TRAVEL NEWS
From Venice, Tuscany to Tobago there are plenty of places to head to during the off season, discovers Chris Leadbeater
Battle fewer tourists at the must-sees by visiting these countries during the off season – so easy on the wallet too.
Cambodia is not the only destination where a visit outside high season can be a rewarding experience. You can find excellent value, enjoy crowd-free sights and generally enjoy a much more authentic experience of many destinations when they are free of tourists. Here are 10 more to consider:
TOBAGO Go in October
Atlantic hurricane season stalks the Caribbean and its otherwise tranquil beaches at any point between June and November. Tobago, though, has a relative amount of immunity to this seasonal situation. And yet prices in October are as low as anywhere else in the region.
VENICE Go in March
No Italian city is a greater victim of overtourism than Venice, especially in July and August. Go in winter, however, and – as long as you skip the costumed mayhem of Carnevale (Feb 16-Mar 5 in 2019) – you will find a far quieter, calmer take on La Serenissima. True, the wind may whip in off the lagoon, and St Mark’s Square may be lashed by rain, but with the shadows lengthening down lamplit alleys, this version of the city is also decidedly more romantic. THE MALDIVES Go in August
Popular opinion has it that the Indian Ocean’s most celebrated archipelago bathes in sunlight through the year. However the generalisation fails to factor in the wet season from May to December. But in August the sun breaks through the clouds – and prices are still lower.
TUSCANY Go in October
Tuscany has long been a fixture of tourists’ dreams in July – when sunlight flashes on the windows of hilltop citadels such as San Gimignano, and the evenings stretch out warm and fragrant. But my, a week in a villa near Siena can feel like an expats’ convention as a result. The same cannot be said of October, when everyone has gone home and the region is devoting itself to autumn.
SICILY Go in April
Like Venice, Italy’s largest island is best spurned in July and August when the crowd and the heat add an extra level of oppression. Better to target more affable April and ignore the notoriously busy capital entirely in favour of the southerly province of Ragusa – and Modica. Not only is this lovely town framed by the Hyblaean Mountains, making it much cooler; it sings with Baroque architecture, a Unesco-listed legacy of its recovery from the 1693 earthquake.
SEVILLE Go in July
The same heat warning might well be applied to Andalucia. But while the city is certainly a place where 35C and up is not an uncommon occurrence, the region around it has long learned to cope with the heat. Pale canvas drapes, hung at roof level along the likes of Calles Sierpes and Rioja, shield shoppers in Seville from the madness of midday – while summer is also the perfect season to test the sheltered courtyards and breezy designs which made the Alcazar (in Seville) and the Alhambra (in Granada) so coolly habitable when they were the palaces of Moorish rule 600 years ago.
RUSSIA Go in December
Winters in the planet’s biggest country can be fierce but that does not mean you should file the latter in the folder marked “impossible”. There is something evocative about Russia in the cold months. Of course, if you visit St Petersburg or Moscow in, say, December, you lose the “White Nights” which make the former (in particular) seem so alive in June. But what you shed in vibrancy you gain in photogenic vistas – piled snow and ice giving grand onion-domes and epic churches a fairy-tale sheen.
TANZANIA Go in November
The Great Migration is one of the globe’s most remarkable wildlife spectacles – the search for fresh grass that sees some 2.5 million wildebeest, zebra and gazelle push north-east through Serengeti National Park and on across the border into Kenya and the Maasai Mara. The drama starts in May, and hits its most exciting chapter in July with the fraught crossings of the crocodile-laced Grumeti and Mara rivers – a scene of nature at its rawest that attracts tourists in droves, with prices to match. However, come November, and the wise safari aficionado waits for the animals to return south into Tanzania – when the crowd has thinned.
QUEENSLAND Go in May
One of the most persuasive reasons for enduring the long flight to Australia is that it lets you swap the European winter for the Southern Hemisphere summer. So why would you go in May, when the best of the weather has gone? Because, in the case of Queensland, the difference is relatively small - the state capital Brisbane basks in 29C warmth in January, but can still manage 24C in May. And the further north you go, the better it gets – Cairns, the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, keeps things tropical around the calendar.
NEW ENGLAND Go in April
So compelling is the image of the “Fall” in the region that it can seem implausible to visit New England in a month when it has not upended the ruddier end of the seasonal paintbox all over its tree line. And yet, the same foliage-lined lanes and pastoral landscapes are just as alluring amid the optimism of spring, when the mood is of green-shooted renewal rather than a golden farewell – and the roads are noticeably emptier, too.