On a trip to Istanbul, I finally accepted that I hate solo travel

As soon as I was old enough, I embarked on a series of solo travel adventures. A particularly eventful summer was spent au-pairing in Athens when I was nineteen. Mornings and evenings were blocked out for my host family’s children, the long humid hours in between free time to explore the city. A history student at the time, I spent my days ticking off all the UNESCO-approved spots: The Acropolis, The Temple of Hephaestus, Hadrian’s Library and the Theatre of Dionysus. My favourite part out of all of these adventures, however, was telling my loved ones about them when I called home.

I actually ended up leaving Athens early for numerous reasons. After some time had passed, I blamed the lacklustre experience on my young age and ineptitude. This pattern continued throughout my solo travel trips over the next few years; I was miserable in Paris because the weather was bad and I could not speak the language; a solo weekend in El Gouna—a beach town in Egypt—was dampened by a stressful job and a recent breakup; the remnants of a flu and closures during Ramadan were the reasons behind an uneventful week alone in Tunisia.