Hi, everyone and welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast by Connie Nass Traveler.

I'm Meredith Carey and with me as always is my co-host, Lala Eric Kowglue.

Hello.

There are so many reasons to want to go on a solo trip right now.

Maybe you've been stuck at home with a partner or your kids for 18 months and just needs

a me time. Maybe you're ready to get back back to travel but your friends aren't at your comfort level just yet but no matter the reason we are all out of practice so to help get you back in the solo travel game we've invited two guests who have taken a solo trip recently to pass on some post-vaccine tips and tricks for your first

adventure. Joining us are New York Times travel reporter Terrero, Mrs. Zewa, and Hannah Pasternak,

Associate Director of Special Projects at Self Magazine. Thank you both so much for joining us.

Thanks for having us on. Yeah, thanks for having us.

It goes without saying that a lot of us have spent quite a lot of time in solitude this past year, often involuntarily.

How do you think solo travel differs from other types of alone time?

I think solo travel offers you the chance to be somewhere really wonderful, whether that's being outdoors

or going to a museum that you love in a totally foreign place. And I think that's a different

way of interacting with a place than being at home alone sitting in your studio apartment, which is what I did for most of the pandemic.

And I think it differs from like a group travel because it just forces you to be alone with

your thoughts and forces you to like challenge yourself to talk to you people and have

different kinds of experiences that maybe you wouldn't have if you were traveling

with your closest friends or even if you were, again, at home alone. Yeah, this question

reminds me a lot of a dilemma I've been going back and forth about in my head for most of the

pandemic, which is like, I'm spending so much time at home. I have all the time to, quote, unquote, self-care.

You know, I can sleep on the weekends. I don't feel like I need to run around from one borough of the city to the other. But, like, okay, so why am I so tired and why am I exhausted, right? Like, we can still do things that, like, quote-unquote are what they are. So like being alone, like many of us have been for

different points of the pandemic, but it still doesn't satisfy that that need because it's not

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