How Solo Travel Gave Me Two Sisters

The bench was in the Plaza de Zocodover, and by the time we sat down I had known her for about six hours. That is the strange arithmetic of travelling alone: six hours can carry the weight of six years.

Her name was Ioanna. Mine is Ioana.

A bus, a guide and a coincidence

Rewind to Madrid, October 2023. I had booked a day trip to Segovia and Toledo, the kind of excursion a solo traveller takes when she wants company without committing to any. The forecast looked uncertain and the clouds kept me guessing all morning, but not a drop fell.

At the meeting point I spotted another woman on her own. We caught each other's eye and both looked away, too shy to speak. Then the guide arrived, we started walking to the bus, and we ended up side by side. One of us said hello. By the time we reached the bus we had discovered the thing that made us laugh: we shared a name.

Cobblestones, a castle and a bench

Segovia and Toledo did what they are known for. Cobbled streets, the castle said to have inspired Disney, and a Roman aqueduct that has stood for two thousand years. We walked and talked through all of it, and by the time we reached Toledo in the afternoon we were both exhausted.

Free time in the Plaza de Zocodover gave us an excuse to stop: coffee and something sweet. We divided the work without discussing it, she ordered the coffees while I joined the queue for huesos de santo, a traditional Toledo sweet sold at a different counter. We carried everything to a bench, and as we settled the sun finally came out. It felt as though the day had been waiting for that moment.

Sitting beside someone I had met that morning should have been awkward. It was not. We talked about the day, about how glad we both were that one of us had spoken first, about coffee. There was no performance in it, no effort. It simply flowed.

Why it happens so quickly on the road

Travelling alone removes the scaffolding of ordinary social life. There is no safety net of mutual friends, no familiar role to play, nobody who expects you to be a particular version of yourself. You can just be who you are that day.

That afternoon I told Ioanna something I had not said plainly to people at home: I was unhappy in my corporate job in New York, even though on paper I had made it. She listened without judgement. She understood. I did not have to pretend or perform.

There is also the freedom of knowing that if it had not clicked, you would never have to see each other again. We stayed friends because we wanted to, not because a shared office or a shared history made it easier. And we had one day only, which made us deliberate about every hour.

Athens, and Themis

We said goodbye that evening knowing we would keep in touch. Then I remembered: I already had a trip to Athens booked for December. Ioanna lives in Athens. The shared name had felt like a coincidence. This felt like something else entirely, a Greek woman with almost the same name, met weeks before my first visit to Greece.

That December did not feel like a holiday. It felt like visiting an old friend in her own city. Ioanna and her friend Themis walked me around central Athens on the first day, explaining what I was seeing, stopping for good food and, inevitably, coffee. It was effortless.

Themis and I clicked at once. She has a degree in archaeology and dreams of becoming a tour guide in Athens, so I effectively had a private tour from someone warm, generous and genuinely excited by every corner of her city. I was a stranger to her, and she offered the kind of hospitality that makes you feel you have been known for years.

The push

A month after we met, I was let go from my corporate job. I moved back to Romania and decided to go all in on my travel blog. Themis was unhappy in her own corporate job in Athens at the same time, and watching me take that leap, and seeing it work, gave her the push to move towards her own dream of becoming a tour guide.

It felt as though I had arrived in her life at exactly the right moment. These friendships seemed less like good luck and more like something that was meant to happen.

Romania, Greece and everywhere between

It is just two countries now, Romania and Greece, but distance has never been the obstacle it sounds like. The three of us message almost daily in our WhatsApp group, video call every few weeks for a proper catch-up, and travel together a few times a year when we can.

Since that day in Madrid we have been to Kenya together, and most recently to Tbilisi, where we squeezed into a photobooth and produced the kind of silly, joyful pictures that explain a friendship better than any description. We can be ridiculous together. We can also sit with the difficult things and hold each other up. We know what is happening in each other's lives, and we show up.

Georgia, Armenia and Prague are already planned.

If you are hesitating over a solo trip, or you are already away and keep almost speaking to someone before talking yourself out of it, do not. Say hello. Sit down next to a stranger. Take the tiredness and get the coffee anyway. You cannot know who is waiting.

Ioanna and Themis became the sisters I never had. All of it began on a grey morning, with a repeated name and a bench in a Toledo square.

About the author: Ioana was born and raised in Romania, spent 14 years in New York and has since returned to Romania. She started travelling alone at 30 and has visited more than 30 countries. She is a full-time travel blogger and content creator at Solo Travel in Style blog, sharing practical tips, itineraries and recommendations. Her story and insights have been featured in The Daily Express, Euronews, Bored Panda, Yahoo and MSN. Find her on Instagram.