Rosenbloom had an epiphany about solo travel while on assignment (she’s a journalist) for the Travel section of the New York Times. I fell in love with the city of lights and can’t wait to return. After a few days there, I made a pit stop in Paris, a place I had never visited but thought, since my flight was routed through there, I should at least stop off and see the highlights. Then, after she left to return home, I went to Bologna, another Italian city I hadn’t yet been to.

After two of our party of four headed back to Canada, my friend Sheila and I went from Amalfi to Verona, a city I had always wanted to visit. Can I go it alone? Turns out, I could and it was kind of amazing. Stephanie Rosenbloom’s book Alone Time seeks to answer the very question I was trying to figure out back in 2018. Her engaging and elegant prose makes Alone Time as warmly intimate an account as the details of a trip shared by a beloved friend-and will have its many readers eager to set off on their own solo adventures.My selfie game is not strong, I realize. Rosenbloom incorporates insights from psychologists and sociologists who have studied solitude and happiness, and explores such topics as dining alone, learning to savor, discovering interests and passions, and finding or creating silent spaces.

Each section spotlights a different theme associated with the joys and benefits of time alone and how it can enable people to enrich their lives-facilitating creativity, learning, self-reliance, as well as the ability to experiment and change. The destinations-Paris, Istanbul, Florence, New York-are all pedestrian-friendly, allowing travelers to slow down and appreciate casual pleasures instead of hurtling through museums and posting photos to Instagram. Through on-the-ground reporting and recounting the experiences of artists, writers, and innovators who cherished solitude, Stephanie Rosenbloom considers how being alone as a traveller-and even in one's own city-is conducive to becoming acutely aware of the sensual details of the world-patterns, textures, colors, tastes, sounds-in ways that are difficult to do in the company of others.Īlone Time is divided into four parts, each set in a different city, in a different season, in a single year. In our increasingly frantic daily lives, many people are genuinely fearful of the prospect of solitude, but time alone can be both rich and restorative, especially when travelling. 'In Paris (or anywhere else, really) a table for one can be a most delightful place.' - Alone Time, as seen in The New York TimesĪ wise, passionate account of the pleasures of traveling solo

Alone Time by Stephanie Rosenbloom