Unpacking Solo Travel: Kae Lani Palmisano
Today I have another Unpacking Solo Travel interview to share with you -- this time with Kae Lani Palmisano. She is a writer and Emmy winning TV host for the show “Check, Please! Philly” which debuted last year. It’s a fun show all about local restaurants in the Philadelphia area. Kae Lani also writes about travel and gastronomy, and loves digging into unique histories and culture.
Kae Lani, how did you get started traveling and what led you to solo travel
As a kid I loved hearing stories of travel and watching the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. Growing up, my family couldn't afford to travel much, so we would go to places like the very, very exotic Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and do things like antiquing and eating all of the amazing Pennsylvania Dutch food.
I always wanted to travel, and I finally got my chance in college. My first solo trip was when I studied abroad in Germany. I worked and saved for about a year and a half before I was actually able to make it happen. I was working towards a business degree, and, at the time, I was part of a stock market club where we played with fake portfolios and stocks. I ended up creating a real portfolio, and because of that I was able to not just go to Germany, but actually pay myself my old salary while I was there, by day trading on the stock market.
You figured out a way to make it work, but, still, that must have been scary at times.
People get so scared of the possibility of failing but that fear is natural and that fear is good because it means you're not going to be reckless. That fear also means that you're going to do whatever it takes to preserve yourself.
Others can do what I did. You just have to go ahead and ease into the uncertainty, and you'll find out that you could do some pretty incredible things. That trip was my first solo trip. And it was to another country!
What was going on emotionally? Did you ever have thoughts of “what have I done, why am I here?”
Well to start, I had no idea how to pack. So I packed everything that I had and my bags were extremely heavy. But also, I didn’t know German. I had taken German for years and assumed that I really knew the language. I was so good at conjugations! But the minute I landed, I learned that I did not actually know the language. For example, there's this really common German word, genau, that everybody there uses. It's kind of like saying ‘exactly’, like, “yeah, yeah, I agree, genau.” So everybody around me was saying genau, this word that I had never heard of before, but is super common. I had to relearn the language.
As far as wondering what I was going to do, or who I would hang out with, I actually had this weird sense of enjoying the solitude. I really enjoyed being in a place where nobody knew me, because I had been in Philadelphia for so long. I think we all come upon these times in our lives where your identity continually changes and grows, but people who have known you for so long remember you for who you were, not who you are now. You can't necessarily evolve in their eyes -- it's a harder shell to break through. But when you travel, there is this kind of sense of feeling like you can do what you want to do and be who you feel like being, and explore different things.
That’s so powerful. I feel like when you travel alone, you get to be your truest version of yourself because you don't have any of those expectations to hold on to. There’s absolutely something to be said for being on your own and being able to experiment with versions of yourself. We’re constantly shifting and changing and morphing.
A while back someone came to me and said, “I'm worried about what happens when I'm alone. What if I don't like me?” It's such a powerful question, but it's something that we all wrestle with. I understand the fear, I still have the fear almost every time I travel, but the reality is, once you get alone, all of that goes away and you get to then be your true self. You're not going to not like yourself when you're alone because you don't have that pressure to be somebody that you’re not. Yes, there are going to be emotional experiences, and you might be lonely at times. But it’s very unlikely that you won’t like yourself.
So after that semester, how quickly did you start traveling again? Did you find that you had this travel bug that then kept you traveling right away, or was it something that came later?
It became a huge priority when I came back to the United States. I went back to Germany several times because I was dating someone there. Eventually he moved to Boston, so we would split our weekends between Boston and Philadelphia, and I really got to explore a lot of cool places in each city.
I also picked up a lot of odd jobs to make travel happen, a lot of weird gigs that turned into interesting experiences, and that’s when the blog started, which eventually turned into travel writing. I started a blog when I did my semester abroad. And it was literally just a way to keep in touch with friends and family. And then when I got home I ended it, and people would ask why I stopped writing, because they liked to read my stuff. So I started looking at what was around me that I could explore and began blogging and writing about experiences in Philadelphia.
Since then I've somehow taken all of the dream jobs that I had, different things that have sparked joy in my life, and turned them into a career. Every year I feel like I'm constantly redefining the thing that I do, and it all started with travel.
We have a post, 5 Steps to Start Traveling Solo, and one of the steps is to plan a trip to visit someone, and make intentional efforts to do things on your own while you’re there, as a way to ease into solo travel. But not everybody has a boyfriend in Germany that they can just go visit! Where are some of the places that you went to fully alone?
I traveled a lot for a job that I had. It was a British company, so I got to go to London several times. We set up an office in Berlin, so I also got to go there. I traveled all across America and spent an inordinate amount of time in Las Vegas, way more time than any one person should spend in Vegas.
My dad passed away in 2014, and it made me realize that life is extremely fragile. The job was great, but it wasn't the thing that I wanted to do, so I left a few months later. I really wanted to go and pursue the things that I wanted to pursue. My dad had a life insurance policy which was enough to cover my student loans and give me a little bit of freedom to be able to invest in the kind of career path that I really wanted, which at the time was travel writing.
I also wanted to see beautiful things. I wanted to go to Alaska. Around that time my roommate told me that she had a dream of seeing a mountain from another mountain. I told her, “Girl, we got to make dreams happen.” So we went to Alaska and saw Mount Denali from another mountain. We did a whole Alaska road trip, and that’s really where it started.
At one point I was actually doing freelance work for a company in Manchester, so I created this other trip right on the heels of Alaska, and spent a month in Manchester.
Then I went to Athens, Greece for a travel bloggers conference, where I met a lot of like-minded, incredible people. After that I got to spend some more time in Germany helping friends get settled in their new home. I also got to go to New Zealand to celebrate the 150th anniversary of one of James Cook’s expeditions.
So you’ve eased into traveling solo, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone just a little bit. What are some of your tips for people on how to make new friends and meet people while they're traveling?
Hostels are great, whether you want to get your own room or stay with other people. The social areas in hostels, or even internet cafes or cafes in general are good places to meet people, and if there's small events, like a show at a bar or park, there will be other people to meet.
I'm huge on education and I feel like there's a conference for everything. Anything and everything that you could be interested in. So go to maybe a writer's retreat, or a yoga retreat, a conference, a comic con. There’s always an event to join.
It's something that you already have a common interest in and you're going to meet people and you're automatically going to bond together. And you can take small steps there to get out of your comfort zone, like you said, by going to a cafe or a small show. If you’re at a conference, there’s probably a happy hour or other networking events that you can go to.
And if you’re totally alone, if you're going to where other travelers are going, there will be places that you can go to to meet people. You very naturally end up meeting other people who are just like you who are in the same boat. They're traveling solo just like us.
What would you say are some lessons you've learned from your solo travel experiences?
Sometimes the idea of a trip can be so overwhelming. You’ll think, “I want to go to New Zealand, but how? I want to go to Germany, but how?” And we often look at everything all at once and it seems very overwhelming, like a really big thing, but that big thing just consists of a bunch of little things.
It’s a big trip. But you pack. And then you step out your front door. You pop in a cab. The cab takes you to the airport. You check your bags and go through TSA and you get to your gate. It’s just step by step, it's all these little seemingly mundane things side by side that build up and turn into one big moment, and before you know it, you’re on your trip.
When you're traveling you are subjected to the time schedules; you are subjected to weather patterns; and you are subjected to all of these things out of your control. You might want to go fast and rush everything, but you can’t do that. You’ve got to get into the rhythm. That’s how travel became easy for me, it all became really formulaic. Suddenly all those seemingly big things become not as overwhelming.
That's good! So here’s my last question for you: What advice do you have for women who are considering solo travel?
Just don't wait for other people to want to travel with you. When I was first starting out, I really wanted someone to do that semester abroad with me. I would go through all the majors to try to find classes that would fit into their curriculum, but I couldn’t get anyone to go with me, so I went alone. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Don't rely on other people's lives or other people's schedules to do something that you want to do. Just go off and do it. You will surprise yourself with how great it will be.
You're never that alone. Honestly the world is just full of people. So don't wait for other people to just start planning. Start looking and dreaming now. It might seem like a long shot now but if you save up the money and you plan accordingly, you could really surprise yourself with what you can do.
And you don't have to go to really far flung places. There are things to see in your area.
I agree, there are so many places near me that are just an hour down the road. Start with someplace near home.
And you know, you're much more likely to meet people and make meaningful connections when you travel alone. But on top of that, if you travel somewhere local, then you might form a friendship that will last longer than the friendships you made on the other side of the world.
Any last piece of advice?
I know that there are a lot of people out there who might have limitations, whether that be financial limitations or even comfort limitations and anxiety. I know for myself that being home so much right now, I get anxious if I leave.
There can be a lot of extreme feelings, so I think it’s good to work your way up to it. You can go on a day trip somewhere, or maybe go to the museum by yourself.
There are so many things that we want to do, but we always wait to do them with friends. We want to try new restaurants with friends, or go to a bar or a show with friends. But maybe that's just the first step, do that one thing that you want to do on your own, and build up from there.
That's so good. If you enjoyed hearing about Kae Lani’s travel stories, you can check her out on Check, Please, Philly, streaming on the PBS App and online. Kae Lani also has her own website, documenting her experiences, Side Quests with Kae Lani. AND she has a brand new YouTube series, Delishtory exploring the origin stories of our favorite foods.
We hope you enjoyed this interview with Kae Lani.
If you have any questions, or if you have your own tips to share, let us know in the comments below!