Fall-ing into travel

Why is it that summer is the most popular travel time? I really don’t understand that phenomenon, because all I want to do in the summer is hop from one air-conditioned enclosure to the next.

Beautiful fall scenery in upstate NY, just outside of Cornell

Now, fall travel is a completely different story. As most of this past week of NYC weather proves (excluding the random tornado that swept through Brooklyn on Thursday afternoon), traveling in the fall is simply delightful. A sunny day that is just breezy enough to require a light jacket is the perfect time to stroll down a foreign street gazing at beautiful architecture or simply enjoying your time sitting in a park people watching. And if it happens to start raining, just pop into the nearest coffee shop or museum or whatever other indoor activity grabs your fancy.

I’ve looked into going to London in the summer a few times (not really because I particularly wanted to shvits in another country, but because several friends across the pond have their birthdays in the summer months). Tickets were TWICE the price I paid to go over Thanksgiving a few years ago ... if not THREE times as expensive. I love my friends, but I’m not dishing out $1,000-plus on a ticket that normally should cost around $500 to sit in the same cramped seat for the same 5.5 hours eating the same fairly crappy airplane grub simply because it’s July rather than November. In this humble traveler’s opinion, that’s simply ludicrous.

A frozen lake on the grounds of a castle in Denmark

And because traveling in the summer seems to be so popular with everyone else, it just means that it’ll take you all that much longer to get through security at the airport; be that much harder to hail a cab outside the airport when you get to your destination; and be significantly more crowded at any attraction you’ll inevitably be waiting all day in line for to get into. NOT my idea of a good vacation.

I tend to like to make travel plans more around the mid-February/early March time of the year. I can plan my time off from work around the President’s Day long weekend and therefore conserve on days. I also plan to go places that most people avoid during the winter months — like Denmark. Granted, it wasn’t my best-laid plan to spend a week in an already chilly country during one its coldest months, but hey, the tickets were cheap, my friends were on break from school and able to take time off work to show me around, and there were no lines ... anywhere. A pair of thermal underwear under my jeans, and I was ready to explore Copenhagen as happily as if it had been 30 degrees warmer.

London's Regents Park in full spring bloom

Spring also is a great time of year to travel. Flowers are in bloom, people are happier, the weather’s usually perfect and tickets are less expensive — again — than they are in the summer (yet the weather’s much more enjoyable). My favorite time came at the end of my semester there in April and May, when I could sit in Hyde Park in jeans and a T-shirt with a sandwich and Coke Light, watching the kids playing and people walking their dogs. Perfect.

However, try and avoid the typical Spring Break locations, unless that's the kind of vacation you're looking for. For me, personally, butting up against college kids as they drink themselves silly in Cancun is not all that appealing — but no judgment here! Those spots also tend to be jacked up in price during that time of year.

So, if you’re like me and don’t really enjoy sweating during your time exploring, and you want to maximize your traveling by saving a buck or two when you can, please avoid European summer travel. And if summer happens to be the only time you CAN appease that travel bug bite, pick a place with an opposite seasonal schedule than ours so that you’re at least going during an off-season for that place.

When’s your favorite time to travel?