The church bells of Santa Maria dell’Assunta chimed seven times, and through the open window I could hear the rustle of lemon leaves brushing against the shutters. It was April 24, 2015, and I was sitting on the terrace of a small pensione in the village of Praiano, halfway between Positano and Amalfi. Below me, the sea stretched in layers of cobalt and turquoise, and a fishing boat puttered out of the marina, its wake dissolving into the morning light. I was not alone—Savannah Grace, a fellow solo traveler I had met two days earlier at a ceramics workshop in Vietri sul Mare, was already awake, a notebook in her lap and a tiny espresso cup balanced on the stone balustrade. She had been here for three weeks, and this was her ritual.
Savannah is the kind of wanderer who moves slowly, not out of laziness but out of intention. She had left her job as a graphic designer in Melbourne six months earlier, with no fixed itinerary beyond a list of places where she could feel something—a phrase she used often. The Amalfi Coast in late April offered a rare sweetness: the spring crowds had not yet arrived, the wisteria was in full bloom, and each village felt like a private discovery. Her day on the 24th showed me how solo travel can be done with grace and self-awareness.
Morning: Finding Rhythm in Ritual
Savannah never began a day without walking to the local forno for a sfogliatella—the shell-shaped pastry filled with ricotta and candied citrus. The bakery was three narrow alleys from our pensione, run by a woman named Signora Elena who had been baking since 1972. Savannah told me that this daily exchange—pointing at the pastries, exchanging a few words in mumbled Italian, receiving a warm paper bag—was her way of grounding herself in a place. “When you travel alone, the small routines become landmarks,” she said. “They tell you that you exist here, not just as a tourist, but as a temporary local.”
We ate our pastries on a bench overlooking the Marina di Praia, a tiny cove where fishermen were mending nets. Savannah had a specific way of eating: first the crispy edges, then the creamy centre, saving the cherry on top for last. She laughed at my observation and said her mother had taught her that slow eating was a form of mindfulness. I noted the detail—it was the kind of practice that solo travel amplifies, when no one is rushing you and every flavour matters.
After breakfast, Savannah pulled out her watercolour set and painted a quick sketch of the cove. She didn't aim for photorealism; she was more interested in capturing the way the morning light hit the limestone cliffs. “I never post these online,” she confided. “They’re just for me. A way of owning the memory.” With everyone documenting everything, her approach felt revolutionary: travel not for content, but for the quiet act of being present.
Midday: Learning From the Land
At eleven, we walked along the Sentiero degli Dei—the Path of the Gods—which connects Praiano to Positano through terraced lemon groves and wild rosemary. The trail was almost empty save for a couple of German hikers and a stray cat that followed us for half a kilometre. Savannah pointed out the different varieties of citrus: the lumpy Pomodorino di Sorrento lemons, the intense Femminello, and the fragrant leaves used in local cooking. She had taken a half-day guided tour with a local agronomist earlier in the week and now shared her newfound knowledge freely. “Solo travel makes you curious in a different way,” she said. “When you have no one to rely on for conversation, you start talking to the people who know the place—farmers, bakers, fishermen. They become your teachers.”
We stopped at a family-run limoncello stand perched on the edge of the cliff. The owner, a man in his seventies named Nonno Carlo, poured us samples from a chilled glass bottle. Savannah asked about the recipe, and he spent twenty minutes explaining the difference between using lemon zest and whole peel, his hands animated, his English a charming blend of Italian and hand gestures. She bought a small bottle, not for the liqueur itself, but to remember the way he laughed when she mispronounced scorza. These are the threads that stitch a solo journey together.
Afternoon: Solitude by the Sea
By two o’clock, the heat had settled into the stones. Savannah retreated to a quiet stretch of pebble beach in Conca dei Marini, accessible only by a steep staircase of 184 steps. She carried a thin sarong, a bottle of water, and a paperback copy of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend—the English translation, but she said reading it on the Campanian coast gave the story a different texture. She did not swim at first. Instead, she sat on the warm pebbles, tracing the line where the water met the shore, and then wrote in her journal for forty minutes. I noticed that she wrote in cursive, slowly, and sometimes stopped to stare at the horizon. Later, she told me she was working on a letter to her younger self.
“I used to be afraid of eating alone in restaurants,” she said, pulling on a snorkel mask. “Now I see it as a power move. You get the best table because a solo diner turns the table faster, and you can eavesdrop on conversations for story material.” She laughed, then waded into the water. The sea was still cool—mid-spring—but she stayed in for nearly an hour, floating on her back, occasionally diving to look at the rocks below. Swimming alone, she said, was a form of meditation: the salt water held her, the silence of the submerged world reset her mind.
For those of us who travel alone, the afternoon can be the most vulnerable time—the lull between activity and evening when loneliness sometimes creeps in. But Savannah had taught herself to treat that lull as an invitation. Instead of filling it with scrolling or frantic planning, she let it be empty. “Emptiness in a beautiful place is not empty,” she said. “It’s spacious.”
Evening: Connection Over Dinner
At sunset, we took the local SITA bus (a cramped, jolting ride that every Amalfi Coast traveller knows) to the hilltop town of Ravello. Savannah had reserved a table at a tiny trattoria that did not advertise online—she had found it by asking the owner of a ceramics shop where they ate. The restaurant had four tables in a courtyard overlooking the Duomo. We shared a plate of scialatielli with zucchini and prawns, followed by a simple lemon granita. Savannah ordered a glass of Falanghina and asked the waiter about his family’s olive groves. He sat down with us for ten minutes, pulling out his phone to show photos of last year’s harvest.
Dinner stretched into three hours. Savannah talked about the difference between travelling to escape and travelling to encounter. “Escape is fine for a weekend,” she said, “but if you want to grow, you have to let places change you. You have to engage, to learn, to be uncomfortable sometimes.” She told me about an evening in Matera the previous week when she had accidentally locked herself out of her apartment and a neighbour had taken her in for dinner, despite speaking no English. “That night taught me more about Italian hospitality than any guidebook ever could.”
As the stars came out and the bells of Ravello’s cathedral tolled ten, Savannah did something I have not forgotten. She took out a small postcard—a black-and-white photograph of a lemon tree—and wrote a single sentence to a friend back home. She sealed it without reading it aloud. She later told me that she sends one postcard from every new place, not as an obligation but as a trail of breadcrumbs for her own memory. “When I get home, I pin them on a map. They show me where I’ve been, but also where I was becoming.”
The bus ride back to Praiano was dark and winding. Savannah rested her head against the window, her watercolour sketchbook tucked under her arm. She did not check her phone. She did not take a photo. She simply watched the lights of the villages flicker across the water, holding the day inside her like a stone warmed by the sun.
April 24, 2015, was not a landmark day in any global sense. But for Savannah Grace—and for anyone who travels alone with intention—it was a day of small, profound wins: a pastry eaten slowly, a conversation with a lemon farmer, a book read on a quiet beach, a meal shared with a stranger who became a friend. That is the real currency of solo travel. When I think back on that day, I remember the way she folded the sketch into her bag, the way the lemon granita melted on our tongues, the way she said goodnight to the waiter in broken Italian. Those are the moments that stick.
