For some, solo travel can be a daunting venture. For Golden Globe Award-winning actress and haircare mogul Tracee Ellis Ross, it’s one of life’s greatest pleasures. And now she has a show about it. Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross just debuted on the Roku Channel, and over three episodes the Girlfriends and Black-ish star takes viewers on her journeys through Marrakesh, Morocco; Marbella, Spain, and Playa del Carmen, Mexico.

Thanks to a mix of documentary-style footage and up-close-and-personal video diaries, her show feels more intimate than most travel productions. “Solo vacation, but kinda you’re with me,” she tells viewers with a laugh at the start of the second episode. And she’s right. We’re there as she (over)packs, gets food poisoning, calls home to Mom (“Mom” here being Diana Ross, of course), and connects with locals every place she goes. Ross shows us how she likes to “follow her heart, go to beautiful places, wear pretty clothes, and enjoy [her] own company.”

Ross spoke with Thrillist associate editor Annie Harrigan about the joys of traveling alone, her best tips for taking that first solo vacation, and what she always packs for a trip.

Thrillist: What’s your favorite solo travel memory?

Tracee Ellis Ross: I have so many. I took my first solo trip at 24 or 25 and I’ve been doing it ever since. I think there’s all different kinds of solo travel people: solo travel for adventure people, solo travel to meet people, or people like me who solo travel to find a sense of relaxation. I just really love the experience of it and so I don’t know that I could pick a favorite. It was a really joyful experience to be able to figure out how to share that very intimate experience of solo travel in a show environment and how to create a kind of video diary of sorts. I really enjoyed going to these three cities. So those would be my favorite memories: Marrakesh, Marbella, and Maya Coba.

How did you get into solo travel?

I was doing a show on Lifetime called The Dish, and I was making the most money I’d ever made, and I was like, “I want to go on a trip.” I had seen in Conde Nast Traveler the Pink Sands resort in The Bahamas and I was like, “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life and I want to go.” I don’t remember flying there. I don’t remember all of that part of it, but I remember the room I stayed in. It was like a little casita on its own. I think it was the first place I ever tried a cocktail. There was some sort of umbrella in it. I remember the sand was pink. It was the most beautiful place I’de ever been, and I had such a good experience. I didn’t feel lonely. I remember packing my beautiful things and it just worked, and so I’ve done it ever since.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to solo travel but is nervous about it?

I’ve got some real good tips for you. OK, so the first thing I would say is if you’ve never solo traveled and you want to, but you’re nervous about it, try going to dinner by yourself on a Wednesday night when the restaurant opens. If you can accomplish that with no problem, go on a Friday or a Saturday night when the restaurant is full of couples and groups of people. Go by yourself and see how you feel. Make a reservation, but go up to that hostess table and say party of one. If you feel good about that, but you’re still nervous about planning a trip, go on a trip to someplace that you’ve already been with people so you know what it’s like. Same hotel, wherever it is you went, go by yourself, but you’ll know where you’re going and see how that feels. You also could tack a couple of days onto a trip that you already have planned with people.

Any tips for choosing a trip?

Ask yourself what kind of solo trip you want. Do you want adventure? Do you want to meet other people? Do you want to be in a resort? Do you want to go on a museum tour? Do you want to go on a food tour? Do you want to go shopping? Decide what you want. Perhaps it’s the kind of trip I take, which is really about the luxury of being by yourself—following your heart around, slowing your pace down, and enjoying your own company. And then once you know what kind of trip you want, you can plan it from there. And then I always say to people, particularly because solo travel can leave you more vulnerable than other travel, ask yourself what parts of your identity are joyful, beautiful, empowered parts of you that might be perceived as a vulnerability out in a foreign place. If you are LGBTQ, a woman, Black, whatever it may be, that might be perceived as a vulnerability. Do your due diligence to the best of your ability to make sure it’s a place that will receive you with open arms so that you can enjoy your experience to the fullest.

What is the first thing you do when you arrive at a new destination?

I like to bring Sono Wipes and the first thing I do when I get somewhere is I like to wipe it down. I wipe down the bathtub, the floor, the shower, the sink, the toilet, the bedside table. I also always bring my own pillow and I like to unpack when I get where I’m going. I travel with a lot of luggage. My philosophy on packing is B.I.A. Bring it all. So that being said, that’s part of the ritual of when I get somewhere.

One of the other things I love to do is get a lymphatic drainage massage. It helps the transition into the place. I love to take a bath. It gets you off that airplane and in water and your body can settle. But other than that, it kind of depends on where I’m going and what I’m doing.

Auden is gurgling on a picnic blanket when I meet her and her mum, Kate Ivory, in a local park.

Tower Bridge looms behind, the midday sun glinting off its gilded tips. It’s a postcard-perfect setting, but I imagine at this point, it’s just another landmark on a long list for this well-travelled seven-month-old, who has seen a huge arc of Europe already.

The mother and baby have just returned from an epic rail voyage across the Continent, a journey that took them from their home in east London to King’s Cross St Pancras and finished in Pisa, stopping in Germany, Austria, Slovenia and northern Italy on the way. In all, their route took 25 days.

When most new parents would rather, understandably, stay at home and work out how to keep their brand new human alive, single mother Kate booked an Interrail pass, loaded up the pram and took her first-born on a debut tour of the EU. So what made her do it?

Kate’s practical advice for globetrotting parents

• Cram that pram: You need a solid pram that’s going to get you about. Make sure it’s serviced before you go, and everything fits on it, so you don’t have to carry a single thing. If you need to put your baby in a sling, or get to a train fast, it’s much easier.

• Route: Plan the journey so you know roughly where you’re going, but leave room for flexibility. The Interrail pass lets you change trains up to 20 minutes before departure.

• Age: Auden was six months old when we left and turned seven while we were away. I noticed how much harder it was at the end of the trip, because she was crawling more. You could do it with an older baby, but it would look like a different trip.

• Accommodation: Be clear on what you want; for me, that was air-con and a cot. I always looked for places near the station, so I could put my bag in the station lockers, enjoy the city for the day, and then hop on a train out in the evening.

• You do you: You don’t have to tailor your itinerary to a baby. We went to a palace with gilded ceilings in Turin, and Auden was fascinated, staring up at it. She loved the things I loved.

• Back yourself: It’s normal to worry, but just trust your instincts. Also, there’s a world of lovely people out there who will genuinely help you.

“Travelling the world after uni changed my entire outlook on life”, explains 38-year-old Kate, who works in advertising.

“When I went on mat leave, I knew I’d never have this block of free time again. I wanted Auden to come into the world with her eyes open and experience different things. Plus, we were about to start weaning, so it was a good time to go. Her first food could be pasta in Italy!”

From pasta in Italy to schnitzel in Austria, and all between breastfeeding, Kate filled Auden’s baby passport pages as much as her stomach. Even more astoundingly, she did it solo.

“I wanted Auden to come into the world with her eyes open and experience different things”

“I’ve got friends, family and a partner, but I chose to have Auden on my own. I wanted us to have high-quality bonding time, just us,” Kate explains.

“Interrailing is a good way to experience lots of different things at once without boarding a series of flights. Plus, from a money perspective, it’s budget-friendly. I bought the Global Pass (£320), which gives you seven days of travel to use within a month,” she says.

With so many possible destinations and routes on offer — 33 countries are covered in the Global Pass, including overnight trains — I wonder if working out the route was the first challenge.

“I used ChatGPT to plan the route”

Kate turned to the AI tool, keeping her prompts specific, with requests for pram-accessible trains and quieter departures to avoid rush hour. Mostly, the responses were helpful, she says, but not always infallible. “There were a few times here and there where ChatGPT told me to get a train, but there wasn’t one — only buses.”

Does a trip with an infant in tow require military-grade logistics? “We only had the first two nights and the first train booked”, Kate reveals. “After that, I booked the next leg as we went. It keeps things exciting, it keeps you free. If you arrive somewhere and think, I don’t like it here, you can just get up and go somewhere else.”

“Most countries are way more baby-friendly than the UK, and people I encountered on the trip were so helpful”

“I didn’t worry about safety at all”

Perhaps it’s this free-spiritedness and iron confidence that makes Kate fearless. When I begin to ask if she worried about safety, she tells me it didn’t cross her mind before I’ve even finished my sentence.

“We live in London!” she chuckles. “Most countries are way more baby-friendly than the UK, and people I encountered on the trip were so helpful”.

Though there were some exceptions: “When I crossed into Italy, it was like, “Ooh beautiful baby! Okay, bye!” and they left me with the pram at the top of the stairs,” says Kate.

“To be honest, I didn’t worry at all,” Kate says as Auden wrestles with the picnic blanket next to us. “Lots of people worried about it for me. They’d ask, ‘Why are you going?’ ‘Have you really thought about this?’ ‘You’re going to be on your own, where will you stay?’”

So where do you stay with a baby when you’re travelling on a budget? Not hostels? Actually, yes. “I just booked a private room instead of a dorm, because honestly, who wants to share with a baby?” says Kate.

“I tried to get cots, but if not, we just shared a bed. The only thing I wanted – which I wouldn’t have cared about had I gone on my own – was air-con, because it was so hot.”

Other beds for the night included local hotels or Airbnbs. With overnight trains an option, Kate and Auden tried that too. “Our longest train ride was seven hours. After that, I swore we’d never do more than four hours at a time,” Kate admits.

“She didn’t love it, I didn’t love it. Was it worth the stress to catch an overnight train? “We were going to go directly from Munich to Ljubliana, but I changed the plan to stop in Salzburg to break up the journey, and it ended up being one of the best bits of the trip,” she says.

Along with Austria, Kate’s highlights included hiking up an Alpine mountain with Auden, taking in the view from her baby sling. “I wanted to take my proper hiking backpack, but I just couldn’t carry it along with the pram. We had one backpack between us that could fit under the pram, another little bag for her stuff, and that’s it, because I needed to be able to fold the pram up.”

Anyone who has holidayed with kids in tow knows that travelling light isn’t an option. Kate stripped her travel wardrobe right back to the basics. As for Auden, “It was 80 per cent her stuff. I vacuum-packed everything down into our backpack.” She bought essentials like nappies and wipes as they went, cleverly buying a pack after a long leg so she wasn’t weighed down by carrying a huge supply.

For food and activities like museum entries, Kate stuck to a bootstrap budget of €20 a day, in addition to accommodation, which was about €60 a night. It helped that her Interrail pass had been pre-purchased.

Kate’s recommended baby essentials

I’ve got this UV blanket that has magnets on it, so Auden couldn’t get sunburnt. I’d wrap her up like a burrito in it.

The Bugaboo pram was amazing, because you can put everything on it and clip things to it. I was umming and erring about getting it, but the strain I put on it saw us through the trip.

The Rockit because it rocks the pram by itself and helps Auden sleep. And a little bag of toys so she could play. She doesn’t need much at six months.

“I was strict, but anything that didn’t get spent would roll over to the next day’s budget, so there were funds to play with”. With Auden still breastfeeding, Kate would give her small snacks to try from farmers’ markets.

“If you ask, in Italy they’ll sometimes do a baby aperitivo; a plate of things she could eat – breadsticks, small bits of melon, things like that,” explains Kate.

It all sounds very Eat, Pray, Love: the baby edition. Surely it can’t have all been plain sailing? “There were a couple of times in Slovenia, where the trains kept getting like cancelled or switched to buses” Kate recalls.

“Then you’re trying to get on the rail replacement, put your pram down, get your backpack in. It was stressful, but I enjoyed us getting through the gnarly bits together,” she adds. “In the future, when Auden doubts herself, I’ll remind her we went around Europe when she was six months, so she can do anything. This trip is now part of the fabric of us.”

“I could have gone for another couple of weeks. I just ran out of money. And pants.”

The Slovenian episode also had a silver lining: a new friend. “We met Elenka, 82, on a train leaving Salzburg, and ended up spending the day travelling to Ljubljana together. When we had to switch to replacement buses, this 82-year-old charged off with Auden to hold our seats, throwing her suitcase out of the window for me to stow away with the pram, yelling in broken English as she went”.

When they eventually arrived in the city, Elenka walked Kate and Auden to their hostel, and they swapped numbers. Later, Kate found out Elenka had booked her dinner in Ljubljana — and had already picked up the bill.

They probably wouldn’t have crossed paths if it weren’t for the baby. “She’s 82, so what do we have in common?” Kate agrees. “But that’s the magic of travel”.

Other friends included an Irish couple in Trieste who were in town for a James Joyce convention, one of Kate’s favourite poets. “They invited us along, so we ended up joining a James Joyce festival for the day,” Kate laughs.

“I just don’t want her to be scared of the world”, Kate explains, bouncing Auden in her lap. “When we were in Strasburg, a fire engine screamed past, and she, naturally, burst into tears. But later on, a loud helicopter went past and she looked up at me for reassurance and then smiled.

“She’s learning that things aren’t scary just because they’re loud. I’ll always have her back. As my friend Leah said, ‘Isn’t it nice that she wakes up in a new place and sees all these new things, but then she looks at you, and she knows she’s home?’”

Of the trip, Kate says “It was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve travelled to so many places, with work, and in life. There’s something so magical about doing it with Auden. I’m seeing it through her eyes.”

“Honestly, I could have gone for another couple of weeks. I just ran out of money. And pants.”