Unpacking Solo Travel: Adrienne Allen
I’m excited to share another Unpacking Solo Travel interview with you! Today’s guest is Adrienne Allen. Adrienne and I met in June 2017 when a mutual friend invited us both out for drinks. The following month she moved to Barcelona, Spain, and, shortly thereafter, we both found ourselves in Rome at the same time and decided to meet up for some exploration. Adrienne is still living in Barcelona, working for a tech start up and enjoying the Catalan lifestyle.
Adrienne, tell me about your travel background. How did you get involved in traveling and what was your first solo trip?
It's very hard to pinpoint how I got into travel - maybe it is just in my DNA. Really, it’s in the human DNA to travel. We started out as hunter gatherers, roaming and traveling.
Genetically, this is not my homeland, my ancestors traveled all over the diaspora, and after that they migrated from the south to the north and then the United States. There’s this constant thread of traveling in our DNA.
My family lives in various parts of the US, so I traveled for the first solo trip at seven to visit relatives in Philadelphia. It was pretty exciting. And I think that was the first point in my life as a traveler that I realized that there’s a thrill to be had, and it can be so exciting.
At the time, I was just in awe of the experience, from planning, to arriving at the airport, the whole ambience of the airplane, and the super-friendly travelers. In general, people are a lot friendlier when they're traveling. When you're interacting with fellow travelers, there’s this vibe that’s so good. That's kind of how I got started on my path and really enjoying it.
My first solo trip as an adult was when in 2012 when I took a train to Chicago to go to the Pitchfork Music Festival for the weekend. It was summertime and Chicago has beautiful summers, great architecture, amazing food. I was just really enjoying life. I connected with people through Couchsurfing, and we had a lot of fun together going out to karaoke, for sushi, and to museums. We had a great time.
How long were you there?
I was in Chicago for four days, and I did all of these things with locals that I definitely would not have been able to find on my own. The karaoke that they took me to was in this Ukrainian community building, like an Elk’s Lodge type of place, that they open up to the public on Friday nights. They had a great karaoke stage with lights, kind of vintage looking, like stepping back in time. You were surrounded by all these old Ukrainian men who are there because it's their club, and then you have these 20-something-year-old hipsters who are just living in Chicago. I would have never found it on my own.
I use Couchsurfing and AirBnB a lot on my solo trips, because I don't feel like I’m alone. If you have some trepidation about solo traveling, thinking about being in a hotel room alone, it might seem a little bit bleak and daunting. But now you have this opportunity to use Airbnb as a platform to have experiences with locals and live like a local. You can blend in more and won’t feel as isolated. You get to have a bit of a home base that’s cozier than a hotel. It made my long weekend in Chicago incredible.
Did you originally plan to go with friends, or was it always supposed to be a solo trip?
I've always loved all different kinds of genres of music. I love music: I cook to music, work out to music, do everything to music. I wanted to go to the Pitchfork Music Festival and the lineup that summer was really interesting to me. There’s this guy, Danny Brown, very much a Detroit rapper, a little different, and I wasn’t sure if anyone I knew would be into him, so I decided I would just go. I wanted to see him live, along with the other bands that were playing. The lineup looked good to me, and I didn’t feel like asking my friends if they liked the bands, so I just went alone.
So after Chicago, what were some other places you went solo?
After Chicago, I started planning more trips and thinking more about relocating, and eventually I moved to Philadelphia with a friend. I really didn’t do any big trips until 2016, because I was working on getting settled into Philly. But I would take short little trips on the weekends to places like New York.
Living on the East Coast, at any point we could just jump on a bus or a train and go. I would go somewhere new every month. And then in 2016, I took a fantastic solo trip to Barcelona for my birthday.
How did you end up picking Barcelona?
I don’t really know -- I just kind of had this intuition about Barcelona. I’d never been. It just seemed appealing to me. I love the beach and I’m definitely a foodie, and I studied art history. There’s a ton of all of that to experience in Barcelona. It just came across as a good destination for solo travel for me. For an American, it doesn’t seem that daunting as maybe a solo trip to Bhutan or something. I felt like I could handle Spain. There was also this draw to Spanish culture for me, something calling me to say, okay, this year on my birthday I would like to do a Barcelona trip. So, I booked everything, and I went.
It’s so funny because I wasn't expecting to really fall in love with Barcelona like I did. I just thought it would be this nice vacation where I'll go to museums and the beach and check things off a list.
So, I get here, almost being prepared for disappointment. I don't know if you do this, but I try not to have super great expectations about things. There’s this thing called the “Paris syndrome” where people have super high expectations of a city, like Paris, and they think it will be just like in a movie, beautiful and romantic, but then when they actually get there, they see the reality -- the city is dirty and the people are mean. I didn’t want that to happen, so I had no illusions about Barcelona, but I was still kind of drawn to it. I didn’t know if it would be amazing. I just wanted to experience it.
And when I got here, everything just sort of came together. I felt like I was in my element; it just seemed to click. Suddenly I could actually see myself living here.
I loved the vibe of it all. Just walking around, hearing the sounds of this Catalan language. Seeing people that I don't know, but I just seem to like them. Obviously the beach. Beautiful architecture everywhere. You can get lost just staring at a door or the interior of someone’s foyer somewhere because it’s this amazing array of tiling and mosaics with so much detail. Just walking around, I had this sense of, “Okay, I love it here. “
How did you go from a vacation in Barcelona to living in Barcelona?
I was chatting with my Airbnb host one night on the trip, and he just said, “You should live here. I could see you living here.” And up until that point I had been really enjoying my trip, having an amazing time, but I wasn't seriously thinking about relocating at all. But then he said that to me, and I just had this epiphany about it.
I started thinking; the gears in my brain were just running. How can I be here? What type of visa do I need? Can I work here? I worked from home in Philly, so I could totally do that from Barcelona. The company that I was working for at the time also had a location in the EU. So I was thinking of how I could maybe plug into that office, and just thought of all the ways to make it happen.
When I got back to the States, I was raving about Barcelona. It was all I could think about. I was always listening to Spanish music. I was so in love with Barcelona and missing it, and I wanted to go back.
So in October, two weeks after I got back to Philly, I booked a second trip for March. I had this Spring trip planned to return to Barcelona, and all winter in Philly, I was thinking “I can't wait for winter to be over and then I’ll be in Barcelona, my love, again in the springtime.”
It was just such a beautiful experience, the first time around. And okay, maybe the first trip was good because vacations are just amazing anyways. I was a tourist -- obviously I was going to enjoy it. So I thought I’d try it again. I had made some connections that first trip that I followed up on and started asking them about life in Barcelona, the pros and cons. I started networking, starting to really stake a claim here. The second trip was more like a research phase to see if I could really do a deep dive and seriously think about living in this place. And when I got back after that second trip, I realized I was going to do it. I was moving to Barcelona.
I went from an old routine in the States, working at a desk job, to becoming the CEO of my life. I had always wanted to take a sabbatical, and I knew that I would need to at some point in my career to just chill and reset, to start working on creative projects or at the very least just decompress. I remember seeing some TED talk about the benefits of sabbaticals, and how it can improve your career in the long run. I think these trips to Barcelona were a small version of that, and it just kept the momentum going. There was some kind of magnetism in it for me.
You moved in July of 2017, and then we met up in September in Rome. So you were in Spain for two months and then you went to Rome?
I was living it up, having the best summer ever, and then I just decided to go to Rome. Rome is so close so I booked a cheap flight to check it out. I mean obviously everyone says Rome is amazing. So, I just wanted to see it with my own eyes.
The only concrete plan I had for that trip was to see the Sistine Chapel, and then just let everything else unfold. That trip to Rome was really crazy. It was so much fun.
So over the last three years what have you been doing? Are you still on sabbatical or have you had to go back to work?
When I moved here I had been teaching English online for a while, which I think every expat and long term traveler has done at some point. Eventually I wanted a break from that, so I started working at a startup. I really enjoy it, and it’s right up my alley. My background in Philly was at a tech firm, so now I'm using that experience here in Barcelona, giving the American perspective on things. And of course, the work-life balance in Spain is a lot better than in some of the American cities I considered living in. I almost moved to San Francisco. That would have been a lot different.
What have you learned from your solo travel experiences? What are some of the lessons you've taken away?
I think in general, solo travel is definitely something that's beneficial for a person 's growth. You have something that happens when you're traveling. You start thinking in new ways: new neural pathways open and you start to have thoughts that would have never occurred to you before.
I’ve also learned that you have to take certain chances and risks. Fortune favors the brave. But when you do take those leaps in life, you get some pretty amazing returns. That is the main lesson for me.
What would you say to someone who's considering solo travel for the first time? What advice would you have for women in that position?
Solo travel is something that you should be motivated from within to do. I would recommend it to anyone. But if it's something that doesn't resonate with you, then don’t beat yourself up for not wanting to travel alone. It’s okay. If it’s something that you want to do, you should really go for it, but if it’s not, don’t worry about it. Just don't be afraid.
And you don't have to go that far. My first solo trip was that weekend in Chicago. Just take small baby steps and don’t be afraid to get out of your comfort zone. Go on a trip to a town nearby before going somewhere big. Doing that will allow you to build that confidence that comes with solo travel.
I think most people have a positive view of travel, right? So, maybe they idealize it and if they're planning their first solo trip, they don't think about the small details like train timetables, especially if someone's never been on a subway before in their life. Definitely learn to use public transportation before going somewhere like London, although London might actually be a good first trip because at least everything’s in the same language!
I usually tell people that their first steps can be small trips at home. Then if you're going abroad, go to a country where English is the first language so that you don't have that hurdle. And then from there you can go to places where people know English, but it's not the first language.
And then once you’re comfortable, you can go anywhere. There are so many universal ways of expressing things with our hands and body language. But another good step is to learn a new language. Take classes. Familiarize yourself with the culture and get excited about it.
And be prepared for plans to change and stuff to happen.
Any safety tips for when things do happen?
I think that solo travel is riskier for us as women. But in this day and age, we have our smartphones, so we're able to have our location on a map and send messages to friends and family when we need help.
I recommend the STEP program, which allows US citizens to enroll their trip with the nearest Embassy or Consulate, which allows you to be informed and stay updated on certain events. It also helps the Embassy contact you if there is an emergency. I definitely recommend enrolling in that.
Do you have a destination that you would recommend to women traveling on their own?
I went to Athens earlier this year and it was one of my favorite solo trips. I think it would actually make a great first solo trip for anyone who might feel a little nervous, or who doesn't speak a foreign language, but still wants to go to a place that feels far removed from American culture, as the Greeks are. They're really friendly, amazing, warm hearted, and generous people. It's definitely a great place to start.
That’s good to know! Well, Adrienne, It was so good to talk to you, and I hope we'll talk some more.
If you enjoyed this chat with Adrienne, and want to learn more about solo travel, check out our other solo travel stories from Her Bags Were Packed. Feel free to send us an email if you are nervous about traveling and want to talk to someone. We would love to talk about travel with you!
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