Your best first international trip after the last child leaves home should be one of self-discovery and opportunity. So go ahead, make it an adventure that is fully planned with a small group of women where you have your own room and make friends before you even fly. Women Travel Abroad’s Istanbul and Cappadocia trip is one good example. It runs September 5 to 12, 2027, caps the group at ten women, and includes every group meal and the flight between the two cities.
What changes when the last child leaves
For about two decades your calendar ran on school years, practice schedules and other people’s dinner plans. Then the youngest moves into a dorm or a first apartment, and the house goes quiet. The time is yours now, and so is the question of what to do with it.
Freedom is often not the first feeling. The quiet can feel strange, even for women who loved raising a family and are proud of the adults they launched. That reaction makes sense. When your days, your friendships and your sense of purpose were organized around your children, their leaving opens a real gap.
A trip abroad planned around your own interests is one of the best uses of that gap. You have spent years choosing destinations by school breaks and what the kids would eat. Choose this one for yourself.
Why solo travel feels harder now
Plenty of women have wanted to travel alone for years. After the kids leave, the picture shifts. A table for one in a beautiful restaurant, or a morning in a foreign city with no one to talk to can feel lonelier than staying home.
The alternative most people picture is a coach tour with 40 strangers and a guide holding a flag. After years of fitting into everyone else’s schedule, that isn’t the answer either.
Women Travel Abroad keeps every group between 6 and 10 women. At that size you learn every name, and nobody gets left at the back of a museum line. On the Turkey trip, the group meets its local guide on the first evening in Istanbul and walks to a welcome dinner together. Over 95% of WTA travelers book alone, so arriving by yourself is what nearly everyone does.
The single supplement question
If you’ve priced a tour or a cruise as one person, you’ve met the single supplement: a surcharge for having a double room to yourself. In JourneyWoman’s March 2025 report, “Invisible No More,” 78% of women over 50 named it their top barrier to travel.
Women Travel Abroad doesn’t charge one. Every traveler gets a private room in a boutique hotel. The Turkey trip’s listed price, $6,895 for seven nights, is already the single-occupancy price. In Cappadocia, that room is in a cave hotel.
How to plan your first international trip as an empty nester
Pick the pace before the place
Decide how much you want to walk each day, then choose the destination. WTA rates every trip for physical activity. Turkey is Level 4, Active, with up to 4 to 5 miles on a full touring day across stairs, inclines and mixed surfaces. As another example of levels, look no further than our Australia itinerary. It is Level 3, Moderate, with walking tours of 2 to 3 miles and up to two hours on your feet at a time.
Make sure to think it through. If a day covering Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace on foot sounds like a good day, choose Turkey. If you’d rather spread your energy across a winery visit, a rainforest railway and a boat day on the reef, look at Australia.
WTA women sitting down for a bite in Sydney
Keep the first trip to about a week
Make your first trip 8 to 10 days. Turkey is 8 days and 7 nights; Australia is 10 days and 9 nights. That is enough time to get past jet lag and settle into the group, and short enough to feel manageable the first time you leave home without your family.
If you want more time, add it at the end. Turkey offers an optional three-night extension to the Aegean Coast, with guided visits to Ephesus and Pamukkale, for $2,595. A Travel Host doesn’t accompany the extension, but local guides and transportation are included.
Start closer to home
For a first trip, choose Turkey over Australia. The flight from the US is shorter, you only change cities once, and the first four days are in Istanbul, which gives you time to find your footing before the flight to Cappadocia.
Our Australia itinerary goes from March 8 to 17, 2027 and suits a woman who has done long-haul flights before. The trip moves from Melbourne to Cairns to Sydney with two internal flights. It pays for that with kangaroos and koalas at Moonlight Sanctuary, the little penguins coming ashore on Phillip Island, and a full day snorkeling off Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef.
Know the payment schedule before you book
A $400 nonrefundable deposit holds your spot. After that, pay at least $400 on the first of each month, and pay the balance in full 90 days before departure. You can request a 50% refund up to six months before the trip starts. Within six months, there is no refund.
That last rule is why travel insurance matters. Ask insurers specifically about a Cancel for Any Reason plan.
Check what isn’t included
International airfare isn’t included on either trip. For Turkey, fly into Istanbul Airport. On the last day, you fly from Cappadocia back to Istanbul, so book your flight home after 3 p.m. local time. For Australia, you arrive in Melbourne and depart from Sydney, so book an open-jaw ticket.
On the Turkey trip, daily breakfast, lunch and dinner are included, along with the internal flight, airport transfer, hammam visit, Bosphorus cruise and cooking class. Australia includes daily breakfast and dinner plus six lunches.
Leave room for free time
Every trip builds in time on your own. In Istanbul, it’s the afternoon of day 4, after a morning at a historic hammam once dedicated to Sultan Süleyman’s queen. In Sydney, day 9 is entirely free. You won’t spend free time wondering what to do, because the group plans it together weeks before departure.
How your group becomes a group before you fly
Women Travel Abroad prepares every group through four touchpoints at 90, 60, 35 and 30 days before departure, so you know the women you’re traveling with before you land.
90 days out, you join a video call with only your group and your Travel Hosts. You hear why each woman picked this trip, and your Travel Hosts cover flights, visas and what to sort out before you arrive. On the Turkey itinerary, your Travel Host is Yolima Carr, a horticulturalist from Colombia who has lived in Spain.
60 days out, you get a packing list for your destination and a video showing how to pack carry-on only. Follow it, and you’ll move from Istanbul to Cappadocia without waiting at a baggage carousel.
35 days out, you’re invited to a private WhatsApp group for your trip, along with options for your free time. This is where women start making plans for that free afternoon in Istanbul, or deciding who is getting up for the optional hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia.
30 days out, your Travel Hosts walk the group through the itinerary hour by hour on a call and answer every remaining question.
A traveler from Durham, North Carolina, described this process in her TripAdvisor review of her Egypt trip. She wrote that from the open Q&A call through “the Zoom updates to meet the other women, everything was handled professionally.”
Travel built around what interests you
Many women in this stage have spent years putting their own interests last. A trip designed around learning and making things is a quick way to find them again.
On day two in Istanbul, the group takes a ceramics class with a women’s cooperative. In Avanos, on the way to Cappadocia, you meet a family that has run its pottery business for seven generations. On the last afternoon, women from a local cooperative teach you to cook a four-course regional menu before the farewell dinner.
The conversations at those dinners are about what you saw that day. School districts and soccer schedules don’t come up anymore.
The empty nest is an invitation
The years you spent raising a family built patience, perspective and a real ability to connect with people. You still have all of it. Now you get to spend it on yourself!
When you’re ready to choose your first trip, browse the 2027 trips and compare dates, pace and price.
Off, off, and away in Turkey