Meeting people while traveling solo is one of those things everyone says is easy and nobody tells you how to actually do.
You read "just put yourself out there" approximately forty times before your trip. You arrive. You put yourself out there. You sit at a hostel common room scrolling your phone while two German guys play cards and a couple from France speaks only to each other. Great.
The truth is that meeting people while traveling solo doesn't happen by accident. It happens in specific situations, at specific times, with a little bit of structure behind it. Once you understand that, it gets a lot easier.
Why solo travel feels lonely at first
There's a window, usually the first 24 to 48 hours in a new city, where solo travel feels genuinely isolating. You don't have your bearings yet. Everyone around you seems to already have friends. The city is loud and unfamiliar and you're not sure where to go or what to do.
This is normal. It's also temporary. But it helps to know what actually closes that window faster.
What doesn't work
Hostel common rooms, despite what every travel blog says, are hit or miss. Some nights they're full of people who want to talk. Some nights they're not. Waiting for something to happen in a common room is passive and passive doesn't work when you're in a city for three days.
Dating apps are obvious but they filter by romantic interest, not by "I want someone to explore this city with tonight."
Bar hopping alone sounds adventurous. It mostly means standing at a bar holding a drink wondering if you look as awkward as you feel.
What actually works
Structure. Shared experience. A reason to talk to someone that isn't just proximity.
Walking tours work because everyone is moving together toward something and conversation happens naturally. sangria workshops for the same reason. Any activity where you're doing something alongside strangers lowers the social barrier immediately.
Pub crawls, specifically good ones with actual guides and a real group, work better than almost anything else at night. And nighttime is when solo travel feels loneliest, which makes this worth paying attention to.
The structure of a pub crawl does something specific: it gives you a group before you need one. You don't arrive at a bar alone hoping to meet someone. You arrive as part of something that's already moving. The social dynamics are completely different. People talk to each other because they're all in the same situation, they are travelers in a new city, ready to have a good night, nobody knows anyone yet.
That last part matters. Nobody knows anyone yet. You're not the only solo traveler in the group. You're one of many, and that levels the playing field instantly.
In Madrid specifically
Madrid is one of the best cities in Europe to travel solo if you know where to put yourself. The nightlife starts late, runs until morning, and the city has a genuine culture of going out that isn't just for tourists.
The problem is that Madrid nightlife is also confusing if you don't know it. Where do you go at midnight? Which areas are worth it? Which bars are full of locals and which are tourist traps with €14 cocktails?
A pub crawl solves all of that in one move. You get the group, the local knowledge, the right venues, and the social momentum of moving through a city at night with people who are all there to have a good time.
The Madrid Pub Crawl operated by The PubCrawl Company runs every night, starts at Calle Cañizares 6 near Sol, costs €20, and includes five free shots and fast-track entry to the club at the end. More importantly, it puts you in a group of international travelers at exactly the moment of the night when being alone feels worst.
If you're in Madrid and you want to meet people, this is the most direct route.
The honest version
You will not meet your best travel friends by waiting for them to appear. You meet them by being somewhere specific, at a specific time, where the situation makes talking to strangers normal instead of weird.
That's all our pub crawl is. A situation engineered to make meeting people easy. The rest: the shots, the bars, the club, is just the backdrop.
BOOK HERE
One Night. One Crew. Epic Memories