I was warned, with almost a menacing exuberance, that solo travel would change me forever. “You have to be willing to lay down your judgement and listen closely,” my university professor told me. “Athens is different from other cities. And it will undeniably leave a mark on you.”
I nodded politely at the time, half-listening, but I was secretly picturing postcard-perfect scenes—beckoning white beaches, blooming flora, maybe even a Mama Mia-style romance. But that’s not how Athens imprinted itself on me. Later, I would come to remember it in sips of bitter freddo espressos, the warm, weathered smile of my local butcher, and quiet Sunday afternoons spent watching neighbors chat in the square.
I’d heard plenty about how solo travel transforms you, but only later did I learn what it first demands: silence, patience, and the willingness to sit still long enough for awe to catch up.
It’s a rare and generous kind of luck to spend four months abroad at nineteen—and in Athens, no less. The city’s winding alleyways had my imagination running wild, and I experienced the simple pleasure of a meal eaten slowly, without haste. Cigarette smoke and the mewing of neighborhood cats became the sensory backdrop to my walks home from work in the afternoons. I spent my days writing stories, and my evenings wandering streets that predate the earliest relative I can think of on my family tree. On weekends, I stretched even further to Rome, Copenhagen, Dubrovnik.
Until Greece, I had never traveled solo. I had taken flights alone back and forth to university, but I had never arrived in a foreign country without a familiar face waiting. I had never booked a hostel, navigated unfamiliar streets, or eaten dinner at a table set for one. I had never sat with so much solitude.
As someone who thrives on conversation and company, I expected to hate solo travel. I feared that silence would swallow me whole. Instead, it healed my relationship with quiet and strengthened my sense of awe.
My shameful but honest pre-conceived notion of solo travel was that it was only pursued by lonely people with nobody to adventure with. It must be so lonely, I thought. Maybe even pitiful. And it can be. There were moments when I missed laughter shared across a table, craved somebody to compare first impressions of a new city with. Some days, I floated through the streets feeling like a ghost, unrecognized by each face I passed.
But amidst the quiet, a different world snuck into view.
My thoughts, which had once been drowned out by everyday noise, grew sharper. Where curiosity had once been dulled by routine, solitude reactivated it; I remembered what it was to be someone who asked questions, someone who noticed small things. The way light burrowed into the cracks on a broken tile, or the scent of mysterious baked goods from a window up above became important, independent moments worth investigation, not just passive details.
As my professor had promised, traveling to a foreign city jolted me awake. But solo travel demanded something even rarer: it made me sit with the emotions awakened within me, with no one to dilute or validate them. Without a sounding board to echo my impressions back at me, I had to turn them over myself like stones in the palm of my hand, inspecting each thought with a new kind of patience.
One afternoon in Dubrovnik, I stood at a cliff’s edge enjoying a jittery blueberry ice cream cone, absorbed by the sea glittering far below. Around me, a dozen tourists snapped photos, the clicks and beeps of their phones infusing digital texture into a once-natural scenery. None stayed long. Once they had captured their proof of being there, most moved on to the next dazzling spot to diversify their camera roll.
It made me think: when was the last time I let wonder arrest me completely before reaching for my camera? When was the last time I let a place imprint itself onto me, not as an image but as a living memory stitched delicately into my senses. What about the sharp salt smell, the sun’s weight on my shoulders, the ice cream’s shocking sweetness as it disrupts the heat? When was the last time I let awe take me over completely?
The word awe traces back to the Norse word agi, meaning fear or terror. Over time, its meaning evolved to capture a feeling of reverence mixed with wonder. When standing before something vast, our smallness is a mere feature of our existence, not a reflection of our worth or accomplishments.
In the greater scheme of things, we are deeply unimportant creatures. This revelation is terrifying and liberating all at once.
In the late winter, I found myself in a tucked-away chapel in Rome. Inside, the ceiling arched impossibly high, covered in paintings that had survived war, revolution, and centuries of quiet, collective faith. I collapsed into a pew and found myself unexpectedly weeping, not from sadness, but from the sheer enormity of it.
The human hands that had touched this place, the immortal essence of their hope, their belief that beauty could outlast time. Meanwhile, not a foot away, two women took selfies in a mirror positioned to reflect the ceiling before skipping to the exit. They did not look up.
Awe-inspiring experiences can “serve as bridges between different societies,” a study suggests
Researchers say that awe has a tendency to soften us, first by shrinking our self-importance. It slows our perception of time, granting us a radical awareness of the world around us. It makes us more generous, more open. It reminds us that we are small, and that being small is, in itself, a form of belonging, not a source of shame.
As one study published in Sage Journals notes, awe-inspiring cultural experiences can even “serve as bridges between different societies, promoting cross-cultural appreciation and mutual respect.”
This sense of reverence doesn’t just enrich the traveler, it also deepens our instinct to protect what we’ve encountered. When a thousand-year-old tree (or a two-thousand-year-old ruin) is seen not as a prop but as an artifact, we are more likely to preserve its story.
Awe reconnects us to the humbling miracle of existing in a world bigger than we could ever imagine. And if anywhere deserves that kind of reverence, it’s Greece. Here, history is not locked behind glass, because it spills into the streets, lives in the sidewalks, shapes daily life from the radiance of the acropolis in the morning to its shadows at dusk.
Here, where democracy was born, philosophies were debated, myths woven, how often do we actually look up?
Even in a place so deeply infused with history, so filled with a chance for awe, it’s easy—even common—for visitors to rush past it, capturing scenes through a lens without stopping to feel the weight of the centuries beneath their feet.
Solo travel doesn’t just leave space for beautiful moments, it provides the stillness required to fully digest them. It taught me that awe is not found by chasing or capturing or immediately discussing, but rather by rooting yourself long enough in a place to let it remake you.
While we don’t have to be alone to experience awe, traveling solo strips away the distractions and expectations that often keep us from noticing life’s bare-bones beauty. It sharpens our senses, slows your step, and tunes us in to the quiet miracles unfolding around us. Next time your breath is taken away, whether it’s by ancient towering columns, the chatter of cicadas on a hot summer night, or a stray cat pressing its head against your calf, pause. Look around. Breathe. Stay just a little longer.
