Travelling Alone for the First Time: a Solo Trip Guide from Quebec
A successful first solo trip comes down to four decisions: choose a country where talking to strangers is easy, book only the first two nights in each city, go out walking the moment you arrive instead of staying in your room, and accept that the first forty-eight hours will be uncomfortable.
The rest is logistics. And the early discomfort is not a sign that it is failing: it is the entry fee for what comes next.
The four fears, in the order they arrive
“I will be bored.” Yes, for the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Sitting in a room at 7 p.m. wondering what you are doing there. It is universal and it passes. A traveller with company can always turn to their companion when they do not know what to do. A solo traveller has to decide. That is exactly what they came for, even if they do not know it yet.
“I will have to eat dinner alone.” The adjustment lasts between two and four meals. After that it is over, and many end up preferring it.
“What if something happens to me?” A fair question, with concrete answers: insurance, three copies of your documents, an emergency number in your phone, and someone who knows where you are. More on that below.
“People will think it is strange.” In Japan, the Nordic countries and Western Europe, being alone in public is entirely normal. In Mediterranean countries, Latin America and the Middle East, you are more likely to be invited to join a table. The pitying look at the lone traveller is a North American fear, not a global reality.
Where to go for a first solo trip
Three criteria: how easy it is to meet people, how simple the logistics are, and the level of caution the Government of Canada recommends. The rankings cited come from the 2026 Global Peace Index.
| Destination | From Montreal | Why it works | Government of Canada advice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portugal | Nonstop to Lisbon and Porto, about 7 hours | 7th in the global peace ranking. Among the best hostels in Europe, human-scale neighbourhoods, a Romance language | Take normal security precautions |
| Iceland | Seasonal service, check by period | 1st in the global peace ranking for the nineteenth consecutive year. English spoken everywhere | Take normal security precautions |
| Ireland | Nonstop to Dublin | 5th in the ranking. The pub is the easiest place on earth to talk to a stranger. Outside the Schengen area | Take normal security precautions |
| Japan | With a connection | 10th in the ranking. Chosen solitude is respected there, never commented on | Take normal security precautions |
| Spain | Connection to Seville, seasonal nonstop to Barcelona | Tapas culture normalizes eating and drinking standing up, alone | Take normal security precautions |
| Italy | With a connection | The aperitivo: everyone stands, everyone talks, nobody sits down | Take normal security precautions |
| New Zealand | Two connections | 2nd in the ranking. The most developed backpacking culture in the world. NZeTA authorization required | Take normal security precautions |
Official travel advice, and why you should read it
Many lists of “easy destinations for solo travel” put Mexico, Colombia and Thailand at the top without mentioning what the Government of Canada says. It recommends a high degree of caution for all three, with stricter regional warnings in certain Mexican states, certain Thai provinces and the Cambodian border area.
One detail targets solo travellers directly: for Colombia, the Government of Canada specifically flags assaults arranged through dating applications, including in Medellín and Cartagena. These are excellent destinations, but they are not first solo trip destinations, and an honest guide should say so.
Get in the habit of reading your destination’s page on the Government of Canada travel advice site before booking. The four levels run from “take normal security precautions” to “avoid all travel”.
The six rules that make the difference
The three copies rule. Your passport scanned and emailed to yourself and to someone close, a photocopy in a different bag, the original on you. Three copies, three places.
The first day rule. On arrival, go out immediately. Do not stay in the room recovering from the flight. Walk for two hours around your accommodation, with no destination. You will come back with your first landmarks, the bakery, the park, the metro station, and above all you will have cut short the spiral of doubt waiting in that room.
The two nights rule. Book the first two nights in each new city before you arrive. Not the whole trip. Two nights give you time to orient yourself and leave you free to stay or move on.
The common areas rule. In a hostel, go to the common areas within two hours of arriving. People meet in kitchens, bars and lounges, never in dorms.
The shared table rule. Izakayas in Japan, beer halls in Germany, Mediterranean canteens: sit at a table that is already occupied and say hello. The discomfort lasts thirty seconds.
The packing rule. Lay everything you want to bring on the bed. Remove half. Put back a quarter. What is left is your bag. In practice: three or four quick-dry tops rather than cotton, one pair of convertible trousers, merino wool underwear, two pairs of shoes at most, a rain jacket that folds into its own pocket. Shampoo is bought on arrival.
Eating alone, and why it stops being a problem
Four strategies, in order of ease.
Bring a book or a notebook: you look busy and available at the same time, and conversations often start with “what are you reading?”. Choose the counter over a table, because at the counter you talk to the staff. Eat at lunch rather than dinner, when the room is full of people eating alone between tasks. And use markets and food halls, where you eat standing or on a bench, which removes the social dimension of a sit-down restaurant entirely.
Meeting people without forcing it
Pay-what-you-want walking tours, two to three hours, are perfect for the first day: they orient you and put you among other travellers with no commitment.
Cooking classes are the best social activity there is. Three to four hours, groups of four to ten, and a shared meal at the end. Nobody leaves a cooking class without having talked to someone.
The rest comes from routine: the same café every morning, the same park, the same counter. You do not meet people by changing neighbourhoods every day.
Safety, and the real hierarchy of risks
In the destinations recommended above, the real risks are, in order: pickpocketing in dense tourist areas, small scams such as unofficial taxis and inflated bills, and ordinary illness.
Five precautions are enough. A pouch worn under your clothes for the passport and backup card. A decoy wallet in the accessible pocket, with a little cash and an old card. The phone put away when walking at night or on an empty street. Official taxis and recognized apps, whose availability varies by country. And sharing your daily itinerary with someone close, not to be monitored, but so that somebody notices if you drop off the radar.
Documents, insurance and the number to keep in your phone
Check your passport as soon as you book. Service Canada quotes ten business days for an in-person application and twenty business days by mail or online, delivery time excluded. Since 2026, eligible adults can renew online.
Check the advance authorizations too, the ones people forget: the NZeTA for New Zealand, the digital arrival card for Thailand, and for Europe the new Entry/Exit System, fully operational on 10 April 2026, followed by the ETIAS authorization announced for late 2026. Note that Ireland is not in the Schengen area, while Iceland is.
On insurance, one figure to remember: outside Canada, Quebec’s public health insurance reimburses in the order of a hundred dollars per day of hospitalization and about fifty dollars for an emergency consultation. Neither ambulance transport nor planned care. For a solo traveller, the clause that matters most is not the headline ceiling: it is twenty-four hour assistance and repatriation to Quebec, because nobody on site will make those calls for you.
Two free steps before leaving. Sign up for the Registration of Canadians Abroad service on the Government of Canada site. And put the number of the Emergency Watch and Response Centre of Global Affairs Canada in your phone; it answers at any hour from abroad, collect.
One last reflex nobody mentions: at cash machines and payment terminals, when you are asked whether you want to be billed in Canadian dollars, always decline. The rate offered is consistently worse than your own institution’s.
The hard moments, because there will be some
A Sunday afternoon going in circles in an unfamiliar city. An evening where every café seems full of couples and groups of friends. It happens, and it is not a failure.
Four remedies, all of them effective. Call someone to share, not to complain: “I am in Lisbon and I just found the best bakery of my life” puts you back in the trip; “I am bored” pulls you out of it. Write by hand. Change location, because the remedy is outdoors and not in your phone. And remember that the loneliness of travel is extremely volatile: it can disappear in ten minutes.
“The first night in Dublin I cried in my six-bed dorm. The next day I met three people in the pub down the street and we spent four days together. The loneliness of the first night is not a sign that it is not working. It is the entry ticket for what comes after.”
Quebec traveller, 34, first solo trip, Dublin, 2024.
And if you want to go home
Go home. Truly. There is no shame in cutting a trip short. What counts is not having finished it, it is having dared to start. Most people who consider going home on day four end up staying to the end, and those who do go home almost always leave again later.
To go further: solo travel for women covers the questions specific to women travelling alone, our Portugal guide from Montreal details the destination we recommend first, and slow travel from Quebec explains what to do when a first solo trip makes you want to stay longer.
Talk to an advisor
A first solo trip is prepared differently: vetted accommodation rather than guessed, an itinerary that leaves room for chance, and insurance that covers assistance and repatriation. Call 1-866-628-6241 or write to us.
