Speaker 1: What prompted you to solo travel for the first time.
Speaker 2: I wanted to see her and it was now or ever.
Speaker 3: You don't see that much anymore these days.
Speaker 1: This is the first time I've done it.
Speaker 4: They were very intrigued by me walking in there, because
Speaker 4: I went pretty much crocodile dum d.
Speaker 5: Can I get the same sour got yesterday? The ginger sour?
Speaker 5: So I'm at the diving board right now and I
Speaker 5: think I'm going to jump in. This is insane.
Speaker 1: Were you nervous about anything?
Speaker 2: Yes? Everything.
Speaker 5: This is Solita stories of what really happens when you
Speaker 5: travel alone, the beautiful, the messy, and the moments where
Speaker 5: you say yes and surprise yourself. I'm your host, Julie Pine.
Speaker 5: The first time I ever traveled by myself was on accident.
Speaker 5: I was twenty one years old, studying abroad in Barcelona.
Speaker 5: I planned a spring break trip to Italy with some
Speaker 5: Americans from my program, and then a few days before
Speaker 5: the trip they all dropped out. But I still wanted
Speaker 5: to go, so I did. I visited Rome, Florence, Milan,
Speaker 5: and Cinque Terre completely solita. I expected to feel lonely, but
Speaker 5: I found that I met more people because I was alone,
Speaker 5: I made more eye contact, I asked for help, I
Speaker 5: got more invites, like the time I said yes when
Speaker 5: a group of strangers invited me to dinner, where the
Speaker 5: restaurant owner flooded us with free lemon cello. He ignored
Speaker 5: the other patrons just so he could calmly sit and
Speaker 5: tell us his stories. That whole night felt like magic.
Speaker 5: When my semester in Barcelona ended, I wanted to keep traveling,
Speaker 5: but I was as a broke student. So I asked
Speaker 5: around and I discovered one of the cheapest ways to
Speaker 5: stay in Europe was to walk across it on a
Speaker 5: trail called El Camino Santiago Compostela, otherwise known as El Camino.
Speaker 5: The main Gamino path is a five hundred mile walk
Speaker 5: across the north of Spain. I carried everything on my back.
Speaker 5: I slept in hostels for no more than eight euro
Speaker 5: a night. I woke up at dawn. I ate cans
Speaker 5: of tuna on the side of the road, and I
Speaker 5: prayed in churches that my feet wouldn't give in too blisters.
Speaker 5: And the beautiful thing about the Gamino is that even
Speaker 5: if you choose to walk it alone, you're never really alone.
Speaker 5: My first few days, I sinked my pace with an
Speaker 5: elderly Irish man who was walking his own solo trail.
Speaker 5: He was in his seventies, following in the literal footsteps
Speaker 5: of his late daughter, she completed the Gamino alone a
Speaker 5: few years back, and then she sadly took her own
Speaker 5: life earlier that year. He walked with her Camino passport
Speaker 5: in hand, which tracked her exact route with stamps from
Speaker 5: the hostels and restaurants she visited. As we followed her
Speaker 5: trail together, I started to notice that this elderly man
Speaker 5: called the same person every night before bed. I assumed
Speaker 5: it was a family member, maybe his wife, but when
Speaker 5: I asked him, he told me it was his publican.
Speaker 5: That's when I learned that in Ireland, the publican is
Speaker 5: the guy who runs your local pub. So my new
Speaker 5: friend was doing pillow talk with his bartender. I was tickled.
Speaker 5: It was a ritual that screamed, go take on the world,
Speaker 5: but hurry back. You belong here in this pub. I imagined
Speaker 5: the Irish pub as this magical place where, of course
Speaker 5: everyone knows your name, but also your mom's name and
Speaker 5: your bad moods and your favorite song, and now the
Speaker 5: stories of how you conquered Spain on foot. I finished
Speaker 5: the Camino and I continued my travels across the world alone.
Speaker 5: In Morocco, I learned to surf. During the quiet months
Speaker 5: of Ramadan. In Tijuana, I made friends with Lucha libtefighters
Speaker 5: and Argentina. I fell asleep on a bus, woke up
Speaker 5: in the wrong town, and then lived there for over
Speaker 5: a month. I was the girl on the back of
Speaker 5: the vespa in Monaco. I flew to Edinburgh just to
Speaker 5: see the clowns. And I've contracted dysentery and bedbugs more
Speaker 5: times than I would ever admit on a podcast. Now
Speaker 5: I prefer traveling by myself, even when I do have
Speaker 5: people to go with. It's where I'm closest to my
Speaker 5: own curiosities. And you know what, fifteen years later, I'm
Speaker 5: still thinking about that irishman and his publican. What did
Speaker 5: he have in that pub? And what is the DNA
Speaker 5: of that feeling of belonging? Could I ever belong in
Speaker 5: a pub in Ireland? How much could I even belong
Speaker 5: in a new place when I'm just passing through Solita?
Speaker 5: Now I know I can't answer these questions from the
Speaker 5: Solita headquarters of my bedroom closet in Brooklyn. So in
Speaker 5: the spring of twenty twenty six, when I get my
Speaker 5: own chance to travel to Ireland, I make it my mission.
Speaker 5: I'm going to become a regular at an Irish pub.
Speaker 1: What was it fifteen years ago?
Speaker 5: I was doing the Caminoda Santiiro, which is like a
Speaker 5: pilgrimage walk.
Speaker 1: Across the north of Spain, the Camino the Camino.
Speaker 5: I started my Ireland trip in Dublin for one night
Speaker 5: before traveling to a tiny mountain town called Kilfinnan for
Speaker 5: an audio arts festival. That's where I met John and
Speaker 5: we quickly became friends. John's in his late fifties. His
Speaker 5: family's been in Ireland for generations and he inherited the
Speaker 5: family farm, although he retired early, saying he was bad
Speaker 5: at farming. John offered to drive me to the bus
Speaker 5: station where I'd be catching my bus to Galway to
Speaker 5: start my five days of solo traveling. So, of course
Speaker 5: I took the opportunity to pick his brain about the
Speaker 5: importance of publicans. Do people not usually have that much
Speaker 5: of a relationship with Republicans? Oh?
Speaker 1: In a small tone, you do absolutely, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: that relation. Oh god, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what.
Speaker 5: That's Well, when I'm in Galway, my mission is to
Speaker 5: try to become a local at a pub.
Speaker 1: Okay, what did that involve? I don't know who's going
Speaker 1: to win the match? What do you think it involves.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's possible? Well? Probably probably not. How
Speaker 1: long are you inna go before four nights? Okay? If
Speaker 1: you go in there every night, you know you'll be
Speaker 1: You won't be a regular, but you will be a
Speaker 1: you will be known. How long do you think you
Speaker 1: have to go to become a regular?
Speaker 4: I would say in your case, being a bit of
Speaker 4: a looker, I would say if there was a man
Speaker 4: behind the counter, i'd say the second night.
Speaker 5: Oh god, but that sounds like a bad regular.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, what's it like in New York? I mean,
Speaker 1: do you know? No, I don't go.
Speaker 5: There's a bar in my neighborhood.
Speaker 1: It's a little too expensive.
Speaker 5: I would never go every night because it's just as
Speaker 5: a part of the It's not lady.
Speaker 1: It's not lady. Why do you say that, I'm gone
Speaker 1: be old fashioned over That's not the case. That's not
Speaker 1: the case here. No, but I mean, I was.
Speaker 5: At a pub in Dublin and I had this really
Speaker 5: friendly older gentleman buy me a drink, and when he
Speaker 5: found out I was alone, he was like, Oh, I'm
Speaker 5: going to stick by you because I actually I just
Speaker 5: don't want you to be lonely. You're a woman here alone.
Speaker 5: And I thought it was really well intentioned.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure it was.
Speaker 5: It was well intentioned.
Speaker 1: I thought he was a sweetheart. And I also thought
Speaker 1: it was like.
Speaker 5: It was showing something inappropriate. No, but like I didn't
Speaker 5: need to be protected in that way, like I can
Speaker 5: find for myself being alone, and I actually sort of
Speaker 5: like being alone. In Spanish, a female alone translates to sola.
Speaker 5: Solita is a little more complicated. That diminutive etha gives
Speaker 5: the word a layer of pity. Ah she's alone, poor thing.
Speaker 5: In Puerto Rico, where my family's from. It also invites
Speaker 5: gossip or cheese me ahino solita, Ah, she came alone.
Speaker 5: You'll never guess why solita gets wielded against women, as
Speaker 5: if being alone is a mark of failure. But when
Speaker 5: a woman reclaims the word for herself, say being a solita,
Speaker 5: she's owning the power of solitude as a deliberate tool
Speaker 5: of possibility. When I tell people I'm traveling alone, I
Speaker 5: get one of two opposite responses. First is disbelief. They
Speaker 5: say I'm brave, maybe reckless. They show concern, They ask
Speaker 5: about safety, about loneliness, as if I shouldn't be doing it.
Speaker 5: The other response is a resounding applause, which I will
Speaker 5: credit with the popularity of the early aughts book and
Speaker 5: movie Eat Pray Love. This response assumes that the world
Speaker 5: is simply a backdrop from my journey of personal transformation,
Speaker 5: which is a Western fantasy, and neither of these responses
Speaker 5: leaves room for the reality. Traveling alone as a woman
Speaker 5: is risky, and it's beautiful, and it's messy, and you'll
Speaker 5: probably learn over and over that the world is not
Speaker 5: your oyster. But I don't think that that should hold
Speaker 5: women back from taking the plunge, and the numbers show
Speaker 5: it hasn't. A study found that over three quarters of
Speaker 5: all solo travelers identified as women in twenty twenty five US.
Speaker 5: Women make eighty two percent of all travel decisions in
Speaker 5: the home, so it makes sense that they turn their
Speaker 5: decision making onto themselves. There was a huge uptick in
Speaker 5: Google searches for the phrase solo female travel in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty two, and then something broke open at the end
Speaker 5: of twenty twenty five because those Google searches hid an
Speaker 5: all time high, nearly tripling overnight. Experts say that the
Speaker 5: broader shift points to women having more socioeconomic independence. Look
Speaker 5: at women from ages twenty five to forty four, Morgan
Speaker 5: Stanley predicts that in just five years, almost half of
Speaker 5: those women will be single. They're not only free from
Speaker 5: the financial responsibilities of having to raise a family, they
Speaker 5: also don't have the built in travel buddies. But it's
Speaker 5: not just women in childbearing ages. It's also women like Chris,
Speaker 5: who I met in my hostel in Ireland.
Speaker 1: How long have you been solo traveling? First experience? And
Speaker 1: how old are you?
Speaker 2: Sixty?
Speaker 1: And what prompted you to solo travel for the first time?
Speaker 2: I wanted to see her and it was now or ever?
Speaker 1: Were you hoping somebody would come with you?
Speaker 2: I had asked my son to come, but he couldn't
Speaker 2: get the time off, so I didn't want anyone else.
Speaker 2: I want to do what I want when I want.
Speaker 1: Were you nervous about anything? Yes?
Speaker 2: Everything?
Speaker 5: In a study of almost three thousand solo female travelers,
Speaker 5: personal safety is the number one worry. Number two is
Speaker 5: higher costs. The next few worries something bad will happen,
Speaker 5: language barriers, and a worry about dining alone, feeling lonely
Speaker 5: and getting lost. Hi, is this the best to gall it?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Great, you got to get her.
Speaker 5: What time is this and it's four thirty? Oh that's
Speaker 5: six thirty. Oh shoot, I get my Times message. Is
Speaker 5: it okay?
Speaker 1: Take this one? Thank you so much for your kindness.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 5: If you couldn't tell by me booking the wrong bus ticket.
Speaker 5: I'm a type B traveler. The only thing I really
Speaker 5: book when I arrive to a place is my accommodations.
Speaker 5: I book a hostel in the center of Galway, walking
Speaker 5: distance to dozens of pubs, and then the rest of
Speaker 5: my plans I leave up to chance. And since I'm single,
Speaker 5: why not crack the door open for a bit of fun.
Speaker 5: On the bus to Galway, I open Hinge and I
Speaker 5: edit my profile to say I'm traveling from New York
Speaker 5: looking for someone to show me their favorite spots in town.
Speaker 5: I start swiping and one of the first profiles is
Speaker 5: a man named Mark. He's cute, he's creative, and he's Cuban.
Speaker 5: I message him, saying, another Latino in Ireland, and within
Speaker 5: an hour we've made plans to get coffee. The next day.
Speaker 5: I step off the bus in Galway, drop my bag
Speaker 5: off in the hostel, and head out for my first
Speaker 5: walk around the city. And within four minutes of my walk,
Speaker 5: I spot Mark from Hinge outside of a pub. I
Speaker 5: avoid him for now and wait for tomorrow's date, but
Speaker 5: obviously I voice note my best friend, how small is
Speaker 5: this city? Literally just spotted him on the steps of
Speaker 5: a pub. That's fucking crazy. I keep walking, and just
Speaker 5: twenty minutes later I start to hear Puerto Rican SOUTHSA
Speaker 5: music blaring down the street, music from my tiny archipelago
Speaker 5: in the Caribbean here in Ireland. I run over, Are
Speaker 5: you guys dancing?
Speaker 7: So yeah?
Speaker 5: New York, New York. They offer me a beer and
Speaker 5: we dance for over an hour. They invite me to
Speaker 5: come dance with them at a local pub. Later on
Speaker 5: that week, a woman from Uruguay named Pamela tells me
Speaker 5: that she works at a nearby bakery. I told her
Speaker 5: I would definitely stop in the next morning for coffee.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I visited Pamela for the same reason I'm
Speaker 5: wanting to become a regular at a pub. It's something
Speaker 5: that I chase in every new place I visit. I
Speaker 5: travel the world hoping to see something new, but to
Speaker 5: feel familiarity. One of the world's most famous travel writers,
Speaker 5: Rick Steves, has written about it. He outlines three different
Speaker 5: ways to travel. He says you can either travel as
Speaker 5: a tourist, a traveler, or a pilgrim. A tourist is
Speaker 5: there to consume. They seek relaxation, entertainment, and escape from
Speaker 5: their regular life. On the opposite side of that spectrum
Speaker 5: is the pilgrim. They're there to challenge themselves in search
Speaker 5: of some sort of personal transformation. And then right there
Speaker 5: in the middle between the tourist and the pilgrim is
Speaker 5: the traveler. The traveler arrives to a due place wanting
Speaker 5: to be a temporary local. They're willing to exchange comfort
Speaker 5: for realness, hoping to immerse themselves in the experience of
Speaker 5: what it might be like to actually live there. And
Speaker 5: I don't really stick out as a visitor in Ireland
Speaker 5: as a white Latina, I have the privilege of not
Speaker 5: getting bothered by racial microaggressions or stereotypes or intrusive questions
Speaker 5: about my heritage or appearance. White women have been at
Speaker 5: the center of popular Western narratives of female solo travel,
Speaker 5: so these nuance of identity are often under explored, and
Speaker 5: I do think my diasporic identity plays into my desire
Speaker 5: to become a temporary local. I grew up in the
Speaker 5: continental US with two parents from Puerto Rico who had
Speaker 5: only just moved from the archipelago a year before I
Speaker 5: was born. I grew up feeling like I was neither
Speaker 5: Kei Nida. Yeah, neither from here nor from there. So
Speaker 5: when I travel, I'm always sort of seeking an understanding
Speaker 5: of what it's like to belong to that place. Now,
Speaker 5: the only thing missing is my regular pub, so I
Speaker 5: hit the road to start looking for it. Yeah, that
Speaker 5: one didn't really even have a bar or anywhere.
Speaker 1: In the city was kind of empty.
Speaker 5: Group is there an upstairs? I stop into it. Least
Speaker 5: least seven pubs on my first night in Galway. I
Speaker 5: need to find a pub within walking distance to my
Speaker 5: hostel for safety late at night, but they're all full
Speaker 5: of other tourists, so I give up on my search
Speaker 5: for the night, and I go back to my hostel discouraged.
Speaker 5: I lay in bed with a bad case of the
Speaker 5: night one blues. It happens almost every trip. On the
Speaker 5: first night, I'm tired, feeling out of place without my
Speaker 5: usual comforts and routines, asking myself what am I doing here?
Speaker 5: I'm spending my hard earned money on myself, hoping to
Speaker 5: find something profound. I can't even find a pub. I
Speaker 5: almost give up on my mission completely until the next night.
Speaker 5: I've exhausted all the old school Irish pubs within walking distance,
Speaker 5: and so when I pass a craft beer bar, I
Speaker 5: walk in, Hey are you yeah?
Speaker 7: It is?
Speaker 5: I don't know what's like your specialty here. I've been
Speaker 5: given three pieces of advice for becoming a regular at
Speaker 5: a pub. One go regularly, two make friends with the staff,
Speaker 5: and three have good crack which stay with me here
Speaker 5: translates to creating good banter at the bar. So I
Speaker 5: walk in and immediately I connect with the bartender, Sean.
Speaker 5: Today is Monday, and Sean tells me that on Wednesday,
Speaker 5: my last day in Ireland, he's quitting his job at
Speaker 5: the pub to finally pursue his career as a writer.
Speaker 5: And I can't help but cheer him on. I talk
Speaker 5: to the woman at the bar next to me. She's
Speaker 5: here every night because her dog is scared of other dogs,
Speaker 5: so eleven pm is the only time she can take
Speaker 5: her for a walk. I ask Sean for a drink recommendation,
Speaker 5: and he pours me a sour beer, which feels scandalous
Speaker 5: in the land of Guinness. I leave after two beers.
Speaker 5: I don't like to get drunk when I travel by myself,
Speaker 5: and on my way out the door, I say, see
Speaker 5: you guys tomorrow. Did I just find my pub? After
Speaker 5: the break? A whirlwind romance that stops before it starts.
Speaker 5: One of the best parts of traveling by yourself is
Speaker 5: asking for help. You really can't pretend that you know everything,
Speaker 5: and being by yourself, people tend to go out of
Speaker 5: their way to help you. When I go on a
Speaker 5: free walking tour, which is one of my favorite things
Speaker 5: to do in a new city, I ask my guide
Speaker 5: Anna if she has any advice for my mission to
Speaker 5: become a regular at a pub. Anna is an immigrant
Speaker 5: from Brazil and she's been in Ireland for ten years.
Speaker 5: She fell in love with this country. He came an
Speaker 5: Irish historian and it turns out pubs actually shaped her welcome.
Speaker 5: So when I tell her about my elderly Irish friend
Speaker 5: from the Camino, she helps me fill in some of
Speaker 5: the blanks I see.
Speaker 4: Everybody in the pub was actually just like, oh geez,
Speaker 4: you know, like do you know Sheamus, He's just going
Speaker 4: up now doing the Camino like Jesus Christ. Fair play
Speaker 4: to him, you know, like the whole lot. And then
Speaker 4: he would just ring from there and just share a
Speaker 4: few of the stories with the public, you know, which
Speaker 4: your men, the bartender or something. Then he would share
Speaker 4: all the news around, you know, because you have to
Speaker 4: think not just what you were doing on your side,
Speaker 4: that you were just chatting with your meny he was
Speaker 4: ringing the public and every time, but imagine the impact
Speaker 4: of his actions back here in Ireland, like me coming
Speaker 4: from Brazil, you know, the population of Ireland is the
Speaker 4: same population of just my city alone.
Speaker 2: And I love.
Speaker 4: Being a small country liketist. And in Ireland there was
Speaker 4: just this immediate gentleness, like they look you up and down.
Speaker 4: They know, we're just like, oh, come in here, one
Speaker 4: of us now.
Speaker 5: I tell Anna about my fascination with pubs, and it
Speaker 5: turns out when she first arrived to Ireland, one of
Speaker 5: the first few jobs she could get was as a publican.
Speaker 4: Okay, I can tell you a funny story about that. So,
Speaker 4: So I used to work in a pub called the
Speaker 4: Old Triangle in Lockray, just outside of go Away, like
Speaker 4: small little town, you know, just all the drinking regulars
Speaker 4: would be like, you know, older men and they're like
Speaker 4: fifty sixty seventies plus ish kind of vibe. There'll be
Speaker 4: like a karaoke every Friday night. There would be like
Speaker 4: country music every Saturday night. It was hopping, you know,
Speaker 4: like it was the place. They were very intrigued by
Speaker 4: me walking in there because I went pretty much Crocodile
Speaker 4: Dundee style. I really needed a job and I never
Speaker 4: worked in a pub before, just arrived in Ireland, and
Speaker 4: I said, listen, I do need a job. I'm competent.
Speaker 4: I'll go for it, like see what I can do
Speaker 4: if I get a trial. And first of all, I
Speaker 4: couldn't understand what my boss was saying. He taught like
Speaker 4: and I was like, I have no chance of working here.
Speaker 4: I can't even understand your man bosh. I went for
Speaker 4: I managed and I learned very quickly the gift of
Speaker 4: the gap, you know, the chatting, the understanding and the locals.
Speaker 4: They go to a pub, and they continue going to
Speaker 4: a pub for a reason because they're well taken care
Speaker 4: of there. It becomes a natural dance once you learn it.
Speaker 4: I used to be the main person behind the bar,
Speaker 4: you know, just you know, kind of locking up and everything,
Speaker 4: and I would be there just pouring a few slow
Speaker 4: pines for them, as they call it. And then I
Speaker 4: realized at some point in my life that my social
Speaker 4: life was basically just having the full on chats with
Speaker 4: those like five six older leads and then in the
Speaker 4: end of the night just being the taxi driver to
Speaker 4: all of them. And it was just the most hilarious
Speaker 4: thing because I would have my car full of them
Speaker 4: leads and me being like the baby streit, just like,
Speaker 4: oh let's go and behavior, oh gid, you cannot smoke
Speaker 4: in here or go on or get out now. And
Speaker 4: you know, I wasn't expecting for any payment to bring
Speaker 4: them around, you know, and any of that. But one
Speaker 4: day my boss will be like, whit a minute, you know,
Speaker 4: because you always poke like a dinosaur. I was like,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, have you you guys have no shame
Speaker 4: of yourself, Jesus Christ, look at this young lady there.
Speaker 2: Just bring your guys around.
Speaker 4: You would pay a TAXI, why would you not pay her?
Speaker 4: So everybody was just like, oh, Jesus personally go like
Speaker 4: twenty quid into like the recal story. So it was
Speaker 4: always such a lovely natural way of interacting. And then
Speaker 4: I went to watch the Saint Patrick's parade in Lockray, right,
Speaker 4: And then I realized when I was watching the parade
Speaker 4: with a friend of mine that I knew all the
Speaker 4: leads that were in the parade. They were driving the tractors,
Speaker 4: drinking a pint of Gainness as they were driving on
Speaker 4: the parade, and I was looking at it, and I
Speaker 4: was like, God, I am really part of this because
Speaker 4: I know all them leads, I know all their stories,
Speaker 4: I know the whole lot. And that's the beauty of
Speaker 4: becoming a local. In my case, I was working a
Speaker 4: very different magic, but very very beautiful.
Speaker 5: If the marker of belonging in a place is walking
Speaker 5: down the street and seeing a person, you know, I
Speaker 5: might be able to check that box off. You know
Speaker 5: what's funny is I think I saw you yesterday?
Speaker 6: Really?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Right? When I read arrived, the city was walking up.
Speaker 5: It made the world feel smorlow. I was surprised to
Speaker 5: learn that my Cuban hinge date Mark is from the
Speaker 5: US and he's been living in Galway for over six years.
Speaker 5: He was also a child actor, and he starred in
Speaker 5: some of the shows and movies I watched religiously on
Speaker 5: the Disney Channel as a kid. How's that for familiarity.
Speaker 5: Two hours go by and we're seated at a table
Speaker 5: inside of a coffee shop that looks exactly like the
Speaker 5: coffee shops back home in Brooklyn, and it's a wonderful date.
Speaker 5: At the end, we're both buzzing and he says, I
Speaker 5: have a workout class now, but do you want to
Speaker 5: hang out when I'm done. This would have been a
Speaker 5: lot if I was back home, but since I'm only
Speaker 5: in town for three more days, I say yes. Plus,
Speaker 5: I'm travel Julie. I'm not regular Julie. Travel Julie is
Speaker 5: more confident, more outgoing, more adventurous. I go back to
Speaker 5: the hostel after the date to get ready for part two,
Speaker 5: and I meet my new bunkmate. She's also traveling alone,
Speaker 5: and she tells me that she's feeling lonely. She asks
Speaker 5: me if I want to get dinner. I tell her
Speaker 5: I have plans, and I feel a little guilty because
Speaker 5: it's easy to escape into someone else rather than sit
Speaker 5: with the challenge of being alone. I also sort of
Speaker 5: feel like I'm cheating my way out of my mission.
Speaker 5: If I do disappear into a whirlwind romance, I probably
Speaker 5: won't go back to the pub. I will have found
Speaker 5: my belonging as somebody else's plus one. But as fate
Speaker 5: would have it, Mark texts me an hour later something
Speaker 5: came up. He got an audition, which sometimes happens at
Speaker 5: night because of the time change in LA he can't
Speaker 5: meet me for part two of our date. I'm a
Speaker 5: little disappointed, but luckily I do have a place where
Speaker 5: I can go to get some support. How are you
Speaker 5: going to see you again? I was here yesterday, Julie. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I good to see you. Julie yeah. Can I get
Speaker 5: the same sour a guy yesterday? The ginger sour? Thank you.
Speaker 5: I tell Sean about my date. It leads us into
Speaker 5: a deeper conversation about who we both are outside of
Speaker 5: the pub. Sean likes to rave. His favorite writer is
Speaker 5: James Joyce and he's a really big fan of Mayor Zorn.
Speaker 5: Mom Donnie, the woman with the anxious dog, is back too.
Speaker 5: She shows me her forearm tattoo and why she thinks
Speaker 5: it's infected, and then her dog crawls into my lap
Speaker 5: and stays there the whole night. Sean's last day is
Speaker 5: tomorrow before he quits to pursue his writing career, So
Speaker 5: on my way out the door that night, I say, tomorrow,
Speaker 5: we celebrate you after the break. How my very last
Speaker 5: night at the pub turns into a minor crime. The
Speaker 5: next morning, I wake up with dog hair on my
Speaker 5: sweater and a swell of gratitude that I have the
Speaker 5: privilege to board a plane, visit a new country, and
Speaker 5: be welcomed by strangers into intimate places like the pub.
Speaker 5: But belonging goes both ways. I've spent all week asking
Speaker 5: Galway to make room for me. I haven't asked what
Speaker 5: my being here does to them. Can a place protect
Speaker 5: what's its own while sharing it with curious visitors like me?
Speaker 5: I found the perfect place to chase that question, and
Speaker 5: it requires a field trip.
Speaker 2: Did you come to a little bridge, go over the
Speaker 2: bridge and straight out to see you hit the.
Speaker 5: Ocean, but i driver directs me to the ferry that
Speaker 5: will take me to the Aran Islands, twenty miles off
Speaker 5: the coast of the Galway Bay. They're historically one of
Speaker 5: the most isolated parts of Ireland, one of the last
Speaker 5: to be colonized by the British, and for that reason
Speaker 5: they're one of the few remaining places where you'll frequently
Speaker 5: hear people speaking the Irish language. But today they're also
Speaker 5: a massive tourist destination. I'm visiting the smallest of the
Speaker 5: Aran Islands in a sheer because up until the late eighties,
Speaker 5: cargo ships couldn't even pull up to its shore, so
Speaker 5: everything that came onto the island had to be physically
Speaker 5: handed through the side door of a cargo ship and
Speaker 5: onto a small wooden boat the size of a canoe.
Speaker 7: Anchored about quarter of mile out the bay, and bob
Speaker 7: and no waven and up and down with the swell,
Speaker 7: trying to hand babies and livestock and everything in an
Speaker 7: outro small cargo door.
Speaker 5: That's Martin talking about the caraffs or the canoe size boats.
Speaker 5: The Karaff was their tiny bridge to the outside world
Speaker 5: until the port opened up in the late eighties. As
Speaker 5: I'm biking through the island. Martin flags me down from
Speaker 5: the side of the road to invite me to the
Speaker 5: museum he and his friends built celebrating the history of
Speaker 5: the cararaff. There was something that was protected because you
Speaker 5: guys were so inaccessible for so long.
Speaker 7: Exactly it was basically it never changed really really up
Speaker 7: until those years eighty eight eighty nine, the islanders were
Speaker 7: almost self sufficient. They didn't really rely on supplies because
Speaker 7: they could make everything and anything. They had so many
Speaker 7: different crafts and so many different traditions that were handed
Speaker 7: down cultures through the generations.
Speaker 5: You guys went from being very self sufficient with these caraffs.
Speaker 5: When did tourism start.
Speaker 7: It would have been going on to beck to the
Speaker 7: forties or fifties or so. Yeah, it would have started
Speaker 7: off obviously small numbers, tiny numbers.
Speaker 5: In the forties fifties, tourists would have to board a
Speaker 5: cargo ship to visit in Ashear, only to be handed
Speaker 5: off to a car off.
Speaker 7: There have been huge excitement trying to be the first
Speaker 7: car alongside the cargo boat because you kind of would
Speaker 7: have first DIBs on the tours Like they started off
Speaker 7: very small, very slowly, very very gently, like an kind
Speaker 7: of just basically expand and expanding every year since basically like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, today with the islands, new port ferries full of
Speaker 5: tourists like me arrived to in Asher multiple times a
Speaker 5: day every day. Tourism has a huge presence.
Speaker 7: I suppose we're kind of heavily reliant on it now
Speaker 7: with the minute as well, because we don't have many
Speaker 7: factories or anything like that. A lot of work through
Speaker 7: tours and like new cafes and new restaurants and new bmb's,
Speaker 7: So yeah, we're lucky really at the minute.
Speaker 5: It's hard to see it purely as luck when we're
Speaker 5: standing in museums celebrating the boats that once kept in
Speaker 5: a sheer self reliant. Now the island's economy relies on
Speaker 5: visits from people like me. As a visitor, I am
Speaker 5: always changing a place, rarely for the better. Look no
Speaker 5: further than Mexico City, gentrified beyond recognition by a swarm
Speaker 5: of digital nomads, and it doesn't really matter if they
Speaker 5: identify as tourists, travelers, or pilgrims. And it makes me
Speaker 5: wonder if I even have a right to this feeling
Speaker 5: of belonging when I'm just another part of an industry
Speaker 5: that extracts. I'm really grateful that I stopped in with Martin.
Speaker 5: I try to buy a T shirt off of him,
Speaker 5: but he doesn't have my size. And then I arrived
Speaker 5: to the ferry three hours later, and there he is
Speaker 5: standing by the fairy entrance. He found the right size
Speaker 5: T shirt, he told me. He lets me pay for it,
Speaker 5: and I give him a really big hug. I bored
Speaker 5: the ferry back to Continental Ireland. When I arrive, it's
Speaker 5: a thirty minute walk to the bus stop, but my
Speaker 5: bus leaves in twenty minutes. So in that moment, I
Speaker 5: decide to do something I have never done before. I
Speaker 5: stick my thumb out on the side of the road
Speaker 5: to hitchhike. Cars are zooming past me, all of them
Speaker 5: making eye contact. Two older men in a car even
Speaker 5: roll down their window just to laugh at me. More
Speaker 5: than fifteen cars later, someone pulls over to the side
Speaker 5: of the road. I immediately recognize them. It's a family
Speaker 5: from the US that I had met on the ferry.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, you really saved me. You don't see
Speaker 5: that much anymore these days. This is the first time
Speaker 5: I've done it. I asked them to drop me off
Speaker 5: at the bus to Galway, which is when we realize
Speaker 5: we're both headed in the same direction.
Speaker 8: I'm sure you don't want to stay to this, we're
Speaker 8: going back to going.
Speaker 5: Oh you guys are yeah, you know what? Sure why?
Speaker 5: We drive the two hours back to Galway after making
Speaker 5: a detour to see the Cliffs of Mohair. On the
Speaker 5: car ride back, we chat about the highlights of our
Speaker 5: respective trips through Ireland. We don't touch American politics, which
Speaker 5: I'm grateful for. And when we arrive back to Galway,
Speaker 5: they invite me out to dinner, but I've got plans
Speaker 5: to meet Mark from Hinge, or at least I thought, Hey.
Speaker 6: I hope you're not trapped on the island, and definitely
Speaker 6: because as fate would have it, I am not able
Speaker 6: to hang out tonight, unfortunately, And that is really sincerely,
Speaker 6: no genuine reflection of wanting to hang out. I really
Speaker 6: liked meeting yesterday. I'm connecting and I wish you were
Speaker 6: here for like a couple of weeks, and I'm sorry
Speaker 6: that my yeah, and I'm not able to make the time.
Speaker 6: I'd like to make.
Speaker 5: Mark and I meet the next day for coffee. He
Speaker 5: takes me on a beautiful walk by the river. We
Speaker 5: walk with our shoulders brushing, and we stop across the
Speaker 5: bank from an abandoned castle. As we're watching the water
Speaker 5: flow by, he tells me about something called the black
Speaker 5: Rock Diving Board. It's at Salt Hill Beach. Apparently locals
Speaker 5: love to dive off of it into the freezing ocean
Speaker 5: to swim. The idea is enticing, but I hadn't taken
Speaker 5: my coat off the entire trip. The air alone in
Speaker 5: Ireland is freezing, and it's also my last afternoon in Galway.
Speaker 5: So I tell myself that I'll check it out on
Speaker 5: my next visit. Yes, I am already planning my next visit.
Speaker 5: I mean, I feel so comfortable in this city, my
Speaker 5: pub and my publican, and the salsa community, and the
Speaker 5: helpful strangers and this person that I want to see again.
Speaker 5: I feel like I built a little home away from home.
Speaker 5: So I decide right there, surely I'll be back. We
Speaker 5: hug goodbye, and he gives me a recommendation for a
Speaker 5: craft shop nearby, and then later in a voice message,
Speaker 5: he finds out that my afternoon took a different turn. Hey,
Speaker 5: so I'm at the diving board right now. After we
Speaker 5: parted ways, I went to the craft shop and I
Speaker 5: actually bought this print of a woman jumping off of
Speaker 5: the diving board. And when I took it to the
Speaker 5: ShopKeep to pay, she was like, oh, did.
Speaker 6: You go there?
Speaker 5: And I said no, I'm going to keep it on
Speaker 5: my wall as a reminder to come back someday. And
Speaker 5: she said, oh, well, you know you've still got time.
Speaker 5: And so I booked it back to the hostel, changed,
Speaker 5: got on a bus, got on the wrong bus actually,
Speaker 5: so then I had to take an uber And now
Speaker 5: I'm here in my sports bra and running pants. I
Speaker 5: just tried it with a really nice man and he
Speaker 5: told me that it's twelve degrees in the water, and
Speaker 5: I think I'm going to jump in, you know. I figure,
Speaker 5: I'm just going to do it while i'm here, just
Speaker 5: take the plunge. But it was really lovely to meet you,
Speaker 5: Like I feel like time really flew while we were talking,
Speaker 5: and I think that's really special. I'm pretty rare and
Speaker 5: you're a part of why this trip has felt really special,
Speaker 5: and I'm going to hold on to that. This is insane.
Speaker 5: Of course, I jumped off the diving board because as
Speaker 5: much as I travel to feel like I live in
Speaker 5: a new place, I also love the urgency of remembering
Speaker 5: that I don't. That urgency is the engine of discovery.
Speaker 5: And yes, I travel to discover new places, new customs
Speaker 5: and perspectives, but I also travel to meet new parts
Speaker 5: of myself. Who am I when I'm alone without the
Speaker 5: context of what makes me me back home? Who am
Speaker 5: I when I'm not people pleasing, when I'm not waiting
Speaker 5: for permission, thinking things through a million times? Who am
Speaker 5: I when I decide today is the day I take
Speaker 5: the plunge. As much as I want to come back
Speaker 5: to Galway, the truth is I rarely travel back to
Speaker 5: a place once I visited. Even when I do feel
Speaker 5: at home there, there's just so much of the world
Speaker 5: I want to see. It's my last night in Galway.
Speaker 5: The salsa dancers I met on my first afternoon invite
Speaker 5: me to dance at a bar in town. We dance
Speaker 5: for a few hours before I head to my pub
Speaker 5: for the last time. It's bartender Shan's last night, and
Speaker 5: I'm feeling excited to celebrate him. But when I walk in,
Speaker 5: Sean isn't behind the bar, and my heart drops. All
Speaker 5: this time building this connection. What am I supposed to
Speaker 5: do now? This new bartender is a guy I've never
Speaker 5: seen before, and he's gruff with dark circles under his eyes,
Speaker 5: and he barks at me for my drink order. It's
Speaker 5: clear that he's not having a good day. I don't
Speaker 5: even try to engage with him. I'm drinking my beer
Speaker 5: in silence, watching my dream of becoming a regular swirl
Speaker 5: down the drain with the overflow of Guinness foam. But
Speaker 5: then the song Waterfalls by TLC comes onto this speaker
Speaker 5: who I heard this song today in the shower with Terry.
Speaker 4: I was like, I love his song.
Speaker 5: I forget I love this And to my surprise, this
Speaker 5: new bartender starts singing, and then I start singing sort
Speaker 5: of at him. I ask him if he's got any
Speaker 5: more music by TLC in his rotation. He plays no
Speaker 5: scrubs and I hype him up. He introduces himself. His
Speaker 5: name is Killian, and then I watch him go to
Speaker 5: the iPad and put on Pink Pony Club. We do
Speaker 5: at a few more chapel Rone songs, and then Sean
Speaker 5: appears and then its final and then the dog is
Speaker 5: in my lap again, and somebody at the bar, buys
Speaker 5: us all a shot of Yaeger, and an instant later,
Speaker 5: the music is off, the lights are on, and the
Speaker 5: door is locked. There's six of us left in the bar.
Speaker 5: It's me, the two bartenders, their guy friend, and a
Speaker 5: lesbian couple breaking up in the back corner. Iconic Killian
Speaker 5: and Sean are stacking the barstools on the table, and
Speaker 5: I keep hearing them say the word lock in, and
Speaker 5: so I say, what's a lock in? And they say, well,
Speaker 5: it's illegal, but it's when we close down the bar
Speaker 5: and we keep drinking, and he hands me another Guinness.
Speaker 5: I look around and the metal grates on the windows
Speaker 5: are indeed completely closed from the outside. Nobody knows that
Speaker 5: we're here, and I think to myself, I've done it.
Speaker 5: I've become a regular. I'm so regular, I'm doing crime.
Speaker 5: And with the lights on and the music off, we
Speaker 5: really start chatting. We chat about leftist politics, about the
Speaker 5: public school system in Ireland. We do talk about potatoes,
Speaker 5: but I didn't bring it up. And I knew that
Speaker 5: the Irish were quick witted, but I'm learning that they're
Speaker 5: just as quick with their sincerity. And then the lesbian
Speaker 5: couple emerges from the back corner of the bar. They're
Speaker 5: wrapping up their marathon breakup and they announce that they're leaving.
Speaker 5: And the second they're gone, it dawns on me. I'm drunk,
Speaker 5: locked inside of a bar with three men I just
Speaker 5: met and none of my friends know. I turn around
Speaker 5: to face the door and Killian's holding it open. He
Speaker 5: looks at me and he mouths, are you okay, and
Speaker 5: in a very exaggerated way, I say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: Maybe it's a little people pleasey, but I really want
Speaker 5: to stay. This is the adventure I was hoping for.
Speaker 5: This is the feeling I wanted. But I also hear
Speaker 5: a little voice in my head saying you should probably go.
Speaker 5: And when you're Solita and you hear that little voice,
Speaker 5: I've learned that you should listen. I turn back to
Speaker 5: Killian and I see he still has the door propped open.
Speaker 5: He's smoking a cigarette now and he mouths to me,
Speaker 5: you can leave whenever you want. So I pick up
Speaker 5: my coat, I say my goodbyes, I give Sean a
Speaker 5: big hug, and I will never forget Killian holding the
Speaker 5: door open, offering to walk me home, and all I
Speaker 5: can muster to say to him is you're my publican.
Speaker 5: That's my publican. I don't know that I will ever
Speaker 5: feel what my elderly Irish friend felt when he called
Speaker 5: his publican every night on the Camino. Three knights and
Speaker 5: a lockin certainly won't get me there. But what I
Speaker 5: did find was that my publican had my back. And
Speaker 5: this is what I find over and over and over
Speaker 5: when I travel alone, whether I'm in Ireland, in Morocco
Speaker 5: or the Dominican Republic, I find that people are more
Speaker 5: good than they are bad. And when you're alone, you're
Speaker 5: more receptive to that message. You're more receptive to the
Speaker 5: world as it is and not the lies that you've
Speaker 5: been sold about it. And yes, you could anticipate the
Speaker 5: worst case scenario, but I bet you couldn't even dream
Speaker 5: of the best one. And that's what keeps me traveling, Solita.
Speaker 5: That's why I want to keep sharing more of these stories.
Speaker 5: So I started talking to more Solitas. Carl I got
Speaker 5: Hella stories. This season, we got Hella stories. I can
Speaker 5: wait four hours for the next bus, or this random
Speaker 5: dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. You're
Speaker 5: about to turn forty. What are you going to do
Speaker 5: with your life when you get bad? You honked up
Speaker 5: with the air Marshals.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did.
Speaker 5: I'm on a mission to demystify solo travel, starting by
Speaker 5: tackling the biggest misconceptions.
Speaker 8: I went to Past nine to go to the West Bank.
Speaker 8: I really wanted to see the part that you don't
Speaker 8: get to see, and I just want to know how
Speaker 8: the people live. So it's so interesting you say travel alone,
Speaker 8: because even when I go somewhere alone, I end up
Speaker 8: meeting people and I never feel like I'm actually traveling alone.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: These are stories of solitas made so that solitas everywhere
Speaker 5: feel a little less solita. Each episode, I sit down
Speaker 5: with a woman who went out into the world and
Speaker 5: came back with a story, not a glossy Instagram post,
Speaker 5: an honest story.
Speaker 3: After all of this solo travel, it became my default thing.
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm just gonna go feel something else,
Speaker 3: somewhere else.
Speaker 2: It never fixed anything.
Speaker 3: Like flying away. Taking a flight never fixed anything. It
Speaker 3: did allow me to know myself in different ways.
Speaker 5: I really hope this podcast helps you take the plunge
Speaker 5: on your own solo trip. I'm at the point, Julie, honestly,
Speaker 5: where if I do not solo travel, it's like being
Speaker 5: emotionally constipated. We'll drop a new episode every Tuesday. Whether
Speaker 5: you're a solo travel veteran or you're just warming up
Speaker 5: to the idea, I hope you'll listen. Solita is a
Speaker 5: production of iHeart Podcasts and No Floaties Productions. I'm your host,
Speaker 5: Julie Binnetro. Our producers are me and Mary Do, with
Speaker 5: consulting from Emily Maronoff and Kate Mansberger, Editing, mixing and
Speaker 5: mastering by Mary Doo and engineered by Bihied Fraser and
Speaker 5: Paul Bowman. Our theme song is by ballun Cover art
Speaker 5: is by Me, with finishing touches by Studio Lee and
Speaker 5: Our executive producers are Me, Julie Binnetro, and Jason English.
Speaker 5: If you like this episode, please tell a friend and
Speaker 5: don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to Solita on
Speaker 5: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your
Speaker 5: favorite shows.