By the time I rolled into Florence, I was dehydrated, slightly lost and clinging to the remains of a bruised peach and my last shred of patience. It was Day Four of a solo trip I’d romanticized into a spiritual pilgrimage but had, so far, mostly been a comedy of errors starring me, a dead phone and the constant hum of “what was I thinking?”
And yet.
I turned a corner, stepped into the shadow of the Duomo, and everything got quiet. Not in a dramatic, movie-score kind of way—just a small, internal stillness. The kind that sneaks up on you when you least deserve it.
This is the thing no one tells you about traveling alone: the best parts happen in the in-between. Not the itinerary highlights or the Instagrammable views, but the small, weird moments where you realize you’re fully alive and fully alone—and that you’re OK.
Everyone should take a solo trip at least once. Not for the aesthetics or the humblebrag, but because there are some things you only learn when there’s no one else to translate the menu or decide which museum is “worth it.” Without the buffer of company, you start to notice how much of your daily life is built around other people’s expectations—and how different your choices look when no one else is watching.
Growing up in church, I was taught that community is essential—and it is. But solitude has its own kind of holiness. I didn’t expect to encounter God in a foreign grocery store while comparing oat milk brands, but there He was. Not in a thunderous revelation, just a quiet reminder: I’m here. Even in aisle five.
There’s a strange kind of clarity that comes when you’re out of your depth. When you’re the only one responsible for your joy, your safety, your next move. It’s uncomfortable, yes. But it’s also honest. You learn what calms you down. What keeps you grounded. Who you become when you have no one to impress and nowhere to hide.
At some point, it stops being about where you are and starts being about who you are. The stakes are low—you’re just choosing where to eat or which bus to take—but the lessons run deeper. You figure out what kind of discomfort you can tolerate. What kind of uncertainty you can navigate. What kind of silence you can sit with.
I’ve had profound experiences in churches and worship nights. But I’ve also felt God’s presence just as deeply while sitting alone on a bench in Lisbon, eating a mediocre croissant and watching locals argue passionately about something I couldn’t understand. There was no sermon. Just beauty, ordinariness and the sense that I didn’t need to be doing more than this.
Solo trips don’t fix your life. But they have a way of untangling it. They pull you out of autopilot. They shake loose the noise. They remind you what actually matters to you—not your group chat, not your feed, not the version of you that performs well in community but quietly falls apart when alone.
Eventually, you come home. But something’s shifted. You’re less frantic. More rooted. Less inclined to overexplain yourself. You know what you like, what you don’t and what’s actually worth your time.
Start small. A weekend drive. A few days in a new city. Bring a book. Bring a prayer. Bring less of a plan than you think you need. Don’t rush the stillness. Don’t resist the boredom. That’s where the good stuff starts to surface.
Take one solo trip in your 20s. Not to “find yourself,” but to remember you were never really lost.
