Every social group I joined.

[Tony Ramirez]

Here is the problem I have when I join every social group in my lifetime.

When I join it they already just came back from a big retreat trip and or going on one, and I am too late to register, then their Instagram shows they did some of them in the past.

Now, as soon as I join their social club and miss the last trip because I got there too late, they decide to go nowhere outside NYC. Not even upstate. They go nowhere outside the city. They have other people visit here instead. Then after a couple of months I start to get excluded by themselves going on personal cliques, not organized group hanging out then eventually trips outside NYC.

I then lose it mentally by having travel and couple envy until I, can't control my meltdowns then they kick me out, or I leave myself then I try again for the cycle to repeat with me stuck in NYC going on no retreat vacation ever or having real friends to do things.

 

[vergil96]

I think that if you want to travel, you have to not wait for opportunities to happen to you, but try out travelling alone. Try out travelling somewhere not too far first, every country has beautiful places to visit. Someone said that you have to treat yourself the way you want to be treated by others, and if you want to go somewhere fun, you can do it on your own too and have fun.

 

[Tony Ramirez]

My parents won't let me go solo but will let me go "with friends" but that's the problem. I don't have real friends. They always travel without me every time.

 

[vergil96]

How about organised trips with a guide?

 

[Tony Ramirez]

How about organised trips with a guide?

If I could find them?

 

[vergil96]

My parents won't let me go solo but will let me go "with friends" but that's the problem. I don't have real friends. They always travel without me every time.

I don't know where your parents took this idea from that it is normal to have friends to travel with especially older than 30. It's hard to make plans of adults align if they're not family. It's hard to find friends who have similar preferences when it comes to travelling. Not many adults travel together. And if they do, it often happens as a result of initiative, for example, you'd be going to place A and have it booked and say "Hey, would any of you like to join me on the trip?" and someone wants to. So yeah, not a too realistic goal to find travel mates. Plus for one person that talks about travelling with friends very loud there are 10 who didn't and are quiet, because nothing is going on for them.

 

[vergil96]

If I could find them?

I'm not from the US, so I don't know the companies that operate there, but there are travel agencies that offer tours with a guide. My grandparents went to a lot of them. One of my friends too. I think the name was Rainbow Tours, but it might be a European company, you'd have to google around to find out about the most popular travel agencies that offer guided tours.

 

[Tony Ramirez]

I don't know where your parents took this idea from that it is normal to have friends to travel with especially older than 30. It's hard to make plans of adults align if they're not family. It's hard to find friends who have similar preferences when it comes to travelling. Not many adults travel together. And if they do, it often happens as a result of initiative, for example, you'd be going to place A and have it booked and say "Hey, would any of you like to join me on the trip?" and someone wants to. So yeah, not a too realistic goal to find travel mates. Plus for one person that talks about travelling with friends very loud there are 10 who didn't and are quiet, because nothing is going on for them.

I tried that and they gaslight me every time. It's silence, then they change the subject. Then I find out they went without me.

I don't like this current place I been in since last year. Never did if you read my post history the DM I sent to some people here I was quite often treated badly but it was sugar coded into looking like they cared. It felt wrong and I was miserable. Also they promised me that I would be going places outside the city. They all went without me. When they setup their new place I begging them for me too help they didn't care to contact me and did it without me. Long story I ended up in the hospital and not one visited. Had to call an old friend from my first church of 5 years. Also they cared on Tuesday too when my so called friend from the other place said she forgot to show up because she meet her friend even though I reminded her three times with cricket response.

 

[AuroraBorealis]

I'm not from the US, so I don't know the companies that operate there, but there are travel agencies that offer tours with a guide. My grandparents went to a lot of them. One of my friends too. I think the name was Rainbow Tours, but it might be a European company, you'd have to google around to find out about the most popular travel agencies that offer guided tours.

I second this. The first time I traveled on my own, it was with an organised group. I found it online. I searched for the place I wanted to visit and googled something like "Name of country, tour travels". I found several agencies that offered planned trips for, e.g., 5, 7 or 10 days, with a pre-set itinerary. It was great. Depending on the place and the tour, it might be aimed at different age groups and have different kind of activities. On the one I went to, I was by far the youngest, but I didn't mind it. Of course, you don't know in advance who will be in the group, and it's possible that you're the only one who goes alone, and the others come in pairs or small groups. You should be prepared for having a great group experience, but also for not really connecting with the others, since you just don't know in advance.

I'd recommend this if you want to travel somewhere alone but, for any reason, don't want to do it all on your own. You should, however, be prepared and feel okay about not making close friends and spending time alone, because that can absolutely happen. Some guides might try to make everyone feel included, e.g. during meals, but others might not, because it's not technically their job, and also because some people join these trips alone and don't want a big bonding experience but are just along for the itinerary.

Also, if you know that you might need some special assistance during a trip, such as getting overwhelmed, having a meltdown, etc., and plan on going alone without someone to look after you in such an event, you should tell the company in advance so they can let you know if they can accommodate you on a trip. If you go on such a tour, you need to be fully able to look after yourself all the time, because the guides are normally not trained or anything. They'd call an ambulance or tell you where to find a doctor, if you get physically ill, but other than that you're on your own.

 

[Misery]

I'm going to second something that @vergil96 said: travelling with friends, as adults, is not something that's even remotely common.

I've done a lot of traveling over the years. And I really do mean A LOT of it.

However, almost all of the travelling done as an adult was done on my own. And when people DID come with me, it was because of special conditions that allowed them to. Specifically, I was usually the one paying for much of it, and I handled all of the actual arrangements and driving. The people who would sometimes go with... one friend of mine, and one cousin... were able to go with specifically because it required very low resources from them (really what they had to buy was their own food, and a ticket to get into whatever convention we were going to), and it also only worked because their days off, at the time, just happened to tend towards weekends, which is when that type of event is held. And even then, most of the trips I've been on did not involve them.

That's the issue in so many cases: work / college schedules can clash (you cant have a group trip unless the ENTIRE GROUP has a schedule that perfectly matches the trip schedule!) and the money (and energy!) has to be there too. And of course, someone's gotta handle the logistics. Even if you're going by plane, for instance, it's never actually that simple. You (or someone in the group) WILL be doing a lot of driving in most cases. A plane trip is never JUST a plane trip, and it's generally the most difficult type of trip to do. Not to mention the most aggravating. And if you're driving purely by car, well, you better be equipped to handle what is often a very long and complex route. Ready to get lost? You better be, because that's a common part of the road trip experience.

And even if you get everyone and everything together and handle all the logistics and such, that 100% does not mean that the trip will go the way you think it will. Travel ads and such often make travelling look like this perfectly bright and beautiful thing that's so easy, so very easy, oh boy will you be able to relax because it'll be so easy.

That's not how it works in reality. I could tell 100 horror stories just from my own experiences, including times I was by myself and times I was with my friend or my cousin.

And I tell ya, adding MORE people to the group absolutely does not help. Each additional person increases the chance... and complexity... of problems arising.

Dont get me wrong: Its not that a group trip cant be a good thing. It absolutely can. But the idea that it's this perfect easy thing, or that it is AT ALL common, is a myth. And often when it does happen, there's some special element holding it together (like a professionally organized group, but even that brings its own potential issues... it only takes one bad event... or one bad egg... to ruin the whole thing for everyone).

Remember: The REALITY of something very often does not match the often gussied-up IDEA of it. And travel is one of the most spectacular examples of that fact.

 

[velociraptor]

I actually prefer to do things on my own, but I have a habit of freaking out my family with this.

 

[VictorR]

I second this. The first time I traveled on my own, it was with an organised group. I found it online. I searched for the place I wanted to visit and googled something like "Name of country, tour travels". I found several agencies that offered planned trips for, e.g., 5, 7 or 10 days, with a pre-set itinerary. It was great. Depending on the place and the tour, it might be aimed at different age groups and have different kind of activities. On the one I went to, I was by far the youngest, but I didn't mind it. Of course, you don't know in advance who will be in the group, and it's possible that you're the only one who goes alone, and the others come in pairs or small groups. You should be prepared for having a great group experience, but also for not really connecting with the others, since you just don't know in advance.

I'd recommend this if you want to travel somewhere alone but, for any reason, don't want to do it all on your own. You should, however, be prepared and feel okay about not making close friends and spending time alone, because that can absolutely happen. Some guides might try to make everyone feel included, e.g. during meals, but others might not, because it's not technically their job, and also because some people join these trips alone and don't want a big bonding experience but are just along for the itinerary.

Also, if you know that you might need some special assistance during a trip, such as getting overwhelmed, having a meltdown, etc., and plan on going alone without someone to look after you in such an event, you should tell the company in advance so they can let you know if they can accommodate you on a trip. If you go on such a tour, you need to be fully able to look after yourself all the time, because the guides are normally not trained or anything. They'd call an ambulance or tell you where to find a doctor, if you get physically ill, but other than that you're on your own.

Great post!

To add to this…

If you want to go somewhere, but aren’t sure where you want to go, but have a base, consider going on a tour agglomerate site (e.g. findmyguide, viator, etc.) and so a search for “tours from [basename].

So for example, if we do a search on Viator for “tours from New York”

https://www.viator.com/searchResults/all?text=Tours from new york

there’s a vast selection, including lots of one day trips to Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Boston, and other destinations.

While there is a large variety of tour types, the most common ones are those targeted towards overseas visitors looking to get photos taken at well-known landmarks.

Such tours focus on getting to a variety of spots for photos, while not actually spending much time visiting them - sometimes a stop might be 15 minutes outside a landmark just to take photos and maybe quickly visit a souvenir shop, without actually visiting the site itself, or in more extreme cases, you are just passing by or seeing a landmark from a distance. For example, on a one-day trip to DC from New York, you won't be visiting any of the museums (or the Capitol). These tours by their nature spend lot of time spent “on the road” getting from one destination to the next. If they’re using a full sized tour bus, quite often they may play videos to provide some entertainment. For longer day trips (e.g. 10+ hours), it’s not unusual that a meal stop might be a fast food restaurant and/or truck stop.

Some things to consider:

• Are you comfortable with long bus rides, including potentially with someone sitting beside you who may not be interested in chatting, or who may be eating or drinking?
• Do you need someone to go with you? For someone with a recent history of meltdowns involving hospitalization, perhaps hiring a nurse or social worker to accompany you might be a good idea.
• In case you become separated from the group for whatever reason, do you have the resources to make it home on your own?

 

[velociraptor]

including potentially with someone sitting beside you who may not be interested in chatting

I always wind up next to the chatty person. Ugh.