Solo holidays, long perceived as a default choice or a sign of marginality, attract more and more young adults, especially women. Each summer, thousands of French people take alone the roads of Europe, America or Asia in search of new adventures, like Rémi, Anne-Laure and Camille who tell BFMTV their solo escapades.
By waiting for her friends to decide, Camille took the lead. Last winter, at 24, she reserved a ticket for China then Korea, alone. A first for this young woman hitherto accustomed to the holidays as a couple, with family or friends. Tired of the plans that never succeed, she made the choice to go alone for a month to the other side of the world … rather than not to leave at all.
“I had offered my loved ones but no one wanted to come with me,” said this digital marketing manager in Avignon (Vaucluse). “My family is too homebody and my friends did not necessarily have the budget for such a big trip at that time … But hey we have a life, and one day I was fed up that my life depends on the goodwill of the group”.
A taste for freedom and self -assertion
In the collective imagination, traveling alone has long been perceived as marginal behavior or reserved for some seasoned backpackers. But in recent years, traveling Solo has attracted a much wider audience, in particular students and young workers in search of autonomy.
For the young Camille who describes herself rather as someone introverted, this choice initially by default has become a real personal approach. This image of solo travel as synonymous with freedom and self -assertion has developed a lot thanks to social networks, specialized blogs and even certain agencies which today offer offers dedicated to solitary travelers.
“Solo escapade”, “My first trip alone”, “The benefits of solo travel” … YouTube, Instagram or Tiktok are full of videos and other contents that encourage to take the plunge, and praise the virtues of travel alone, like Lena situations, superstar of networks that regularly leaves abroad.
Now, more and more French people, and especially women, refuse to put their desires on a break for travel companions. Rémi, he had this click 10 years ago during his separation. That summer, the Versaillais then aged 36 decided to take advantage of this time alone to realize his dream of walking the roads of the west coast of the United States, for 15 days.
This framework in telecommunications has taken a taste. “Now the long holidays, it’s me alone and it’s not negotiable,” says the forties, who manages solitude very well. “I go to the feeling and I don’t impose myself any pace. I decide everything on site and I do what I want when I want, depending on my moods. It’s a whole new way of seeing the trip.”
“A difficult step to take but liberating”
This great lonely recognizes that this way of leaving would not suit everyone. “You have to love, there are moments when I go out the evening when I would like to be able to debrief my day with someone, but it is also an opportunity to go to others: to dare to type the discussion to the hotel customers or to the staff of a restaurant, for example”.
Rémi recalls that leaving alone has drawbacks in terms of budget. Hotel, taxis, car rental … The solo trip means sometimes higher expenses, failing to be able to share the costs with a partner. Thus, to control her expenses, Anne-Laure Laratte favors alternative solutions, including youth hostels and public transport.
A little intimidated by the idea of going on an adventure alone for the first time, the young Rennaise had opted in 2018 for an accessible and reassuring destination: Lisbon. She spent six days there in a youth hostel, discovering the Portuguese capital on foot or tram. “It was a big city, I felt less vulnerable and less lost. And at worst, it was just a 1:30 am by plane from my home,” explains the young woman of today 32 years.
A little frightened by the unknown at the time, this dietician had not dismissed at all from the city center, “for fear of getting lost, not to understand others or to come across ill-intentioned people”. The first days of the trip, she says she was confused. “I was wondering: ‘But what am I doing here? Why did I do that?’ I cogitated a little too much, I took a day or two before relaxing and finding my rhythm. This is where it becomes pleasant”.
“We become really observer”
“In the end, it’s quite flattering and pretty cool,” says Anne-Laure. “It is a step that is difficult to take but once we have done, I find that it is quite liberating because if we are cap ‘of that, we are cap’ of everything”.
“It’s a good way to force yourself to get out of your comfort zone,” confirms Clémentine Zinetti. The 24 -year -old woman, who needed to take time alone, left for a week in Rome in a youth hostel last December, in particular to reconnect with her Italian origins.
“It is an experience in its own right. It was perfect for me to be alone, it was flowing from the source,” added the Parisian, who enjoyed “being able to get up in the morning then stroll without a predefined program”, or to be able to “find a good book in the evening after gambading in the city all day”.
“We become a really observer with regard to what surrounds us: it’s relaxing and informative,” she adds.
This immersion on the Italian hour allowed him to discover the city and the daily life of the premises from another angle: this allowed him to hire spontaneous conversations with residents, to take Italian cooking lessons at the inn, to meet people during theme evenings in bars.
“For women, wandering is already a transgression”
From her getaway in the Portuguese capital, Anne-Laure Laratte has tried to push her limits. Thus last year, the 30 -year -old went up a gear in the experience of the solo travel. She made a small journey of 15 days across Europe: from Rennes to Slovenia via Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
A trip during which she did not get bored for a second, unlike the many fears formulated by her entourage. “My parents and my grandmother were worried the first times. They have done so since but at the beginning they found it weird ‘a girl who left alone, anyway!'”. And for good reason, as a woman, leaving alone was far from obvious, as Lucie Azema recalls in her essay Women are also travelingpublished in 2021 at Flammarion.
“For women, the simple fact of wandering aimless in the streets is already an act of transgression … (…) There is a real difficulty in admitting that a woman can consent, in a full and whole way, to her loneliness”, she writes in particular.
“Believe me or not, but the days go by hyper quickly,” says Anne-Laure Laratte, especially since she always takes care to choose hostels with a real atmosphere and proposed activities. In Berlin, for example, she spent four days in an inn with wood fire, a small cinema every evening and a large common room full of sofas. “It was extra,” she recalls.
Naturally reserved, she explains that solo journey pushes her to get challenges like going more to others: “Knowing that we will probably never see these people again, it frees ourselves. We allow ourselves to be more direct, there are fewer barriers.” In the absence of companions to be able to take a picture of it here and there, Anne-Laure Laratte began to hold a small logbook where she notes what she does day by day, in order to keep track of her adventures. She explains that she also tried to put her mobile phone more for the benefit of other activities … “which is not obvious,” she admits laughing.
“When I come back, I am soothed, really quieter”
For the young woman, traveling alone has also become a way of better managing her anxiety. “Traveling alone forced me to refocus. It helps me to ask myself, to breathe, to leave more serenely.” Her friends have understood that this face to face vacation with herself did her good: “When I come back, I am soothed, really quieter.”
Of course, everything is not always simple. As a single woman, Anne-Laure must be twice as much caution for her safety. One day in Lisbon, a man began to follow her on the train and ask her lots of questions, so that she was forced to decampe faster than expected from where she was. In Poland too, late at night, she was paying attention by returning to the hostel: “On the road, I pretended to be on the phone and I warned the people with whom I shared my room from where I was going, even if it means sharing my location live with my phone”.
But apart from these security aspects with which she learned to compose on a daily basis, Anne-Laure was completely seduced by this new way of occupying her vacation, which allowed her to discover a new facet of her personality: resourcefulness. So much so that today, she dares to say that she does not know if she would be able to leave with friends, or “by posing a lot of limits”.
