Burnt Out

So many people love to travel, and I've met quite a few who say traveling alone is the absolute best. I've also met people who don't enjoy traveling alone. I absolutely love traveling and was looking forward to my month trip where I could go see more of Spain and do whatever I wanted to do. Needless to say, I was majorly surprised when a week into this trip I found myself feeling completely miserable. I've wanted to go home since I left Santiago and today I finally realized why. It's not because I'm homesick, which yes I'm homesick but it's not a bad feeling. I don't enjoy traveling alone. I quite honestly cannot see the point in traveling alone. No one is around to enjoy the views with you or make silly comments about the places you go to. There isn't someone there to cheer you up on a bad day or make sure you're eating since sometimes you forget that eating is important. Traveling to me is all about the shared experiences not just seeing places on your own and meeting strangers. While I enjoy myself slightly more hanging out with the people I meet at the hostels, it's not the same. They don't know you already so understand your sarcasm or any of your emotions or feelings. It's just basic level knowledge and I don't find that basic level enjoyable enough to fully enjoy the experience. Every time you move to a new hostel, you start from scratch with the people there. You could find someone that's fun to hang out with or you could be left on your own in that town. You have to start over though. All the basic information that the last strangers from the hostel wanted to know the strangers from the new hostel want to know as well. It's like living on repeat with different surroundings and that's not enjoyable. I love hearing their stories yes, and I'm sure they love hearing other strangers' stories as well, but I only want to repeat so many times "I just finished a semester in Santiago studying Spanish and am travels around Spain now, what about you?" "Yes, I was just there you should see blah blah blah when you go."

Traveling alone for me means that someone is looking for something relaxing to do and just wants sometime alone to relax. I can relax at home though. I don't want to relax while traveling, I want to go out and see everything, but traveling alone makes me not want to see everything. Traveling alone makes me feel guilty and stressed out when I decide that I'm staying in for the day because my stomach is upset or I started reading a really good book. I'm not relaxed. Relaxing is Netflix and reading and just being in familiar surroundings for me. Sure the parks I go to here are a relaxing environment, but I'd rather relax at at park at home. Here I want someone to walk through parks with and make little comments about the annoying birds trying to fly straight at our faces or complain about the dogs being allowed to shit everywhere and no one cleans it up. I want the deeper conversations that you probably shouldn't have with strangers who just met you, like all those subjects that have a taboo on them but you talk about with your friends anyway because friendships know no taboos. 

With 16 days left of alone time and 7 more places to go, I've come to the decision that I hate traveling alone and would not like to do so again. I want to change my plans so I have fewer places to travel to now. I don't want to go to south Spain anymore. I'd rather save the south of Spain for a later time when I'm not completely miserable being on my own and go with someone who I can enjoy exploring Spain with. As much as I love Spain, I can't love it enough to find traveling alone through it enjoyable. So that being said, I'm going to just go to Madrid for a while after Salamanca instead of going to Málaga, Murcia, and Valencia. I burned myself out on traveling and it's just not worth it to keep going... Since I'm about 3 days from my trip to Málaga, I had a hard time finding places available in Madrid for the week and a half or so that I rescheduled. I am now hostel hopping in one town!