Did you ever get homesick or lonely?
Absolutely. Once, while walking alone on a cold, foggy night along a narrow street in Oxford, England, the sight of a woman’s ginger-colored cat greeting her at the front door—I’m a cat lover and had two of my own at the time—made me dissolve into tears. But I felt many things during my travels: challenged, homesick, exhilarated, lonely, happy, uncertain, self-confident. And I learned it’s quite natural to feel all those things; I just gave myself permission to have a bad day now and then, knowing it would pass. Not a bad lesson to bring home from such a trip!
Do you have any strategies for combating loneliness? How did you handle eating alone in restaurants, for instance?
Eating alone in restaurants, particularly at dinnertime, is one of the universal problems for the solo traveler. Breakfast and lunch are no problem. I usually take breakfast at the hotel where I’m staying—I hate starting the day by searching for a place to eat—and find it relaxing to have a leisurely breakfast at the hotel. It’s also a good time to meet other hotel guests, who are often more relaxed at that time of day. Unless I have plans to meet someone for dinner, I usually make lunch my main meal of the day. This is the time to try the restaurant you’ve heard about but don’t feel comfortable going to in the evening and asking for a “table for one.” Lunch at a fine restaurant is cheaper, for one thing; the same dinner at the same restaurant would cost twice as much. Often, after such a lunch I don’t really need to eat a large meal at dinnertime. A salad and yogurt from the market—eaten in my room—is quite enough.
But there are also places where a woman alone can feel comfortable for lunch or dinner. Museums frequently have cafés or full-service restaurants; many are open at night. One of the most important decisions for me when planning a trip is to pick my hotel carefully. I try to find one located in a lively, friendly neighborhood, one that has cafés and food markets, sandwich shops and small family-run restaurants. I’m willing to spend a little more on such a hotel; it can make all the difference in the world to a solo traveler to feel at home in the neighborhood. In Paris, for instance, there are several small hotels on the Left Bank near St. Germain-des-Prés that have become my home-away-from-home.
What’s the best thing about traveling alone?
One of the best things is that it’s easier to meet people. Part of that has to do with the need to reach out more when you’re a solo traveler; otherwise, you’ll be spending most of your time alone. And part of it has to do with the willingness of locals and those not traveling alone to reach out to you. Sometimes they’ll reach out because they’re interested in what you’re doing alone in some small hill town in Italy, and sometimes it’s out of pity. Also, people traveling as couples or in groups sometimes get bored with one another and like to meet outsiders who bring a breath of fresh air to their travels.
Can you really form friendships on the road? In your chapter “The Sloane Street Club,” you manage to meet three Englishwomen who become your “gang” in London. Tell us about that.
Well, it happened at lunch one day. I knew from previous visits to London that a wonderful shop on Sloane Street—the General Trading Company—had a small lunchroom in its basement. I’d eaten there and the food was quite good. But the thing that drew me there was I knew that they often placed singles—who were agreeable—at a table together. It was there that I met an Englishwoman down from Scotland to visit her daughter. We really clicked, and through her I met two other women, one from London, the other from Kent. Over the course of my month in London we did many things together and, I believe, formed a bond. Now, I don’t know if this could happen if one were in a city for two days or a week, but on the other hand, anyone who’s traveled—particularly alone—knows that friendships formed on the road can be quite intense. Whether they last beyond the trip is another matter.
Did any of the friendships you write about in Without Reservations continue upon your return?
During the year after my return, I kept in touch with a half-dozen of the women mentioned in the book. Gradually, though, except for one or two of them—Angela in London and Jean in Australia, for example—the friendships dwindled down to relationships consisting of the occasional postcard or Christmas message. Of course, the question most asked of me is: Do you still see Naohiro? And the answer is: Happily, I do. We have met several times in Paris—where his work often takes him—as well as London and Venice. And in doing some research in Kyoto for my next book, the two of us spent some time together.
Were there any moments when you wished you weren’t a woman traveling alone?
Yes, a few. But I’m not sure a man traveling alone for a long period of time wouldn’t feel the same way. It’s part of the human condition to want companionship and security in situations that are uncertain. Still, I write in the book about having dinner in Siena, Italy, with three other women—a wonderful, lively dinner, in my opinion. Afterward, one of the women looked longingly at the next table where a young man and woman sat, holding hands and whispering intimately, oblivious of anything but each other. “Tell me the truth,” she asked me. “Wouldn’t you give anything to be like them? To be in love and part of a couple?” The truth was, it had never occurred to me. I was having a wonderful time. But traveling alone—whether a woman or a man—requires an attitude, one that allows you to look at each day with a sense of adventure.
What advice would you give to someone who sets out to travel alone with more than just tourism in mind?
First of all, I would advise anyone who wants to experience something more than just the tourist’s view of a city to stay in one place—or each place visited—for as long as possible. Try to settle in for a while, even if it’s only for a week. There is a saying among mountain climbers that you can learn more from climbing one mountain one hundred times than one hundred mountains one time. It’s equally as true of travel, I think. Given a choice, I’d always opt to go to fewer rather than more destinations. And as I said, find a hotel or apartment in a neighborhood that feels like a real neighborhood. It’s very comforting to recognize the man at the newsstand or the clerk at the bookstore or the woman at the market. They may not become your friends, but they do become familiar faces. Second, I would say you should set out each day with an agenda. You don’t have to follow it, but you should have a plan in mind. It’s very easy to just wander around without setting some goals for yourself. Often I only headed in the direction of the museum or market on my list, then found something along the way that changed everything. Spontaneity is important but so is some planning.
What was the most important thing you learned about yourself on the trip described in Without Reservations?
So many things, it’s hard to pin down the most important. Probably, though—in addition to learning to listen more and talk less—I learned that to be a truly independent person, you must first allow yourself to be dependent. If you’re going to travel alone, you have to allow other people to help you. This has always been hard for me. I like to think of myself as an “independent” woman, someone who can get the job done without help. But when you don’t speak the language or if you get sick while traveling, you don’t have your usual fail-safe system to fall back on. You have to trust that other people will want to help you. And they usually do! When I was ill in London, my new friends took care of me in a way that I would never have allowed at home. But I had no choice. It was a very important lesson—and a very belated one—in my development. And, I am happy to say, it has lasted beyond this trip.
Now that you’re home, how have you incorporated the lessons you learned into your daily life?
At first it was very hard to readjust to the rigidity of “normal” life. Not so much with my family; my grown sons were both living away from home, pursuing graduate degrees, one in law, the other in physics. Still, having said that, I do believe that my “sabbatical” did change the way in which my sons and I related. I could be imagining this, but it seemed as though we all respected each other eve
n more than we had before. Our lives had separated a little bit during that year, and it was as though we had each learned how to see one another standing whole, as individuals. The real adjustment upon returning was learning to meet again the responsibilities of a demanding job.
At the time, I was writing a twice-a-week column for the Baltimore Sun, along with the occasional long feature article. I found it difficult to be confined, more or less, to sitting at a desk and to meeting deadlines that loomed over and over again. I felt like the sorcerer’s apprentice: As soon as I finished one column, another was due. Instead of getting used to the work that had seemed so “normal” before my trip, I grew more and more frustrated. Finally, after four months of serious thought about what to do, I went to the editor of the paper and proposed a job change. How would he feel about my giving up the column and returning to the road to write feature stories, I asked him. To my great relief, he agreed to my idea. It was one of the best decisions of my life; in the years that followed I think I did some of my best newspaper work.
What I learned about the world and about myself during the time covered in Without Reservations also enabled me in 2000 to leave the Baltimore Sun in order to write books full-time. My identity for twenty-one years was tied up in being a newspaper reporter, so it was not an easy decision. It has turned out, so far, to be a good one. Although I still do some freelance journalism, I am currently working on my next book—a nonfiction work that chronicles my travels around the world for approximately two years.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
While relaxing at a café in Paris, Steinbach reflects, “What adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.” What does she mean by this? Do you think it is possible to gain a greater understanding of the whole by looking, individually, at its parts? What factors in Steinbach’s life, and perhaps in your own, could cause one to overlook such minute, beautiful moments?
Over the course of the book, Steinbach often personifies the cities, towns, and villages she visits. “Rome and I are not lovers. We are not even friends,” she writes, when reflecting on her unpleasant experience on the Spanish Steps. When describing three towns along the Amalfi coast, she comments, “If Amalfi were a man … he’d be dressed by Calvin Klein and reading Tom Clancy. Positano would wear Armani and carry a book by John le Carré. But if Ravello were a man … he would be in chinos and a fresh white oxford shirt with no tie, buried in a book by Graham Greene.” Why do you think she chooses to describe the places she encounters in human terms? What effect does this technique have on you, the reader?
In her travels, Steinbach meets people from all walks of life. In one observation, she provides a fresh take on the old maxim “Don’t judge a book by its cover” when she writes, “Paris guards her inner beauty from the casual observer. To find it one must look beyond the façades. It is true of people also, I think: their spirits exist behind their façades, beyond their words.” Who does she meet along her journey who helps to reaffirm this belief? What do these encounters teach her about herself and the world around her?
Steinbach constantly reflects on her own sense of adventure or lack thereof. She tries to nurture it and let it grow at its own rate, a rate that is both comfortable and exciting for her. Reminiscing about her youth she notes, “I made dangerous choices in those years, thinking myself bold and adventurous. Later I would come to understand I hadn’t been daring at all, just driven by confusion and hormones. The person capable of true daring, I knew now, possessed two admirable qualities: curiosity and courage.” Do you agree with that definition of a “daring” individual? Thinking back to all of Steinbach’s European adventures (and misadventures), do you think she fits her own bill of what it means to be “daring”?
Remembering an interview she once conducted with French actress Jeanne Moreau, Steinbach realizes that “Moreau’s declaration of independence from ‘looking into the mirror that others hold up to me’ was a deft description of what I was after on this trip.” Searching for the approval or acceptance of others seems to be a recurring theme in Steinbach’s book and, more important, a recurring theme in her daily life in America. To what extent was she able to overcome these insecurities during her travels? Do you think you would react similarly? Why or why not?
What role does Steinbach’s grandmother, or, more correctly, the memory of her grandmother, play in her road to self-awareness? Are there people or events in your past that continue to help you understand the present and, perhaps, address the future?
Steinbach asks herself, “Is it possible to change your outer geography without disrupting the inner geography? The travels within yourself? Today I traveled back to my past and forward to a future shaping itself somewhere at the edge of my thoughts. But I also traveled to a place less often visited: the childlike purity of the ticking moment.” If Steinbach’s grandmother is a symbol of her past, are there characters that embody Steinbach’s immediate present? To what extent does Steinbach’s unexpected relationship with Naohiro serve as a reminder of the beauty of the present? If Steinbach’s grandmother acts as a constant connection to the past, Naohiro a reminder of the present, which character, if any, is the embodiment of the future?
When in Venice, Steinbach imagines herself, if only for a brief moment, to be Katharine Hepburn in the film Summertime. Observing a lounge singer in a Paris café, she asks, “Who did she imagine herself to be? Marlene Dietrich? Edith Piaf? Was that the image that sustained her when she examined the realities of her life?” At what other moments in her travels does Steinbach seem to slip into the safe world of fantasy, and at what moments does she seem to awaken herself to reality? At what times in your own life does fantasy play an important role for you?
Steinbach often views the people and places she visits through the lens of literature. For instance, at the prospect of reuniting with Naohiro in Venice, she compares herself to Penelope awaiting Ulysses’ return from Troy, and often she draws parallels between her own experiences and those of a young Jane Eyre. What other literary figures does Steinbach evoke? Have you ever used the world of literature to better understand your own feelings? How do you think our interactions with literature help to shape our responses to the world around us?
In a postcard to herself referring to her frightening experience in Rome, Steinbach notes that Albert Camus once wrote, “What gives value to travel is fear.” Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? Steinbach writes, “A little dash of fear gives value to more than just travel. For one thing, it can teach us to be brave.” Do you think traveling alone would instill in you a sense of bravery you might otherwise not have possessed? Some might argue that it is not brave but rather foolish to travel alone. Have you ever subscribed to this line of reasoning? If so, did Steinbach’s book convince you otherwise?
Without Reservations is rich with one woman’s observations, reflections, and personal philosophy. By the end of her travels, Steinbach discovers in herself a woman she thought had been lost in time or worn down by age. Her time alone, time spent encountering both old memories and new ideas, helps her reignite her independent spirit and reawaken her sense of fierce individuality. Did reading Steinbach’s story inspire you in the way that Freya Stark’s memoir inspired her? If you were to take such a journey, where would you go? What would you want to do? What aspects of such a journey appeal to you the most?
SUGGESTED READING
In reading Without Reservations, one constantly feels the presence of an underlying body of literature that serves as a background for Steinbach’s writing. Taking Steinbach’s ever-present curiosity as a cue, one might be interested in seeking out those authors who proved inspirational for her along her journey to self-discovery.
In London, a friend presents Steinbach with The Journey’s Echo, by Freya Stark, the intrepid British wanderer who left her comfortable life in Italy to traverse the Middle East, alone, from Persia to Yemen. Stark’s own chronicles of her travels can be found in her landmark travelogues, The V
alleys of the Assassins and The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut. Jane Fletcher Geniesse’s critical yet sensitive biography of the remarkable and revolutionary traveler, Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark, is one of the most recent and insightful biographies of Steinbach’s muse to date.
Steinbach also seems to acknowledge a debt of gratitude and admiration to E. B. White, an author known best for his children’s books, Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, and one to whom she owes some element of her craft. In more than fifty years of writing for The New Yorker, White honed his style to one described by The Washington Post as “creative, humane, graceful.” His essays, collected in The Essays of E. B. White, and the portrait he draws of one of the world’s most exciting cities in Here Is New York, will delight any reader who is searching for a backdrop to Steinbach’s perceptive, elegant, journalistic prose.
Of course, diving headfirst into the vast wealth of travel literature is another option for Steinbach’s “curious and courageous reader.” In this case, it would seem only appropriate to begin with Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, his slender memoir that is as much about Paris in the 1920s as it is about the Americans who encounter it.
A more contemporary piece of travel writing, Frances Mayes’s Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy weaves together one woman’s story of leaving the familiarity of her home in California to renovate a Tuscan villa. Through the inclusion of her own journal entries, local recipes, and reflections on the Italian countryside as a food writer and journalist, Mayes provides another perspective on the essence of northern Italy as seen through the eyes of an awed and inspired traveler.
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