I Took Myself to Dinner

I took myself to dinner alone three times last week on Salt Spring Island and asked for the good table.

Not lonely. Alone. There is a difference.

As people get older, many of us become increasingly attached to home. I understand why. There is tremendous comfort in knowing exactly where everything is: your own bed, your own coffee mug, the grocery store where you know which aisle has the olive oil, the familiar road home.

There is something lovely about that kind of familiarity. But I also think there is something important about occasionally leaving it.

I have travelled alone for the past twenty-five years, often to familiar places, but I try to make at least one trip a year to somewhere unfamiliar enough that I have to pay attention again. Last December it was Adelaide, Australia, for a backstage pass to see Oprah live, courtesy of a friend. In 2024, it was a workshop with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Denver, also remarkable, in a completely different way. This year, it was five days on Salt Spring Island. Quieter than the other two. Just as necessary.

Twenty-five years ago, when I first started travelling alone, I remember sitting in a restaurant in Toronto by myself and a woman came up to me and whispered, “Oh, you’re brave.” At the time I was taken aback. I never thought of going out for dinner by myself as being particularly brave. I was just having dinner.

Maybe it’s about time we normalized solo-travel.

Here is what five days alone reminded me.

I can be by myself and not feel alone.

I can walk into a restaurant alone, ask for a table for one, and not feel awkward about it. In fact, I learned very quickly not to accept being tucked away somewhere in the back simply because I was alone. I wanted a good table. I wanted the seat where I could see the band play. I wanted to be in the middle of the movement of the place. After all, I was taking myself to dinner.

And once I got over that one second of self-consciousness, decided not to care about being by myself, and simply started enjoying myself, something interesting happened.

People started talking to me. A lot. Far more than they do when I am sitting across from someone else. Men, women, children, young and old, people simply seemed more inclined to talk to me.

When you are travelling with another person, you create a little world around yourselves. You talk to each other, make decisions together, move through a place as a unit. When you are alone, somehow the edges are softer. People come in.

I met a man named Jason in line for the bathroom who recognized me the next morning at the coffee shop. We talked for a few minutes, and he gave me a travelling rock stamped You Are Loved. A tiny chip embedded in it linked to a website where I registered my info, then chose to keep the rock or send it onward. I sent it on. It’s heading to Australia in a few months.

I discovered a little place that made bone broth and joined a communal table where I quickly fell into conversation with a man and his son about life, family, relationships, and aging.

The chef there, a woman I can only describe as a food alchemist, made the best bone broth, a delicious chicken latte, and the best paleo breakfast sandwich I’ve ever eaten.

I went back three times. By the day I left, we were old friends. We greeted one another by name, and we talked about solo travel, aging, and healthy eating in a way that was exactly what I needed to hear that week. The owner said she felt she knew me. I felt the same, even though we had never met before this trip.

I met a friendly shop owner who sold hand-woven baskets from Africa and had a story as beautiful as the pieces she carried. I bought two. Down the street, a talented jeweller who designed jackets out of seventy-year-old hand-stitched kantha blankets told me about the trip she’d just taken alone to Egypt, a place I’ve wanted to see my whole life. I left with one of her amazing jackets and a small, specific kind of envy.

The best way to get acquainted with a new place is to find the best coffee shop in town, the one where all the locals go. I did this and showed up just as it opened each day. By the second morning, I recognized people. By the third, we were saying good morning to one another.

For five days, I got to experience the strange pleasure of becoming a temporary local, something I suspect would have been much harder to do if I hadn’t been alone.

Being alone also meant my time belonged entirely to me.

I could stop the car because something caught my eye. Wander into a shop and stay two minutes or forty. Change my mind. Eat out, or stay in. Dress up simply because I felt like it. Have an afternoon nap. Drive the whole island with music on and nowhere particular to be, pulling over on a hiking trail or a back road without ever asking, Do you mind if we stop here?

I had pre-booked exactly one thing: a massage in the woods. I’ll save that wonderful experience for another article. I was completely on my own schedule.

The trip fed my soul but also fed my work.

The novel I’ve been working on for the past six months takes place on Salt Spring Island. Part of the reason for this trip was to immerse myself in the place rather than simply imagine it from home. I wrote late into the night and woke up with fresh ideas. No distractions from my usual life. No television. No taking care of other people. Just the work.

Without the usual interruptions of home, I began noticing more: the way the roads curved, the scent of petrichor in the woods, the species of trees, the colour of bark on the cedars, the same faces in the coffee shop each morning, the sound of birds I had written about but never really stopped to listen to. Places I had imagined suddenly had weight and distance and weather. My main character deepened because I could walk where she walked and eat in the places where she ate in the story. The plot changed because the island kept giving me these little gifts that I could never have invented at my desk. Best of all, the new people I met somehow quietly found their way into the book.

That may be the greatest gift of travelling alone: you become available. Available to people. Available to places. Available to coincidence. Available to yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, I think comfort is wonderful. I have spent years creating a home I love returning to, along with daily routines around exercise, eating, and writing, and I understand completely why it becomes harder to leave as we grow older. But I don’t want comfort to become the reason my world gets smaller, so I push myself to do this even if it feels uncomfortable.

My mind always tries to talk me out of it. It’s inconvenient. I like my routine. It would be so much easier to just stay home. Every single time, some quiet, reasonable-sounding voice makes the case for cancelling. But I’ve learned not to trust that voice, because the rewards are always bigger than the temporary discomfort. They just are.

There is value in occasionally having to figure things out again. Where am I? Which road do I take? Where should I eat? Can I do this alone?

It turns out I can. And every time I prove that to myself, something expands.

I came home after five days grateful for my house, my own bed, and the people I love. But I also came home reminded that I am still capable of walking into an unfamiliar place and making a little life for myself there: that I can find my way, sit alone, talk to strangers, decide things without consulting anyone, and enjoy my own company. Most importantly, that I can be alone without being lonely.

That is why I insist on at least one solo holiday a year, if not more. It is a promise I have made to myself, not simply a travel habit.

Not because I want to escape my life. Because every once in a while, I want to remember that my life still belongs to me.

Thinking of going on a solo trip? Maybe this is your sign.

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