There is a particular smugness that creeps into travel advice the moment anyone utters the phrase "best time to visit."
It is in every guidebook, every glossy magazine article, every influencer caption dripping with lavender fields and sun-warmed lemons: "Avoid the crowds by visiting in shoulder season!" "The best time to go is just before peak season — when the weather is perfect, but the tourists haven't arrived yet."
This cult of the Perfect Season has become so widespread, so deeply internalised, that many people now believe it is irresponsible to travel at the "wrong" time. But here is the truth that no one likes to admit: the best time to visit anywhere is not always the time you are told. And sometimes, the "wrong" season is exactly when the magic happens.
I have been to Venice in the textbook "right" months — May, September, that narrow window in October before the mist settles and the canals start to chill. Lovely? Certainly. Predictable? Absolutely.
But the best time I have ever been to Venice? January. Dead of winter. The city all but emptied out. The fog curling through the alleyways like cigarette smoke. Everything damp and shadowed and smelling faintly of old wood and saltwater. No lines, no crowds, no sweaty day-trippers cramming into the vaporetto. Just me, a coat that was slightly too thin for the weather, and a city that felt like it had folded itself inwards for its winter nap.
Or take Siena in September — that languid, honeyed mood of summer's last gasp, golden light bouncing off the stone piazzas, locals slipping back into their routines after the August holidays. The air feels heavy with wine and dust, in the most seductive way. You can sit in the square until midnight, long after the day-trippers have disappeared, and the city feels like it belongs to you.
And then there is Essaouira in February. Windy, yes. But also utterly, disarmingly beautiful. The Atlantic crashing against the stone ramparts, the streets quiet enough to wander without dodging crowds, and that sense of otherworldliness that Morocco delivers best when it is not trying to impress anyone.
The problem with the Best Time to Visit myth is not just that it is wrong. It is that it lures people into a false sense of control.
People think that if they hit that ideal window — the precise two weeks when the weather is temperate, the crowds are thin, and the prices have not yet soared — they will unlock the ultimate version of a place. So they arrive during "best season" along with everyone else who read the same article. They find the streets thronged with people clutching the same guidebook pages. They book the "hidden gem" restaurant that now has three sittings a night and an English-language menu. And then they come home saying "it was nice, but a bit touristy" — as if they were not part of the crowd themselves.
You cannot manufacture magic with a calendar. The best trips are not about weather reports or shoulder-season discounts. They are about how you show up — and whether the place meets you halfway.
Some places are deeply, unapologetically seasonal — and they require a little strategy. Florence at Easter? Absolutely worth it. Scotland in October? Heaven. That low amber sun slicing across the hills, the moody landscapes turning everything into a gothic novel, the smell of peat fires curling through the villages — it is cinematic.
But I have also had wildly unexpected joys in seasons that "shouldn't" have worked. Edinburgh in August, during the Fringe — absolute chaos, not a quiet moment to be found, but electric in its own way. Athens in March: bright, clear days, temperatures perfect for wandering without wilting, enough tourists to keep the restaurants lively but not so many that you need to elbow your way to the Acropolis.
Sometimes, clichés exist for a reason.
Italy in July or August? No. Absolutely not. I will die on this hill.
The heat alone is biblical: thick, suffocating, and relentless, like walking through hot soup while dragging a suitcase with one busted wheel. And then there are the crowds — throngs of schoolchildren on language tours, sunburned tourists in matching linen sets, swarms of cruise ship day-trippers clutching melting gelato and blocking every scenic viewpoint. Even the Italians know better. The ones who can afford it flee to the mountains, to the coast, anywhere but the cities.
Unless, of course, you have secured a shaded villa on the coast with a private pool, sea breezes, and enough staff to keep you supplied with icy Negronis until sundown. If that is the case, you already know how this works.
Italy's summer hellscape aside, the "perfect season" is a myth. Go when you want. Go when you can. Go when it feels right, even if the guidebooks wag their fingers at you. Ring us first, if you have a truly feral idea. The weather will pass. The crowds will come and go. But the stories you bring home are yours — untidy, unseasonal, unforgettable — no matter when you went.
Tell us what you have in mind. A destination, a date, a feeling. We will take it from there.
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