The alarm never rings. At 6:47, the light over the Ligurian Sea shifts from grey to rose, and that is enough. Mareen Schauder, a 34-year-old freelance photographer from Hamburg, has been traveling solo for eleven years. She does not post daily stories or chase viral spots. Her travel style is deliberate, almost monastic in its attention to detail. I spent a day with her last October in the fishing village of Vernazza, one of the five towns of Cinque Terre, to understand how she structures a day when the only itinerary is presence.
The Morning Ritual: Before the Day Takes Shape
Mareen rents a small room with a kitchenette on the upper edge of Vernazza, away from the main piazza. She wakes without a phone check. The first thirty minutes belong to stretching on a yoga mat she carries rolled inside her duffel bag, then a short walk to the harbour wall with a stainless steel thermos of green tea. She sits on the stone bench at the end of the pier, facing the water, and writes three lines in a small notebook — not a journal entry, just a sensory note: the colour of the sea, the sound of a boat engine, the temperature of the air.
“If I start the day with a screen,” she told me over breakfast at a bar on Via Roma, “I lose the texture of the place. The light here changes every fifteen minutes in autumn. I want to see it, not photograph it immediately.” She photographs later, around 9:30, when the sun clears the hill behind the village and the facades of the pastel houses warm to their true colour. For her, the morning is a container for emptiness — no plans, no lists, just the body adjusting to a new latitude.
Breakfast and the Art of Not Rushing
At 8:15, Mareen walks to the same bar she has visited every morning for the past six days. The barista, a woman in her sixties named Silvia, already knows her order: one espresso macchiato and a cornetto vuoto — an empty croissant, no jam, no cream. Mareen eats standing at the counter, watching the local men argue over a football match on the small television. She does not understand Italian well, but she enjoys the cadence of the argument. “Travel is not about understanding everything,” she says. “It is about being comfortable with not knowing.”
She takes the second half of the croissant to the bench outside the church of Santa Margherita di Antiochia and eats it slowly, watching the first ferry of the day arrive. This is the moment she calls “the golden pocket” — the time before the day-trippers flood the train station. She uses it to read a physical book (she never travels with a Kindle) and to plan only the next three hours. Nothing beyond lunch is fixed.
The Midday Exploration: One Small Task, One Open Walk
Mareen’s afternoons follow a pattern she developed after years of solo travel burnout: one intentional destination and one aimless wander. The intentional destination might be a specific bakery she read about in a local food blog, or a viewpoint she noted during a train ride. The aimless wander is exactly that — she leaves the phone in the room and walks without a map, letting the alleyways and staircases decide her route.
On the day I joined her, the intentional destination was the small oratory of Santa Maria di Reggio, a chapel perched on the hill above Corniglia. She had read that the wooden crucifix inside dates to the 14th century and that the custodian, a retired fisherman, opens the door only between 12:30 and 13:30. We climbed the 365 steps from the train station to the village — she counted them aloud, not for accuracy but for the rhythm of the breath. Inside the chapel, the air smelled of beeswax and salt. She stood in silence for seven minutes, then thanked the custodian in broken Italian and bought a postcard from him (€1, cash only).
The aimless wander took us down a narrow path behind the cemetery, where wild fennel grew between the stones and the view opened to the terraced vineyards. She stopped to touch the leaves, crush them between her fingers, and smell. “This is the real scent of Liguria,” she said. “Not the pesto you buy in a jar, but this — wild, bitter, green.” We walked for an hour without speaking. She later told me that silence with a companion is a skill she learned deliberately; not every moment needs commentary.
Lunch Alone: The Solo Traveler’s Table
Mareen rarely books restaurants in advance. She prefers to walk into a place at 13:30, after the peak lunch rush, and ask for a table near the window. On this day, she chose a trattoria on a side street in Manarola, one of the few that still writes the menu on a chalkboard and does not have an English version. She ordered trofie al pesto — the local pasta shape with basil, pine nuts, and pecorino — and a glass of the house Vermentino. She ate slowly, using bread to clean the bowl at the end.
“Eating alone is not lonely if you treat it as a ritual,” she explained. “I look at the food. I look at the room. I watch how the waiter moves. I do not scroll. If I finish the meal and there is still wine in the glass, I stay. I do not rush to the next thing.” She paid in cash (€18 total) and left a small tip — €1.50, enough to be polite, not enough to be performative.
The Afternoon Rest: A Practice of Doing Nothing
Between 14:30 and 16:00, Mareen retreats to her room. She closes the shutters, lies on the bed, and listens. Sometimes she naps. Sometimes she reads. Sometimes she just stares at the ceiling. This siesta-like break is non-negotiable, even when the weather is perfect and the light is golden. She learned it the hard way after a trip to Morocco in 2018, when she tried to see everything and ended up exhausted and resentful by day four.
“The biggest myth about solo travel is that you have to be constantly doing something,” she said. “You are the only person you need to answer to. If you need to rest at 3 p.m., you rest. That is the whole point of being alone — you get to design the rhythm.” She sets a timer for 90 minutes, then gets up, washes her face with cold water, and steps back outside for the evening.
The Golden Hour and the Evening Meal
From 16:30 to sunset, Mareen walks the section of the Sentiero Azzurro between Vernazza and Monterosso. She does not bring a camera. This walk is for the eyes only — the way the light hits the sea at a low angle, the shadow of the cliffs stretching across the water, the gradual cooling of the air. She walks at a pace that feels slow even by Italian standards, stopping whenever she feels drawn to a view.
Dinner is a flexible affair. Sometimes she cooks in her kitchenette — a simple plate of pasta with garlic, oil, and chili, eaten on the tiny balcony. Sometimes she joins a group of travelers she met on the trail. On the evening I observed, she bought focaccia from a bakery, a piece of aged Pecorino from a cheese shop, and a bottle of local Sciacchetrà, the sweet passito wine of the region. She ate on the rocks near the harbour, feet dangling over the water, watching the lights of the fishing boats appear one by one.
Evening Wind-Down: The Solo Traveler’s Nighttime Routine
Back in her room by 21:00, Mareen takes a long shower with the window open — she loves the contrast of hot water and cool sea air. She wears no perfume, uses no skincare products beyond a bar of olive oil soap. She writes two pages in her notebook, not about what she did, but about what she felt. Then she checks the train schedule for the next day — not to plan in detail, but to know the first departure time in case she wants to leave early.
She is asleep by 22:15, with the shutters open and the sound of waves through the window. No white noise app, no eye mask, no sleep tea. Just the natural rhythm of a day that followed her own tempo, not the internet’s.
What a Day Like This Teaches About Solo Travel
Mareen’s approach is not a template everyone must follow. It is one woman’s answer to the question: how do I travel without losing myself? Her day includes no museums, no famous viewpoints, no Instagram moments. It includes presence, rest, local food eaten slowly, and a deep trust in the value of doing less. For solo travelers who feel the pressure to optimize every hour, her example offers a different possibility — that the best day of a trip might be the one where nothing happens, and that is exactly the point.
If you are planning a solo trip to the Italian coast, consider staying in one place for at least five nights. Let the village become familiar. Let the barista learn your order. Let the afternoon siesta become a habit. That is where the real journey begins — not in the sights you check off, but in the quiet rhythm you build with a place.
