The first dinner alone is the whole trip

Ask a hundred people what stops them booking a retreat alone and most won't say safety, cost or choosing the wrong place. They'll describe one image: a table for one, on the first night, with nobody to talk to and everybody looking.

Here is what actually happens. Nobody looks. Retreat tables are the easiest tables on earth because around 40 percent of retreat guests arrive alone, and every one of them remembers their own first night. The person across from you is a stranger for approximately eleven minutes.

The script, if you want one: sit at the communal table (you can always leave), ask the person nearest you where they flew in from, and let the second question take care of itself. Travel questions are the one topic every person at a retreat can answer generously.

On every Sola route the first dinner is a hosted welcome dinner. The host seats people, starts the conversations and lets them go where they want. You will never stand in a doorway holding a plate wondering where to sit. That, we think, is worth designing for.

And if you want a table for one that night, or every night, you take it. A table you can join, or not: it's the second line of our Solo Standard for a reason.