I sit down in a modestly lit pub not far from the museum where I spent my afternoon. It is a little too early for dinner, but my long day has pushed my appetite beyond the snacks offered before the kitchen re-opens, so I order a drink, take a seat, and wait.

I place the book from my bag on the table out of habit. I have come to spend some time out on my own rather than going back to my hotel with a sandwich and a bottle of water, but my nerves grow. All day my phone is dying faster than expected thanks to some sort of digital sim card installed so I would have better maps of the city. Maybe I should head back to the hotel? My phone will last if I leave now but if I stay here and read and then have dinner? I have doubts.

Just as I think of leaving, my beer arrives, so I must stay at least for a little while. The seat is warm and comfortable. My phone will last through the next thirty minutes and if I do need to head back to the hotel, at least I will have recovered a bit.

I pick up the book and start reading.

I always choose my books for trips very carefully, doing my best to anticipate what I will need, where I will be, what time I will have. For this adventure I have chosen Lauren Elkin’s book Flâneuse¹ which is about women walking around their cities, often on their own. It may be a little on the nose for my own adventure, but I trust my packing instincts.

Thirty minutes later and my choice has justified its long journey. You see, just as I have travelled far from home, the book in front of me has too. It was purchased in Paris, in perhaps the most famous bookshop in the world (founded by a remarkable woman, of course) before it’s trip back to my shelf at home for several months before being packed up again and heading to London with me.

Me. A woman. Trying hard to remember how to explore on my own.

I used to love being on my own. I’m an only child and a solitary creature but during the days, months, years of the pandemic our home, designed to be smaller so my family could travel more, simply became small and full when we were all locked down together.

Travel changed too. Our trips went from cheap, small adventures, either together or apart, to longer expensive trips mostly to see further afield friends and family desperate to chat in person and not over the phone or a video call after those years of isolation and sickness and testing and worry.

I am grateful for those years of company during lockdown and those reunions after. Being alone must have been terrifying during that time and I wasn’t alone. Now, though, the world is breaking the structure of the past few years and settling into a new one. Being alone might not be just because of illness or forced isolation anymore; peaceful solitude has once again become an option.

But in this moment, in this pub, I need to trust myself. I need to remember the power and the peace of being on my own for a while.

One small, delicious beer and 50 pages later and I have the kindle for the fire to warm my seclusion. (Nothing is better to light a fire within than a book.) Elkin describes her own walks and then turns to other women in different cities, in different worlds of time. I can picture their wandering and slowly picture my own. I have an itinerary. I have a plan. What I need is the ability to execute it with enjoyment instead of worry.

The kitchen re-opens and I order dinner and a glass of red wine and turn off my phone. If it dies, it dies. I am not dead and I am the one who will find my way across the city.

I sip my wine and think of the days my mother started traveling with nothing more than a paper map and a child with an excellent sense of direction and memory for landmarks. I remember getting us back to our hotels at the end of a long day more than once because the winding roads may have been difficult for my mother to read on the map, but the bakery across the street that offered me treats at the start of our day was easy for me to find.

I swirl the red around the glass and see the trails it leaves behind and picture the route I will take tonight, turning left leaving the pub and walking back to the tube station by the museum. I know the transfer I need to make to get back to the station nearest my hotel. I can picture the walk from there, by the full, loud bars and theatres back to the front door.

My dinner arrives and I pick up the book to enjoy them together. Around me are friends meeting after work, families having a drink before dinner, one older couple with an adorable poodle comfortably sitting in a chair. I smile and enjoy the conversation around, but not in front, of me.

I enjoy the solitude.

1. Full title: Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London by Lauren Elkin. ↩︎