Travelling towards myself
Lost and found: the person I met when I stopped worrying about being alone.
Subscribers, regular readers, forgive my absence but the refresh and reset and varying landscapes and stimulations of my recent travelling weeks were sorely needed. Thank you for your patience with me – I’m grateful for it (and for my privilege as a middle-class westerner with freedom to roam and easy access to wads of credit-card debt). If you’re a paid subscriber and feel short-changed by the weeks I’ve not delivered a newsletter to you, I’d be so happy to extend your subscription at no cost … simply email me at sw@stephaniewood.com.au and I’ll do it in a flash, no problem.
New subscribers … thank you for joining us. A lovely great bunch of you have subscribed in the past month, many I’m guessing as a result of watching Fake, the television series based on my book, in the UK. A note to new subscribers – I roam widely in my writing here and if you’re not interested in something I write one week, you might be interested in something I share the next. I’ve covered topics such as our ageing bodies, the importance of remaining vigilant on social media, and the challenge of holding on to our relevance as we get older. (Plus, in each edition, I share a carefully curated bunch of links to excellent things, articles, social media posts etc that I’ve seen during the week.)
Um, it has been suggested that my emails are too long (should I pare back perhaps, yes, no?) and Substack might throw up a note saying my newsletter is too long for your inbox. Just FYI, if you see that, there should always be a button at the bottom of the email that says “read more” (or similar) and you can also click the main headline (eg, in this edition, “Travelling towards myself” above), in which is embedded a link to the edition which will open in your internet browser … it should give you a smoother, more satisfying reading experience.
For sure, my next few weeks’ editions might be long(ish) – I’ve been gathering material and thoughts for a month now (was I offline during my trip? not a chance!😫) and am feeling expansive (and expanded in ways that suggest too many Greek cheese pies and a possible surplus of French cheese).
The top-line finding from my trip (London-Athens-Tinos-Paris): it changed me, and not just the circumference of my waistline.
In the past I have been a fairly timid, reluctant solo traveller, overly vigilant about my safety, cautious to a fault, mostly fearful of, with apologies to the good blokes I know who read this, men. That man walking too close behind me at dusk – what are his intentions; this taxi driver in an unfamiliar city – is he taking me to a destination of his choosing not mine to do with me god knows what … and, etc … fears stoked by well-meaning acquaintances whose cautions about this, that and the other have unnerved me over the years to the point that, sometimes, I have almost been deterred from travelling at all.
Plus, beyond practical matters of safety, for all my introverted tendencies, when I’ve travelled alone before, I’ve frequently felt lonely and forlorn.
Ahead of this trip, I also had the apprehensions of the unpracticed: I’d not been to Europe for 25 years. (Some I know will raise superior eyebrows at that; other people I know count themselves lucky ever to have been to Europe. Check your privilege if you are in the former camp.) Would I remember how to use the tube in London (which, a lifetime ago when I lived there I could navigate in my sleep) and the Metro in Paris, would I be OK in Athens and the Greek islands on my own if, as a result of some unforeseen circumstance, my friend was not able to meet me, would I find my way and be safe on the RER B from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to Gare du Nord.
Yes, yes and yes. Of course, yes.
To be sure, it’s not that I did anything remotely adventurous and I was with friends more than I wasn’t (dearest C and B, I’m looking at you🙏💕 and my Paris partner-in-crime, dear R🙏🐩, you too!), but the alone time I did have clicked a switch in my head, gave me a new sense of strength. I felt powerful, fearless and completely delighted to be with myself. (Credit-card debt permitting, I’m plotting my next solo trip … more and more Greece please, or possibly Japan from top to bottom.)
All this by way of saying, should you ever have been reluctant to travel alone as I have been, the rewards of stomping on your fears and leaping into the world are enormous, the confidence you’ll take home with you better than any souvenir. (For inspiration and information, take a look at the vigorous, 600,000+strong Facebook group – “Solo in style – Women over 50 travelling solo and loving it” – or even back to the intrepid, wasp-waisted women of the 19th century such as the incredible Marianne North – a Victorian plant hunter and botanical painter who visited 17 countries on six continents in 14 years on her own between 1871 and 1885.)
And, for me at least, there’s another joy in travelling solo – eating alone at great restaurants. Far from feeling awkward, I sink into the pleasure of it; I focus on flavours, soak up the theatre of the room, revel in the peace of my own thoughts. (Food is my thing, a bad meal is a wasted meal, restaurants are my drug of choice.)
In London, I ate alone at St John, chef Fergus Henderson’s storied nose-to-tail restaurant in Smithfield. Wonderful from beginning to end (roasted bone marrow with a petite parsley salad; lemon sole with samphire and capers; apple and cider sorbet with a shot of vodka and a treat that the chef was at another table). At Borough Markets I ate alone at the bar of Wright Bros Ltd (“oyster and porter house”) … raw oysters and oysters Rockefeller and a glass of Pouilly-Fumé. In Shoreditch, I ate alone at the delightful Leila’s, a short-menu-ed lunch cafe with a home kitchen vibe (chicken terrine with coronation sauce and the best lemon posset with rhubarb … Maggie Beer recipe for this simple gorgeous dessert here). Had advance organisation and time and funds allowed, I could have delightedly eaten alone at a different London restaurant every day for a month.
In an excellent recent New York Times article headed “Don’t Pity a Woman Eating Alone”, writer Callie Hitchcock notes that in the late 1990s, restaurateur Keith McNally started a tradition at his restaurant Balthazar: women dining alone were given a free glass of champagne “to send the message that the restaurant actually, even encourages, women to dine alone”. But, Hitchcock adds:
“Can we even imagine giving a man a free glass of champagne for eating by himself? Or telling him we’re impressed he’s managed to find a way to eat a steak all by himself on a Sunday night? Would any restaurant owner feel the need to encourage this man to venture into the world by himself? Men are individuals, and women are strictly communal, the social stigma around women dining alone seems to tell us … Dining alone hopefully pushes against that view of the world and expands the social imagination on women’s autonomy.”
And, in a recent edition of Condé Nast Traveller, English writer Emma Gannon describes the pleasure she gains from eating alone:
“In my twenties, I used to nervously ask, with a tinge of embarrassment, for a table for one. I wanted to take up space, but didn’t quite feel it in my bones yet. I would eat nervously, distracting myself with a book and avoiding eye contact with anyone who might look pitying, and I would act sheepishly with the waiters. Now, at 36, I proudly ask for my table for one. Sometimes, I even ask for the best table and order multiple things to try, as if I were wooing myself. I take my time; I don’t even need a book, Kindle, or podcast to keep me company. I just enjoy the food, flavours, and the experience of being present in the moment.”
Everything Gannon describes fits with my own experience. Once, I wanted to embrace eating alone but was uncomfortable when I did. Now, for me, dining alone is an almost subversive luxury, one I don’t allow myself at home, more rewarding than a new pair of shoes, more bang for my buck than a sumptuous hotel room.
Beyond eating alone, this trip taught me how being alone in a new place hyper-focuses the attention on small things, on glimmers* – in London, the colour of an East End door (below, the incredible No. 4 Princelet Street, Spitalfields), the cherubs on a cathedral (below, St Paul’s), the framing of a famous landmark, the chic on a passer-by, the wit in a street-art scrawl. (And on big things too; if I’d been gas-bagging with a companion as I walked the streets of London’s financial district, the Square Mile, shadowed by architectural grandeur, by the immense buildings erected through centuries in a muscular celebration of wealth and empire and colonisation, I doubt I would have had time for a thought about the slavery and exploitation and suffering underlying their foundation.)
Many of you might be intrepid solo travellers already (crossed desserts, hitch-hiked through war-torn countries, explored remote jungles??), think me still timid and have different thoughts about solo travel … I’d love to hear them … how have you overcome fears, are there practical things you do to stay safe as a woman travelling alone, what do you love most about the experience?
For me, idiosyncratic and focused as I can sometimes be, this trip has made me realise that there is a great deal to be said for choosing your own adventure and revelling in pure self-interest. Accountable to no one, waiting for no one, compromising for no one. What bliss.
*A glimmer is, apparently, the opposite of a “trigger” – a mental-health bonus, something that sparks a moment of joy. You’ll find more of my travelling glimmers on my Instagram account.)
PLUS, BELOW IN TRAVEL: Keep reading for some of the basic/practical things I learned during my trip, from transport to tech tips (should it have been a while since you took a long-haul flight.)
Fake in the UK
Coincidentally, Fake was launched on UK TV just days before I arrived in London. The Sunday Express newspaper asked me to write a story about the whole shebang; you’ll find it here, far from my finest work … a very fast turn-around in the frantic days before departure. (A photographer snapped me in the reception of my London hotel … “be serious,” he told me. I look like I have stomach ache.)
As far as I can tell, the series is still streaming on ITVX. If you’re in Australia and haven’t yet seen it, it’s streaming for free on 10Play (trailer here). Oh, and of course, I’d be completely delighted if you were to buy my book! Options for that here and here. (I try to avoid reading the reviews but on Goodreads it has 3.89/4 from nearly 3000 ratings and 4.2/5 from 750 ratings on Amazon. I’ll take that!)
🎵 Mood
Stumbled recently on this 2017 video of A-ha frontman Morten Harket singing Take On Me … tears … especially in light of the recent news he has Parkinson’s disease.
Wild thing
Meet 97-year-old Catherine Kuehn, a world-record-holding powerlifter. “It’s been very easy for me,” she says in this endearing short documentary, “because no one else was doing it.”
Reading
I’ve accumulated a bunch of links over the past few weeks for your reading pleasure, on your marks, go …
My brilliant friend Joel Meares writes wonderfully in The Sydney Morning Herald about his Dad, his Dad’s iconic Sydney restaurant (Danny’s Seafood in “La Pa”), jumbo stuffed prawns and a 2004 encounter with Ivana Trump (“I probably gave her a nervous ‘hi’ and she probably gave me a dismissive ‘umph’ – I recall the vibes, not the verbatims. But I do remember she looked out of sorts, like a puffed-up Patsy Stone without her Eddie”).
Also in the Herald (which, if you hit the paywall, is worth subscribing to for these two articles alone), Waleed Aly on the end of The Project on Channel 10, the death of free-to-air television and the advertising that has been lost to Meta and Google et al, companies which precisely target their advertising using vast amounts of our harvested personal data. The AI companies … will they do the same, Aly asks. (“By far the hardest part of this week has been seeing my colleagues exhausted and in tears, trying to discern a future that is precarious and terrifyingly uncertain. Right now, it’s all that matters. But in the long run, we’ll all be footnotes. Even television itself won’t be the point. What will matter are the empires that are being built in its place, and precisely what will have been plundered to erect them.”)
The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson died this week. He might have written the sunny songs we know so well, Surfin’ U.S.A., Wouldn’t It Be Nice, I Get Around and Good Vibrations, but he was anything but sunny. This New York Times obituary tells a tragic story of trauma and depression (“Murry Wilson, a frustrated songwriter and father to the three Wilson boys, was a physically and verbally abusive bully. The darkness that eventually overtook [Brian] started early, at home.”)
In a moving story in The Guardian, a woman tells the story of the death of her dearest oldest friend, the gap it has left, the grief and the lack of space our world has for people grieving friends. (“… when Chrissy became ill, people seemed to either interrogate me about how deep our friendship really was or avoid the situation – I even felt a vibe from some of, “Why are you making such a meal of this?”)
Also in The Guardian, horrifying, important, a new era of ecological collapse. (“[the scientists] are witnessing … a newer phenomenon: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions of forest.”)
Never can get enough of the extraordinary Tina Brown whose Substack on the ascension of the first American Pope is so worth catching up on. (“The ascension of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost to the Holy See feels like a brilliant celestial move by his predecessor Pope Francis to create not just a rival moral centre from the U.S. to counteract Trump, but one who can draw even bigger crowds and command instant mega-headlines. That will put Trump in an immediate quandary …”)
I have Edmund de Waal’s The Hare With Amber Eyes on my book shelf but am ashamed to say that, as with too many books I have bought, I haven’t read it. But I was entranced by this story in The Observer about the potter and author, by his obsession with archives, family archives, by the archival impulse. (“I return to Berlin, to Paris, Tokyo, Stoke-on-Trent. To Bologna to watch the light change in the dust of Giorgio Morandi’s studio on Via Fondazza. I find myself in the archives of the ceramic collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, tracing who acquired the porcelain, and in the stores of broken objects of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, tracing why those things are hidden away.”)
On the excellent Jessica DeFino’s Substack, “The Review of Beauty”, a reader asks how she can stop her self-criticism about her skin … “Every time I meet someone new, I feel scared that they will find me hideous”. DeFino’s reply is fabulous: “On subway seats, in coffee shops, across candlelit tables, I see people with scars and spots and dark under-eye circles being held and kissed and loved like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Because it is! You don’t have to fix a single thing about your face to find that.”
And, in The New Yorker, everything you need to know about intimacy co-ordinators for film-sets. (“For one of our first in-person lessons, we gathered around a table lined with silver mannequin torsos. Scattered beneath them was the latest in barely-there wardrobe technology – strapless thongs, penis pouches, pasties. … ‘Are the pouches one size fits all?’ Giselle, a cheery woman in her forties from Yorkshire, England, asked. ‘No, there are different pouch profiles,’ Duenyas replied diplomatically.”)
Plus, please can I encourage you to read Sarah Wilson’s recent Substack headed “Sufficiency as a way of life”, which includes excellent tips to embrace low-impact ways of living. (“Sufficiency needs to work from both ends of the spectrum –consuming/doing less yourself and actively encouraging policies that lead to more equal distribution of resources”) Do you know how much energy the kettle in your kitchen takes? …
Watching
I’ve started watching Dept Q on Netflix, enthralling, darkly humorous, loathe Detective Carl Morck but assume his complexities and redeeming features will be revealed soon enough. I think I’m in for the long haul despite the series’ cliched crime-show trope that will become apparent if you get to the end of episode 1.
Plus:
Wonderful ABC Compass on the remarkable Geraldine Brooks, her profound grief for her late husband, Tony Horwitz, her retreat to Flinders Island.
The riveting first season of The Pitt, streaming on Max. The divine Noah Wyle (you might remember him as John Carter from ER) is Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the traumatised emergency room head of a fictionalised Pittsburgh hospital. Couldn’t stop watching. Bring on Season 2.
Beautiful Things
Wonderful whale action off Bondi shot by Jason Iggleden (I profiled him for The Sydney Morning Herald in 2021). Click through for video. Plus – a fever of cownose rays.
Virginia Wolf’s bedroom at Monk’s House, East Sussex. (Click through for the video.) “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
This is hilarious … “Professor Grammarian” tackles “the Errorist’s” attack: “… getting reports of fragment bombs, mass capitalisations, subjects and verbs disagreeing in the streets.” … from American singer-songwriter and Instagram star (1.3 million followers) Elle Cordova.
Travel
For those of you who might not have travelled so much recently … a few things I learned in London, Paris and Greece:
You won’t need much, if any, cash. I got some to be safe but barely used it, even on the Greek island of Tinos. Based on a savvy friend’s recommendation, I got a Wise e-card which I stored in my iPhone’s digital wallet. Next time I’ll also get a physical version of the Wise card just in case I need to make cash withdrawals. (Don’t ask me what I saved with the Wise card in terms of fees and conversion rates … I have certain weaknesses … the word I believe is dyscalculia.)
(Mon dieu! … the cost of everything … the exchange rate … If you’re Australian, factor in spending twice as much on everything as you would at home.)
So much more English is spoken everywhere than the last time I was in Europe. I’d loaded the Google Translate app on my phone but didn’t use it once.
Forget your phone provider’s roaming offerings; they’ll be more expensive and have limited data unless you want to pay a bomb. Get an eSim. You MUST have unlimited mobile data because you will do EVERYTHING on your phone, from following maps to making online reservations to looking at metro maps to checking out some obscure detail about an interesting building. I used HolaFly; I haven’t checked my credit card statements yet but I think it was about AUD$100 for a month. Other recommendations from well-travelled friends include Airalo, Simify, Saily and Byte Sim. (Just FYI, I’m generally not tech-challenged but I had to fiddle around a bit to get HolaFly working and needed to use my laptop simultaneously to do so … you’ll also need to change your “primary SIM” in your phone settings.)
You MUST have a powerbank to top up your phone battery. I have a Cygnett which works a treat.
Generally the cheapest way to get from Heathrow Airport to Central London is on the Elizabeth line. A single journey from Heathrow to central London is £13.90 (about AUD$29) when using contactless payment – just tap your credit card on the machine. Unless you book well in advance, the faster Heathrow Express is much more – about AUD$52.
God, the London Underground is so simple (unless a line is out of service when you really need it!) … can’t believe I was worried about it. Just flash your credit card of choice (or Wise card) at the start and end point. The Metro in Paris is just as simple in concept but the new-ish ticketing system is a bit janky. You’ll need a Navigo card (available at ticket counters at major Metros and stations, ticket machines and at the RER B station at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport). I found that the 12€ one day pass option (AUD$21, excludes travel to airports) was more affordable than a multi-day pass. ) Once you have the card you can top it up at machines in metro stations. FYI: you don’t need to flash your card off when exiting metro stations.
You’d be mad to do anything but get the RER B from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to Gare du Nord (or other central Paris stations). It’s simple and safe. (Trying to meet up with a friend who has arrived on the Eurostar from London at the same time, not so easy – Gare du Nord is a vast and poorly signposted station.)
The CityMapper app is great; Google maps as a backup.
Take an Uber, take an Uber, to save time, your legs and to cram more into your day. Your existing app will work in every city.
Test out AI to build an itinerary: on my first day in London, I had some hours before I could check into my East End hotel. I hadn’t planned what I would do in those hours and was brain-fogged. I asked the AI platform Perplexity (available for desktop and as an app – free for a certain number of searches) to come up with an itinerary for me. It nailed what I was interested in. (See my search result here.)
At Terminal 3 Heathrow you can pay to get into Qantas lounge – a lifesaver for me this time as I’d travelled from Paris that morning and had many hours of airport waiting before my evening flight home. For £65 (AUD$136 for people on Qantas flights, more if you’re on another airline) you can access the buffet, booze, showers and endless powerpoints to recharge your devices. Plus peace – I got an (overdue) story written in my six hours there. (I don’t think Qantas makes too much of a fanfare about these single-access passes … I just happened to see a sign as I came through security … more here.)
Big research and agonising can pay off with hotels: I loved Citizen M in Shoreditch (one of a chain, also in Southwark, Bankside, Victoria Station and Tower of London and multiple Euro cities) – cool basic with a great bar/lobby area (below) although it was a 15-minute walk to the nearest tube (which can feel a lot after a huge day). From memory, about AUD$400 a night which, as London hotel prices go, isn’t too bad. In Paris, Hotel Panache was a winner in the 9eme – a pleasant little hotel in a great spot a short walk from the brilliant food street Rue des Martyrs (also about AUD$400). And a shout-out to Daria at reception – très charmante et serviable!
Stay in the East End of London! I loved it, only went to West End once … when I did it was overwhelmingly touristy. (I’ll come back in another edition with some East End tips.)
I ran out of time to research and book Paris restaurants in advance. Bad mistake. Walking off the street into a bistro or brasserie will mostly lead to disappointment. Also, do some research ahead of your trip to identify the best cafe near your hotel for breakfasts, coffee and drinks. (Next week: the Croque Monsieur I sent back.)
Get your steps up before you go. Some days I did 20,000 in a day and I was close to passing out. (Even 10,000-step days can be tiring when you’re in a new environment and your brain is working double time.)
What have I missed? Any tips you’d share?
Socials
(via Instagram – very funny, click through for video!)
(via Threads; the poster is likely a troll but the comments are an unfolding comedy show … can’t recommend them highly enough.)
Stolen words
“From your description, and from what I know of your previous work and your ability; the work you are doing sounds very good … Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever – make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your ‘weird humour’. You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw and paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as ‘to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistent approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end’. You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to.” – American artist Sol LeWitt encouraging artist Eva Hesse to work through a creative block (via Letters of Note).
No, never too long. Just have to save to read for longer. That incredibly clear aqua water you’re languishing in, not to mention the water worn rocks, has to be on a Greek island. So glad you had that healing journey in beautiful places and thanks for bringing them back for us.
This is a long one that I will come back to. Some very good travel tips here; Wise card used in UK last year, I had mine on phone wallet and husband had card. I was nervous I couldn’t set it up but it was easy. City mapper a life saver for public transport.. will circle back soon to continue reading. I really appreciate the travel recommendations. Any very important ones for France for non French speaking travellers?