Sometimes the best travel partner is a (almost) complete stranger! I met Lowry the day before our trip to Lake Como on a walking tour of Milan. After spending the entire day of the walking tour together eating, shopping, and listening to jazz, I decided to join her on her trip to Lake Como the next day.

Here are three of the lessons I learned from travelling to Lake Como with someone I had just met:

Be flexible

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I’m the sort of person that likes to make a schedule and stick to it. But especially when you’re travelling, schedules don’t always work out the way you want, and it might even be better that way. We had been up pretty late the night before listening to jazz, so we didn’t manage to make it to the train station in time for the train we had planned. I got to the station first and offered to buy us tickets. But that didn’t quite work either. The kiosks at the station didn’t tell me what the difference between the available routes were so I had no idea which one to select. Luckily, Lowry knew of an app that made it easy to buy tickets and we were on our way only 30 minutes behind schedule.

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We went to Lake Como with no plan other than to drop Lowry’s suitcase off at her hostel and to get some food. Usually I like my schedule to be planned and packed when I travel but it ended up being so much more relaxing to wander around Como without an agenda. We were able to fully admire the beautiful town and to take some great pictures!

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You don’t know until you ask

I don’t know about you, but I always assume that what’s written on the menu is final and am always afraid to ask about gluten free options. But Lowry went up to the waiter at all of the restaurants we passed to ask if they had anything that was gluten free. We walked around for quite a while without any success. Finally, one restaurant told us that they could make me a gluten free mushroom risotto even though it wasn’t on the menu! And it was delicious.

Say yes!

Sometimes it can be scary to say yes to doing something new, especially in a foreign country. But I had the most amazing time travelling to Lake Como with someone I met only the day before and I am so happy that I said yes to joining her for the trip!

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