The best aspect of travelling is to lose yourself in the culture of the place, meeting people, experiencing traditions, tasting local food and enjoying typical activities. Even so, making friends while travelling is actually my favourite part: it makes me feel comfortable in the place I’m visiting, and it helps me to enjoy the whole travel experience.
This is not always easy, but there are some tricks that help me to make friends while travelling, being more sociable and “open minded”.
Join a group tour
Honestly, I used to underestimate the importance of joining group tours during a trip. Tours are so important to be better connected to the place you’re visiting, to explore cultural aspects, social issues, food, music dance, and so on. They are perfect for any kind of interest, and in almost any city you will find good tours focused on a specific aspect, where you will meet people and share your interests with them.
To make friends while travelling, I particularly recommend free walking tours, a pretty new way to explore a city joining a local guide and a little group of tourists for free. This kind of tours are perfect to learn interesting anecdotes about the city, but also to meet people from all over the world and – why not? – make new friends!
Stay in a hostel
I’m not a huge fan of hostels, but I have to be objective: when it comes to make friends, they are probably the best choice ever.
Being so close to the others, even sharing very personal spaces, makes people be more “open” and friendly. To stay in a hostel doesn’t only mean to share a bedroom.
Even having a coffee alone in the living room could easily became a social experience. You will always be surrounded by young travellers, and probably also involved in big dinners or other activities, where you will surely make new friends.
Choose the right app
In the technology era, even an app could help you to make friends while travelling. My favourite one is definitely Travello. In addition to share your travel stories and photos, on Travello you can join a huge community of travellers. The app gives you the possibility to connect with people near you, to chat with them, to join groups and to take part to meet ups all over the world. But that’s not all. My favourite part is that you can add your future planned trips on your profile and, magically, the app will show you all the other users that will be in the same place during the same period, so that you can contact them and plan a coffee together. Isn’t it amazing? 🙂
In my experience, making friends is probably one of the best part of travelling. As you can see it’s not even so complicated to meet new people: you just need to smile, open your mind and go for adventures! 🙂
Which is your favourite way to make friends while travelling? Do you have any other tips or recommendations to share with me? Please let me know in the comments! 🙂
*This is a sponsored post for Travello. All opinions, as always, are my own.*
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