Boldly Go Solo

Solo travel - day tour strategy

Short tours can do wonders for alleviating loneliness when you're vacationing alone. If, after flying to your dream destination, you start to feel lonely, you can join a group activity for a day or two and have real live conversations. Something beyond, "Does this bus go to Sintra?"

I recently went on an "urban foraging" walk in downtown Victoria, British Columbia. (My cousin asked if that meant dumpster diving!)  My tour guide Kathy and I tasted our way through a tea shop, a French cafe, a BBQ place called Pig, a chocolate store and more, talking the whole way along.

Usually she won't go out unless she has a minimum number of people, but it was early in the season and she made an exception this time, me being a travel writer and all.

Short tours can do wonders for alleviating loneliness when you're vacationing alone. If, after flying to your dream destination, you start to feel lonely, you can join a group activity for a day or two and have real live conversations. Something beyond, "Does this bus go to Sintra?"

I recently went on an "urban foraging" walk in downtown Victoria, British Columbia. (My cousin asked if that meant dumpster diving!)  My tour guide Kathy and I tasted our way through a tea shop, a French cafe, a BBQ place called Pig, a chocolate store and more, talking the whole way along.

Usually she won't go out unless she has a minimum number of people, but it was early in the season and she made an exception this time, me being a travel writer and all.

So much to experience along the Slea Head loop on the Dingle Peninsula in Western Ireland

I hadn't heard of the Dingle Peninsula until a few years ago during a "girls weekend," when a friend presented a bottle of Dingle Original Gin from the Dingle Distillery for another friend and I to taste.

Then when I was researching a trip to  Ireland last year, the travel literature suggested that if visitors had time for just one tour in the west of Ireland and had to choose between the Ring of Kerry and the shorter ring road on the Dingle Peninsula, the choice should be the latter. 

And so it was, although it would have been nice to be able to do both.  

I recently wrote about my trip around the Dingle Peninsula for the Boston Globe. I didn't travel solo, but it's a place you would enjoy as a solo traveler - if you're willing to drive a standard shift car on the left-hand side of the road.

Or you could join a guided tour of the Slea Head drive and let someone else do the driving. A quick web search shows plenty of companies that will take you around this Irish-speaking region.

Specialty beers, cars from the good old days and relaxing massage. This is Hershey, Pa.?

Children and chocolate. That is what most people think when they think Hershey, Pennsylvania.

But it's entirely possible to have a grown-up weekend in the town that chocolate built.

Mine involved visits to a winery, a brewery, a spa, an outlet mall and an antique car museum. All for a travel story for The Burg, a monthly community newspaper for Harrisburg, Pa.

I've written about Hershey way more times than I need to count. Somehow I keep ending back there! Each trip has been fun...and different. Including a falconry  experience.

This time, I started at the spa in The Hotel Hershey. In the parking lot, I could see the roller coasters of the nearby amusement park and Chocolate World in the distance. But those were two places I bypassed all weekend.

Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrates Peru

The culture of Peru is on display on the Mall in Washington, D.C., until Sunday. Catch Peru: Pachamama (Mother Earth) if you can. 

Most of you can't, but I would say put the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on your travel to-do list, should you ever visit D.C. in late June or early July.  

The Smithsonian does a great job of bringing in people, culture, crafts, food and more, from places all over the world.

Last year the themes were Kenya and China. Other years, states or cities have been represented. The festival planners go all out to bring in artists, craftspeople and performers.

And the exhibits can be astounding. From Smithsonian's website:

In recreating physical settings for the traditions represented, the Festival has built a horse racetrack (from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol Building), an Indian village with forty-foot-high bamboo and paper statues, a Japanese rice paddy, and a New Mexican adobe plaza.

New Year's thoughts, wishes, dreams

For me, the beauty of travel is how even mundane days at home are enlivened by those memories. Random snippets of news or information send my mind to intriguing places I've visited and experiences I had there.

When I noticed that my jeans were made in Jordan, my mind leaped to Petra, the city carved into rocks. I visited a couple of years ago during a trip to Israel. 

When I read a story about Israel in the local paper, I found myself thinking about the history and modernity I experienced there, from the museums to the food markets to the high-fashion stores. 

And when I heard the word "geothermal" on the radio recently, I thought about the geothermal lagoon in Iceland where people go all year round to soak, float and get massages with the lagoon's silica mud. And where, weirdly enough, I met a buyer of Icelandic lamb for the Whole Foods supermarket chain. Yes, while floating in the lagoon.

Our minds wander hundreds of places all day long. It feels like a gift to travel the world in some of those wanderings. In between the thoughts about the to-do list, the work obligations, the worries.

Travel is not only about a week or two weeks away. It is about a day-to-day life enriched. Along with a way to  have a deeper understanding of the world. 

If it means going on your own to some of the places you dream about, so be it. Think about the gift of a lifetime you'll be giving yourself. 

Happy New Year and best wishes for a well-traveled 2014. Go!

Photo: The Treasury in Petra, Jordan. By Ellen Perlman

Falconry, archery, off-road driving and more, at Gleneagles in Perthshire, Scotland

How can you not like a place where you can order cullen skink and Dalchonzie tart  at dinner, have a stare-down with a falcon and discover that you weigh in the single digits?*

I was in Scotland last week reveling in the Scottishness of it all, starting at the The Gleneagles Hotel. Gleneagles is hosting the Ryder Cup in 2014, exciting news for golf aficionados.

The baggage carousel at Glasgow Airport is to golf bags as Denver's baggage carousel is to ski bags. Every other piece of luggage was an odd-shaped case containing clubs.

Not being a golfer - except the kind where you rent a single club and putt through 18 Astroturf holes - I was more interested in the country pursuits offered.

Archery. Gun dog school. Off-road driving in the Perthshire countryside, as pheasant and other fowl scoot by.

I managed those three activities all in one day - why lounge around when there are new things to try?

Falconry was saved for a "hawk walk" I went on a few days later at the Cameron House on Loch Lomond.

A Titanic museum in Branson, Missouri?

There's a half a ship on the main drag in Branson, Missouri, with a Las Vegas-like marquee out front saying:

                TITANIC

                 NOW

             BOARDING

            9 am - 9 pm

A Titanic museum in the Midwest, hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean? I was prepared to be underwhelmed.

Instead, I've been talking about it ever since. If this museum was meant for children, I must be a big kid. 

I tapped out my first-ever Morse code message. ("Ellen in trouble"). I started a timer and stuck my hand in a tank of water set at the temperature of the ocean that April night in 1912. I was in pain after about 15 seconds.

I tried to walk on three different decks that had pitches of varying steepness, demonstrating what it was like to hang on as the ship was sinking. I needed both hands on the railing to pull myself up the steepest one.

Sitting in a recreated lifeboat, I pushed buttons and listened to the stories of the people who had been in them. I patted two real dogs - Molly and Carter - two King Charles Spaniels whose trainers at the museum talk about the dogs known to have been on board the ship.

Art at the Burwell-Morgan Mill in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley

On typical Saturdays in the town of Millwood, Va., volunteers set the 18th-century Burwell-Morgan Mill to work grinding corn, wheat, rye or other grains. They demonstrate the centuries-old method of food production, weighing and bagging the flour, grits or cornmeal for sale, often enlisting visitors to help.

But for three weeks in the spring, and again in the fall, the stones grind to a halt, the water rushing to the water wheel is cut off, and it’s showtime of a different sort.

That’s when Art at the Mill opens.

The show will be open for three weekends, starting April 27 and running through May 12. (Here's the story in The Washington Post on Art at the Mill.) 

For a lovely and relaxing way to spend a day or weekend, take a drive out to the Shenandoahs, wander through the show and picnic on the grass. 

There's something special about buying real art and being in the surroundings that the artist captured.

Red Bank, New Jersey - retro, but contemporary too

Ever heard of Red Bank, New Jersey? I hadn't. But I went to visit for a travel story and ended up loving the place for a variety of reasons, nostalgia being no small part of it.

Red Bank calls itself a "cool little town" and I agree. It's the kind of place with few chain stores, where teens walk from homes nearby to wander around on their own, hanging out at the yogurt shop, grabbing a slice of pizza, playing some pinball at a pinball and video arcade.

I wrote about Red Bank for today's Washington Post travel section. 

If you're a shopper, you'll like the many stores selling high-end clothes or the consignment stores offering the hand-me-down version. (Hey, I'm all about a deal.)

The town is a draw for antiques lovers too. If you're into pinball, which I remembered I was when I got there, or classic video games, you'll have a great time at YESTERcades.

Maine lighthouses open to the public in September

Any lighthouse fans out there?

On September 15, lighthouses in Maine will be opening their doors to visitors. You can climb the towers of the state's lighthouses situated on the coast, on islands and along rivers.

The fourth annual Maine Open Lighthouse Day will take place rain or shine. (Like the London Olympics?)

The event is the largest of its kind in the country, according to Maine's tourism office, and is meant to increase awareness of the state's maritime heritage.

Lighthouses always have a mystical feel to me. Ocean waves crashing ashore nearby. Thoughts of ships relying on that strong beam to navigate. The sea smell. Rocky coasts.