Hell (and heaven) is traveling with other people
As Sartre once famously declared: hell is other people. Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to the solo traveler. Readjusting to traveling with other people can be quite the task when you’ve gotten accustomed to sharing responsibility, power and planning with no one but yourself.
I once wrote about the ups and downs of traveling by yourself—but after checking out Paris and Amsterdam with Rex, one of my best guy friends from high school, I took a look at the other side.
The ups:
- You have a friend in me. It’s nice having someone to talk to over dinner, or a listening ear when you just need to vent.
- A balance of priorities. Rex and I joked that I brought the culture while he brought the debauchery. However, our differing personalities helped create a balanced trip. We often agreed on museums or monuments in the morning, with a wine bar or a coffee shop in the afternoon.
- Give your bag a break. Without the need to amuse myself, I didn’t need to drag my iPod and book everywhere I went. My purse was delightfully light.
- Trying new things. When you’re traveling with someone else, you’re bound to have different tastes. I wouldn’t have sought out vintage cinemas in Paris or coffee shops in Amsterdam by myself, but catering to someone else’s interests helped me discover a side of the city I would have missed.
- There’s security in numbers. I felt much more confident walking back to the hostel late at night with someone. Plus, traveling with a boy who wasn’t my boyfriend still worked the same way traveling with a boyfriend would: strange guys didn’t dare bother me. It was a refreshing change from always being on guard.
The downs:
- There’s always someone to blame. I always get annoyed when I travel with my parents and we show up to the airport hours early: what the heck are we going to do but wait? However, when it’s just me and I show up ridiculously early, I have no one to blame but myself—and I tend to just accept it without an issue.
- And someone always feels guilty. When I’m traveling on my own, I get lost. But most of the time, it’s kind of on purpose: I just wander around, taking side streets and rarely checking a map, until I figure out where I’m going. However, being with someone else automatically means that someone needs to lead, and getting us lost loses credibility.
- Don’t mix a night owl and an early bird. On my own, I’m early to bed and early to rise. However, Rex and I quickly realized that our ideas of sleeping in varied by a few hours. We figured out a compromise: I woke up early to do some writing and wouldn’t wake him before 9 a.m.
- Trying new things…that you don’t want to try. Sure, it’s great to get a nudge to do something that it isn’t at the top of your list—it could be a hidden gem. But what about when it’s a museum that really doesn’t interest you or revisiting a monument you didn’t like the first time around? While compromise is key to making things work, it’s one thing that I certainly don’t miss as a solo traveler.
- Money is taboo. I know how I like to spend my money while traveling: I don’t mind splurging on good food, but I’ll walk miles and use public transportation to save on transport costs. The thing is, many of my friends would rather save on food and splurge on a taxi. It’s often the hardest thing to discuss, but it’s important to get budget issues out in the open.
What do you like and dislike about traveling with other people?
