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| Illustration: Pat Leidl |
Of all the many
well-known quotations about travel, there are dozens to do with
the process of journeying solo. "He travels fastest who travels
alone," wrote Rudyard Kipling while Freya Stark famously noted,
"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest
sensations in the world."
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What's so good about going solo? Not the tourism industry's ubiquitous
"single supplement", that's for sure. One pays dearly
for privacy, usually marooned in an expensive double room, as so
few hotels include single configurations. If they do, it resembles
a walk-in wardrobe. Breakfast in bed takes on a whole new meaning
when it's delivered straight to your pillow by a waiter unable to
fit through the door without vaulting over the bed (beware of possible
concussion from the brass doorknob). Staying alone at a family-run
Irish castle one night, in a strange little box room decorated with
pony club ribbons, I had a surprise around midnight when the room's
usual occupant came bounding in and threw her suitcase onto the
bed in the region of my kneecaps. It was mine host's teenage daughter,
home a day early from boarding school.
I was duly moved to the ante-room of one of the main chambers and
deposited on a sofa bed. Next morning, I discovered it was a sort
of butler's pantry adjoining a suite wherein two fellow tourists
were installed in queenly splendour, sitting up in velvet-draped
four-posters. They had paid for a twin-share while I'd insisted
on the single supplement - and I'd paid more.
At least there's no possibility of a twin-share with a stranger given to nocturnal rumblings
But there are advantages to travelling alone, naturally. There's
no possibility of a twin share with a stranger given to nocturnal
rumblings (snoring, say the wholesalers, is the single biggest source
of complaint among paired-up travellers on package hols).
The bathroom can be gaily bedecked with one's smalls (or bigs, depending)
with nary a thought about any else needing to negotiate a flapping
forest of bras or boxer shorts. The hot water will not run out -
unless you spend all day lolling in the bath. But, if you do, there's
no need for explanation, except perhaps a small white lie to the
housekeeping department.
There will be no arguments about whether to shop for shoes and go
to the cinema in Florence or line up for the Uffizi. I like to think
of it as the Adoration of the (Bruno) Magli versus the Magi, and
Bertolucci worship as opposed to Botticelli. As for Primavera and
the Birth of Venus, if you think the former is simply a pasta sauce
and the latter an anti-ageing cream, no one is going to laugh at
you.
It was someone
like Dorothy Parker (or perhaps it was my mother, or both) who said,
"Culture is so ageing, darling." So true. If touring alone,
there's no pressure to do the opera and ballet (particularly if
you're the sort of traveller who feels no guilt about a night spent
snugly in one's hotel room with a club sandwich and Larry King).
No one to lie to about tummy troubles or tension headaches at the
very mention of folk dancing. No need to feel like a cretin if you
front up at New Year's Metropolitan Museum of Art and only go to
its gift shop (great greeting cards, stationery, posters and reproduction
jewellery). No one to act all superior if you let slip that you
think MOMA is a black all-girl band.
It's
possible to have no pressing agenda, to start the day without a
clue as to where to go or what to do
One sets one's
own pace, be it languid or lickety-split. Being fairly short in
the leg, I am not a fast walker. Many is the time I've been left
trailing behind by striding companions who embark upon a stroll
as if about to trek the Himalaya. There's little chance of window
shopping or dawdling when trying to keep up with a distant bobbing
head. I much prefer the Italian notion of passeggiata wherein one
slinks about in a sort of predatory promenade, showing off a treat.
When alone, one doesn't have to explain one's mild obsessions, like
collecting cocktail swizzle sticks or chasing such obscurities as
grape-flavoured gummy sweets (from Japan - for a favourite niece)
or out-of-print books (London's Charing Cross Road).
And how I love that word "unaccompanied". Mostly you hear
it associated with baggage and with it comes the suggestion that
the suitcase could end up anywhere, least of all where it's meant
to be. It can be like that, too, when you travel without company.
It's possible to have no pressing agenda, to start the day without
a clue as to where to go or what to do. You can do that with a partner
but as most of us know, often from painful wear and tear, it's not
easy to find someone who's so totally attuned that they'll merrily
follow the path you set.
"An unaccompanied bag" is not such a bad aim for me to
be as I grow older and become more daring and eccentric. Why worry
about age and labels, unless you're a bottle of wine.
Susan Kurosawa is the Travel Editor of The Australian newspaper.
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