Elena Marchesini
Solo female travel, with the safety-first common sense of a woman who has done it wrong first
About Elena
Elena writes about solo female travel — the kind that reads like a good novel and gets you home safely. She spent three years living between Lisbon, coastal Kenya and Sardinian villages after leaving corporate law in Milan at 28, and now covers the destinations that reward women who arrive alone.
Elena was a corporate M&A associate in Milan until burnout arrived on a Tuesday morning at 07:14. She resigned by end of week, spent 18 months on Kenya's Watamu coast in a beach house that cost less than her Milan Wi-Fi bill, and never quite came back. She now lives between Lisbon and wherever the writing takes her — usually somewhere with a working port, an old town, and at least one restaurant where the owner remembers her name.
Elena's adventures
Signature adventures — narrative travel stories with real routes, real properties, real numbers.
Sardinia when the tourists leave — where I actually stayed
The last ferry leaves Olbia at 22:00 in October and the island exhales. This is where I actually stayed — and the chef who kept the kitchen open past midnight because I was writing at his bar.
The Kenyan coast where I wrote a book — and slept with the door open
Three weeks on the Kenyan coast where I finished a manuscript, learned to free-dive, and slept with the door open every night. Here's the neighbourhood.
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How Elena writes
Tone: Warm, gently curious, protective without being maternal. Reads like a slightly older sister who has already made all the mistakes for you.
“What I would have told my 27-year-old self”
“The point where the town stops performing for tourists”
“If you're travelling alone, this is where you actually sleep”
“Nothing about this is complicated once you're there”