Luckily, I’m awesome so this hasn’t really happened to me. But it might happen to you, and you want to be prepared with an arsenal of ways to ditch your travel partner domestically or abroad.
Pawn them off on someone else.
Find another traveler that seems more patient and you know, nicer than you are, and convince the two of them could be best friends, or perhaps are soul mates. We’ve all seen Eat Pray Love. Everyone has a Javier Bardem out there, or at least, that’s what you should tell them.
Pretend to be interested in weird stuff.
If you’re in Iceland, just say you’re headed over to The Icelandic Phallological Museum. Otherwise, here’s a list of strange places not a lot of people are going to want to wander off to.
Encourage them to stay there forever.
Ever seen Under The Tuscan Sun? Just tell them they should stay and live in Italy forever. Then bounce to a better destination and block them on Facebook.
Hey, if it worked for Diane Lane it can work for them!
“Leave early.”
Feign some kind of an emergency and fake book a ticket. Those things are pretty easy to Photoshop. Then just bee bop over to Barcelona and maybe avoid posting it to Instagram for awhile.
Pretend like they never really knew you at all.
Go Jason Bourne and tell them you’re escaping some kind of criminal offense back home. Hop on a train dramatically, slowly raising your finger in front of your lips, never to be seen again.
Until you update your status the next day from Prague.
Tell them Harry Potter is real.
…and that you’ve been accepted to Hogwarts. This might involve some animal wrangling of some kind, as well as some elaborate calligraphy, but is the most fun and believable lie of the bunch.
You should also tell them you’re in Slytherin and if they don’t leave you alone, you’re going to perform some kind of dark magic on their luggage and passport.
This is slightly satirical. If you don’t like jokes, hop on over to TripAdvisor where they keep things real.