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AI generated summary, newsroom reviewed
Solo travel gets pitched two ways, and both are slightly wrong.
There's the Eat-Pray-Love version, where you cry over a plate of pasta and find yourself, and there's the LinkedIn version, where you "level up" and come back with a whole new personality.
The truth is more boring and better: you go somewhere alone, eat what you want, sleep when you want, talk to whoever's interesting, and skip whoever isn't. That's the whole pitch. One time, I went to Maldives for 3 days and I don’t think I spoke any words during the entire trip – except to maybe order food.
Of course, Instagram will send you the entire world, but some places make it easier than the rest.
Here are my picks!
Tokyo is, of course, the undisputed champion. I know the hype, but this place truly lives up to it. The reason isn't mysterious: ramen counters, conveyor-belt sushi bars and standing noodle spots are literally designed for one person eating quickly. Nobody is wondering why you're alone. Nobody is wondering anything about you. The trains are signed in English, you couldn't get mugged here if you actively tried, and Tokyo at 11pm on a Tuesday is more functional than most cities at 3pm on a Wednesday. London's fun if you want pubs. Tokyo's the answer if you want to disappear into a city of fourteen million and feel completely held by it.
I mean, I know White Lotus sold you Koh Samui, and you’re tired of the Phuket trips, so here I’m going to add Chiang Mai to your radar. Yes, it’s a little slower. While Phuket is for stag dos and trashy Patong nights, Chiang Mai is where you go when you want temples in the morning. The rest is pretty much the same: the beaches are beautiful, the $2 khao soi for lunch is fabulous. The remote-worker scene is huge here though — has been for about a decade — which means there's a built-in social layer the second you want one. The hills around the city, an hour out, are where the whole thing gets quiet again.
Adventure junkies, assemble. Kyrgyzstan is mostly mountains — the Tien Shan range covers about 80% of the country — and you can stay in yurts with nomadic families, ride horses across alpine pastures, and trek to Song-Köl lake without seeing another tourist for days. It's cheap, the visa is easy for most passports, and Bishkek is a perfectly functional base.
Vienna is the most underrated city on this list. The Viennese coffee-house culture is built for sitting alone — you order one melange, you read your book for three hours, nobody hassles you for the table. The museums (the Belvedere, the Kunsthistorisches, the Albertina) are genuinely world-class, the public transport runs on a clock you could set your watch by, and Vienna is consistently ranked one of the safest capitals on earth.
The City of Eternal Spring. The transformation Medellín has pulled off in two decades is genuinely remarkable, and now it's one of the better-value Latin American cities for a solo traveller: strong coffee culture, a real food scene, a metro and cable-car system that actually works, and an expat-meets-local energy in neighbourhoods like El Poblado and Laureles.
Iceland is like the cheat code for nervous first-time solo travellers. It's one of the safest countries on earth, everyone speaks English, and you genuinely cannot get lost on the Ring Road because there is, essentially, one road. Reykjavík is small enough to get a feel for in two days. Rent a car, drive a loop, see waterfalls and glaciers and black sand beaches that feel rendered rather than real. Expensive, yes. Worth it, also yes!
This is the quiet Balkan answer to "I want mountains and lakes but Switzerland is bankrupting me." Triglav National Park is the headline — alpine lakes, jagged peaks, Lake Bled with that postcard church on an island — and Ljubljana is one of those small capitals where you can walk the whole centre in an afternoon. Calm, manageable, well-priced, and a great gateway to the rest of the region.
International arrivals jumped 56% between 2019 and 2023 and the country is on the cusp — the mobs are about to set in. The Riviera (Ksamil, Dhërmi, Himarë) is what Croatia was fifteen years ago, water that colour, a quarter of the bill. Tirana is unexpectedly fun.
Bruges is embarrassingly pretty, and it literally feels like it was a village built for a film set. It’s small, it’s walkable, it’s medieval and is full of canals. I think two days are enough here, and then you can even pair it with Amsterdam by train. Eat the mussels, drink Trappist beer brewed by men in robes. There's a famous Colin Farrell film about how boring Bruges is. He was wrong. Bruges is the perfect length.
A genuinely under-the-radar pick — an archipelago off the West African coast that's a wonderland of hiking trails (especially Santo Antão), volcanic landscapes, reefs full of life, and cities with music spilling out of every other doorway. Best in winter when the rest of the northern hemisphere is grey and miserable, and ideal for island-hopping at your own pace.
This is the northernmost municipality in Finland, well above the Arctic Circle, and properly inside Sami country. Basically, it’s Lapland without the Santa industrial complex — no reindeer photo ops, no glass igloos with WiFi. Here you’ll find just raw tundra, the Teno River, and a hell lot of silence. Go in late September or early October. The autumn palette up there is unreal — the locals call it ruska — and you've got a real chance at the northern lights before the deep winter dark sets in.