Solo sightseeing

New Orleans was alive on an overcast day – back before Katrina blew in and beat down its spirit.

I was standing at a corner on Royal Street, wondering whether to take a right or a left. William Faulkner wrote his first novel in this town; I wanted to go to Faulkner House and breathe where he’d breathed. But the exotic antiques shops right beside me were filled with museum-quality pieces, things I’d probably never see again.

As it’s prone to do, New Orleans made the decision for me. A harmonica screamed, so I started walking and stopped where an old man was playing, his Fender amp and a mike right in the middle of the street.

After that, the music decided where I went. Clubs, streets, Jackson Square.

It was one of the best trips I ever took – because I was alone.

Alone, I don’t have to decide anything in a hurry. I can sit for as long as I want on a beach or a mountain or a rooftop patio and absorb where I am. Eat when I’m hungry, drink when I’m thirsty or ignore both in favor of a long walk so I can see more of the place I came to see.

If I want to save money and stay in a dumpy New Orleans rental with a bad heater, I can. If I want to lock myself away in a remote adobe, also with a bad heater, on a spiritual journey to the desert, I can do that, too. If I choose to take my dog like John Steinbeck did in “Travels With Charley,” it’s my and Steinbeck’s business.

Solitude can mean freedom – but it may come with a price.

Hours later that same November day, I was on Magazine Street, drenched and cold and afraid. The rains came when the sun went down, and water rose knee-deep in places. I had loads of shopping bags, so bright and pretty during the day, so silly and dangerous now in the dark downpour.

To my left, art galleries and hip shops were closed for the day. To my right, just across the street, it might as well have been a different city. When I walked into a convenience store, the man stared at me, suspicious, and made me pay 25 cents to use the phone.

Street folks congregated, and a guy tried to sell me a fern he’d obviously stolen from someone’s front porch down the block. I called and called for a taxi, but none came for me.

I don’t usually scare easily in strange places, but I figured the fern guy was about to realize he could make a lot more off my bags full of Christmas gifts than he could with that beat-up plant. So I went to wait outside in the rain.

Time after time, cabs came and kept right on going. Finally, I saw one plowing through the water and just ran for it, grabbed the door when he slowed down. The guy stopped, said he was off-duty. But he took pity on me (and probably knew he’d get paid well, and off the books). He took me back to the French Quarter.

And it was still one of the best trips I ever took. Because I was alone.

I learned to pay attention when the guidebook says the city can change from safe to unsafe in a matter of blocks and to never get caught in the dark in certain areas.

I never thought much about traveling alone as a woman, whether it was safe or bad or good – it seems natural to me. But for those with trepidations, Teresa Rodriguez Williamson is here to tell you anything is possible.

The San Francisco entrepreneur runs www.tangodiva.com and has written a book called “Fly Solo: The 50 Best Places on Earth for a Girl to Travel Alone” (Perigree Trade, 368 pages, $15.95).

Love gone bad and her friends’ busy schedules drove Williamson to travel much of the world alone. She had an epiphany while she was aboard a 757 with one blown engine (they only have two) on a return flight from Peru.

After the engine went out, she says, “The cabin filled with smoke; it was just like a movie. Alarms were going off in the bathrooms; the crew was running up and down the aisles. I thought, ‘If this is the way I’m gonna die, I’m really disappointed with myself.’ “

So she decided that if she survived, “I was definitely going to do something to empower women and connect women.”

Now Williamson uses her Web site to share with other women her experiences and philosophy about solo travel.

“I think the best is that you really get an opportunity to find out what’s important to you in your life,” she says. “If you want to sleep in, you can sleep in. There’s no haggling over who’s going to pay. You can go at your own pace.

“You have the opportunity to nurture yourself. As women, we forget how important ‘me time’ is.”

Williamson gets into the kind of psychopop womanspeak that can be annoying if not used carefully – she talks about the “inner warrior” and not giving away your power – but she makes it work when it comes to travel. She often counsels common sense and going with your gut.

Which can be important in, for example, a foreign country. So can just plain bravado, I learned in Mexico City.

The airport was crazy. I was having trouble converting dollars to pesos in my head, my Spanish was rusty, the place smelled like stale beer, and nobody was holding a sign with my name on it.

Somebody was supposed to be holding a sign with my name on it. They were going to chauffeur me by Mercedes-Benz to a boutique hotel in the upscale Polanco neighborhood.

I walked past one line of people holding signs several times and didn’t see my name. I found another line of them and walked past that one. Nothing said “Judy Wiley.” Nothing even said Judy. Nobody there was from the Hotel Habita.

So I hauled my luggage to the terminal doors.

I stopped at the first one and said, in Spanish, “At which door would I find someone from the Hotel Habita?” (OK, I said something more like, “Where is the door of the person for Hotel Habita?” but they got the idea.)

Every time, a nice, uniformed man at the door would say “esta persona” would certainly be at a particular door, usually about five more doors down.

I walked the length of the terminal that way before I had enough sense to find an information desk. A woman there located my driver, after a really long time.

He escorted me to the “Mercedes,” an old Mercury Marquis. To make up for the car and the four-hour miscommunication, Carlos told me I could smoke. In fact, he said he’d stop for some tequila and we could have a “fiesta.” I declined the fiesta but lit a cigarette.

A lot of them. We spent about three hours in traffic unlike any I have ever seen in my life.

On the way, Carlos tried to tell me the Hotel Habita was full and I’d have to go to the Sheraton. I’m sure he had some kind of deal going with the Sheraton.

I finally lost it and threw a fit. All my Spanish came back. I threatened him with everything I could think of. I forgot, for a moment, that I was alone with a strange guy in a strange country and that everything I had, including my passport, was in the trunk of his car. He could have booted me out by the side of the road and driven off.

But the fit worked. He shrugged. Made a phone call. And eventually took me to Habita, which was chic, hip, contemporary – and my key was waiting at the desk.