,” which as best I can translate, has something to do with workers protesting layoffs of transient employees, and wanting peaceful negotiations.  But I feel like there are important pieces of information missing here.  I wish my Spanish were more advanced, so I could have understood better what their cause was.  (That’s a real kick in the pants or me to speed up my Spanish studies.)  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything online about what this particular demonstration was about.

In any case, I appreciated this glimpse into the lives of working class locals–something I haven’t often gotten when I’ve traveled in the past.  It reminded me that there is more than just a tourist economy in Puerto Rico. I became curious about their cause, the history behind it, and what will happen to them going forward. In some ways, it set the tone for how I felt about everything else that I did while in San Juan.  I felt lucky to have stumbled across this little snapshot of Puerto Rican life.

Louise Brown of TravelBlogSites.com informs me that SoloFriendly.com ranks #96 of the Top 100 Travel Blogs on the TravelBlogSites leaderboard. This score is the average of the Alexa and Compete.com rankings for each travel blog.

Woo! This is exciting news for me.  As I told Louise, I’m pretty lost when it comes to rankings and how to move up and down them, but knowing how many bezillions of travel blogs there are out there in the webiverse–and how good so many of them are–I’m pretty pleased to have any ranking at all, let alone one in the top 100.  I have no idea what I’m doing right, but I hope it continues.

For this achievement, I get to post this nifty badge on my website:

Cool, huh?  If you’re looking for more great travel blogs to add to your reading list (in addition to this one, of course), the leaderboard (which is updated weekly) at TravelBlogSites is a good place to start, and you can read blog profiles there as well to get the “story behind the blog”, so to speak.  (In fact, my blog was profiled a couple of weeks ago.)

And don’t forget to check back weekly for my Recommended Reads, which will bring you more of the best travel writing on the web.

Photo by andreakw, Creative Commons

Did you know that the birthplace of the piña colada was Puerto Rico?  This cold, creamy drink made of pineapple juice, rum, and coconut cream has been the official drink of Puerto Rico for decades.  I ran across this tidbit of information as I was researching my trip to San Juan.  Trouble is, the history of its origins was a little unclear.  You see, two different establishments claim to have invented the piña colada: the restaurant, Barrachina, and the hotel, the Caribe Hilton.  Prior to my trip, I consulted Marta Albanese of Puerto Rico Tourism to get some clarity about which one was correct.

“The question has never really been settled,” Marta replied.  “While the Caribe Hilton received the recognition of being the birthplace of the piña colada by  [former governor] Sila Maria Calderon about seven years ago, Barrachina is recognized by many as the original spot where the drink was first served.  They even have a marble plaque in front of the restaurant that commemorates the event.  I think that in the end, the never-ending feud adds fun to the story of the piña colada.”

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As an information junkie, I read a LOT of other travel blogs every week.  There is some great travel writing happening out there, people.  Just in case you’re not spending 80% of your life in front of your computer like I do, I have decided to do my part to expose you to more great articles beyond my blog that might inspire you to travel. I am hereby instituting a new weekly series to share a few of my favorite posts and articles from the previous week or so that I really think you should read.  I will of course try to give preference to articles on solo travel, but anything related to travel is fair game. And because I know you all have busy lives, I’ll try to keep the list short.

For now, I am calling this regular series “Recommended Reads”, but if I think of something sexier, I’ll change it.  (Suggestions are welcome.  Please use the comments section below if you have one.)

What articles grabbed my interest the most in the past couple of weeks?

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Puerta de San Juan by khowaga1

In a couple of days, I will be trading my winter coat and boots for flip flops and shorts, and my bowl of hot soup for a frosty pina colada in tropical San Juan, Puerto Rico.  Sounds like a great tradeoff to me!  I promised to take you inside my planning process for my trips, so let’s catch you up, shall we?

When last I wrote about it, I had booked my airfare and hotels. Then I went into information-gathering and itinerary-creation mode. My first order of business was to find a good map of San Juan, which is easier said than done.  It seems that practically overnight, I have become Mr. Magoo’s middle-aged daughter and find it nearly impossible to read the tiny, tiny print on maps any more.  I finally had to cobble together some maps I created on Google (after magnifying them a few times).  If you know of a company that makes large print maps, please let me know before my trip to Europe in the fall.  Thanks.

For the past few months, I’ve been regularly reading TripAdvisor’s San Juan forum as well as Puerto Rican blogs Visit the Coqui and Puerto Rico Day Trips.  Recently, I went back and rewatched the GoGalavanting ladies’ video of their trip to Puerto Rico.  Kim and Maren make it look like so much fun (except for the lost luggage)!  I also reread the Traveling Mamas’ posts of their trip to San Juan last year.  For kicks, I’ve been randomly reading blogs via a Google blogs search for any mention of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  This search turned up the most hilarious article, Kicking Back in Puerto Rico by Jonathan Goldstein.  I’ve been gathering names of good restaurants in San Juan via TripAdvisor and Twitter.

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Norwegian Epic Studio Stateroom

Norwegian Cruise Lines announced today that starting Monday, January 18, solo travelers will be able to book staterooms on the Norwegian Epic (its newest freestyle cruise ship which launches in July) that were specifically designed for single and solo travelers–which means no single supplement! Prices for these “Studio Staterooms” start at $799 for the Epic’s 7-day Eastern and Western Caribbean cruises. The rooms are 100 square feet, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s your own private space, and going by the above photo, I think I’d be happy in one.  One of the perks of these studio rooms is access to the Studio Lounge, a common area exclusive to those staying in the Studios where they can enjoy a beverage and connect with other solo travelers.

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