Ireland
In Spring of 2018 I took my first solo international trip to Ireland. I did meet up with a flight attendant friend for a night when I had my first Dublin Guinness, found a pub with dozens of people playing instruments together and singing loudly along, and attended a late night drag show. My friend went on back to work and I found a hostile to stay in for a few nights. I quickly become buddies with two Canadian girls sharing the bunk next to me and we entertained ourselves that night by finding a pub with a band playing traditional Irish music, where we certainly made tourist fools of ourselves.
On one of my days in Dublin I found myself in a natural history museum and an art museum. Having never in my memory been to museums of that scale alone, I was thrilled to be able to move at a glacial pace since no one was with me to consider. I was shocked to find out that the natural history museum was mostly a huge collection of taxidermy, some so early they're anatomically incorrect which was highly entertaining to me. Peep that whale hanging from the ceiling in the second photo.
The trip forced me out of my comfort zone in some really good ways. One of which was photographing the people around me, some I asked for permission, some I just snapped as I passed. It may seem like not a big deal, but photographing a stranger requires a level of boldness I wasn't sure I possessed but surprised myself with. I also got to visit the Cliffs of Moher via a tour company. At lunch, I stumbled upon another twenty-something girl traveling alone and then she and I found two more girls just like us. We all sat together and laughed at how the only solo travelers on our bus were all women around the same age but no solo guys, all of us apparently carry the same "don't tell me I can't" trait.