Solo travel advice online is weirdly obsessed with Southeast Asia and Portugal. Which is fine, but if you’re American, or already in America, flying twelve hours to prove you can eat dinner alone seems like a lot.
The US is genuinely good for a first solo trip. Everyone speaks your language, or at least a version of it. There’s infrastructure. And there are a handful of places where being on your own is completely normal rather than conspicuous.
Here are the ones I’d actually recommend, and why each works.
What Makes Somewhere Good for Solo Travel
Three things. Can you get around without a car, or is driving alone genuinely pleasant there. Is there a reason to be out in the evening. And do you feel conspicuous eating by yourself.
That last one kills more solo trips than danger does. Places with counters, food halls, bars that serve food and a strong coffee culture are much easier than places built around family restaurants.
Cities score well on all three. National parks score well on two, and you have to be at peace with quiet evenings.
Santa Fe, New Mexico
My top pick for a first solo trip, and hardly anyone suggests it.
It’s small, walkable and extremely safe in the historic core. The whole downtown is adobe, there are around 250 galleries, and the food is genuinely distinctive rather than generic American.
Why it works alone: art galleries are the perfect solo activity, museums are plentiful, and the plaza has benches full of people sitting on their own. Nobody’s looking at you.
Add a day trip to Taos or the high road between them and you have four days easily.
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Portland, Maine
Small, coastal, and one of the best food cities in America for its size. About 68,000 people and an absurd number of good restaurants.
The Old Port is compact and walkable, everything is oyster bars and counters, and eating alone at a bar is completely standard.
Ferries run out to the Casco Bay islands for a few dollars and give you a whole day. Lighthouses are twenty minutes away.
It’s also cheap to get to from most of the northeast, and you don’t need a car if you stay downtown.
Chicago
The big-city option, and it’s better for solo travel than New York in a few concrete ways.
It’s cheaper, the public transport is straightforward, and the lakefront gives you eighteen miles of car-free path where half the people are alone.
The architecture boat tour is the single best solo activity in any American city. Ninety minutes, you learn a lot, and being alone on a boat is entirely normal.
Museums are world class, the food ranges from cheap to excellent, and there’s live music every night of the week.
The National Parks Option
Zion, Yosemite, Acadia and the Smokies are all realistic solo trips, with a caveat: you need to be comfortable with your own company after dark.
Shuttle systems in Zion and Yosemite mean you can do them without a car. Trails are busy enough that you’re rarely genuinely alone on the popular routes.
Lodges and campgrounds have communal areas where people talk to each other, which is not true of hotels.
Tell someone your hiking plan every day. Signal is non-existent in most parks and this is the one place where solo carries a real risk.
Savannah and Charleston
Both small, both walkable, both southern, and both absolutely full of people wandering around looking at buildings.
Savannah’s squares give you somewhere to sit every two minutes, which sounds trivial and matters a lot when you’re alone and want a break without buying something.
Charleston has the better food scene and slightly higher prices. Either works, and they’re two hours apart if you want both.
Walking tours are the easy social move in both. Two hours, you learn the city, and you’ll usually end up chatting to someone.
New Orleans, With One Caveat
Extremely easy to be alone in, because the whole city is set up around bars, live music and eating at counters. Nobody in New Orleans thinks it’s odd that you’re by yourself.
The caveat is that the drinking culture is intense and the French Quarter late at night is not where you want to be alone and unsteady.
Stay in the Marigny or the Garden District instead. Go to the music venues on Frenchmen Street rather than Bourbon. It’s a completely different city three blocks over.
Where I’d Skip for a First Solo Trip
Los Angeles, unless you love driving. It’s forty miles of separate towns and you’ll spend the trip in a hire car on a freeway, which is a lonely way to travel.
Las Vegas, which is designed around groups and couples and gets grim alone quite fast.
Anywhere requiring a lot of long-distance driving on your first trip. Ten hours alone in a car is a real test and it’s not the one to start with :/
Practical Things That Help
Book the first two nights and leave the rest loose. Enough structure to arrive without stress, enough freedom to change your mind.
Eat your main meal at lunch. It’s cheaper, restaurants are busier with other solo diners, and you’re not walking back to a hotel at 10pm.
Do one organised thing early: a walking tour, a cooking class, a boat trip. It breaks the ice with yourself as much as with anyone else.
And take the single supplement hit on your chin, or stay in places with communal space. Hotels are the loneliest option and often the most expensive.
Common Questions
Is the USA safe for solo travellers? Broadly yes in the places above, with normal city awareness. Research specific neighbourhoods rather than whole cities, which is where American safety advice is usually too vague to be useful.
Do I need a car? Not in Chicago, Portland, Savannah, Charleston or New Orleans. Santa Fe is walkable but a car helps for day trips. National parks vary, with shuttles in Zion and Yosemite.
What’s the cheapest solo destination in the US? Savannah and Portland, Maine are the best value of these. Chicago is surprisingly reasonable for a major city outside peak summer.
How long should a first solo trip be? Four to five days in one place. Long enough to relax into it, short enough that it doesn’t feel daunting.
Is it weird to eat alone in American restaurants? At a bar or counter, no, and most places have them. Booths at family restaurants are where it feels most conspicuous.
