Low tricks of low season

By Clive Dorman

NO SCHOOL holidays in sight, we're deep into the travel "low season", but air fares are climbing when they should be falling. Thankfully, there's other competition to choose from, but Qantas' current Red E-Deals - its best online fares - look like something out of the olden days.

Its best fare on the benchmark Melbourne-Sydney route is now $125 one-way, dearer than it was before the arrival of Impulse and then Virgin Blue half a decade ago. And it's the same across the network, with $10 or so added to the best fares seemingly every month for the past few months.

Virgin Blue is pushing up its margins as well: its best Melbourne-Sydney fare is now $109, when a year ago it was $69. You can get a "cheapie" for $89, only if you travel on a Tuesday or a Wednesday and only if you're prepared to spend plenty of time online looking for that rate for travel at least a month out.

Read more...

Know Your Seasons for the Best Travel Bargains

By Tim Leffel

Shoestring travelers go to great lengths to stick to their budget: finding inexpensive lodging, getting cut-rate airfares, and taking the cheapest local transportation. One often-overlooked variable, however, is the time of year they visit a particular destination.

In any area that attracts a lot of tourists, high season is expensive. In some cases, downright outrageous. High season can be as long as summer, or as short as New Year's Eve weekend, depending on the location. In any case you are sure to pay top dollar. Whether it's a Thai party beach during the full moon, Goa around the Christmas break, or Europe in the summer, this is the time when prices shoot up and you'll find little to no room for negotiation.

Low season is often low for a good reason, however. Prices are cheap, but they often deserve to be. Hurricanes are blowing around the Caribbean and Florida, Egypt feels like the inside of an oven, the Andes are obscured by clouds. Many beach towns all over the world are literally boarded up in the off-season. It can be a good time to work on a novel or to meditate, but many find the lonely streets and bad weather during low season to be a downer.

Read more...

Off Season Ireland

By Bernd Beige

Over the last few weeks I received a few e-mails with the question whether specific months were good for traveling to (and in) Ireland. Good question. And best answered with a definite "maybe".

Ireland's tourist season runs from, roughly, Saint Patrick's Day or Easter to the October Bank Holiday. From November to mid-March the whole island goes into hibernation. Well, sort of - many B&Bs and rural guesthouses close down, a number of attractions drastically curb their opening times or shut down completely. True, many seasonal "attractions" open for Christmas, but apart from a few exceptions they are downright tacky. Think "Santa's Grotto" in the most down-at-heel shopping mall you can imagine.

But quite honestly - the time between November and March is great for experiencing Ireland.

Read more...

Off Season Vacation Weather - It’s The Reason to Go

By Vacapedia

I love to travel in the off season. No, it’s not that travel is cheaper. It’s the weather.

Really.

As I type this, the rain pounds down in San Francisco, the first big one of the fall season. It reminds me of Salzburg’s famous Schnürlregen. No, a Schnürlregen is not a pastry, it’s a type of rain, called “string rain,” that comes down hard at an angle, in piercing strings of water that pound the dust and oil out of the streets.

Then, it’s gone. Sudden as it came. Everything’s the same as before, except for the streets. They’re clean. You could eat off them.

But the fun part is that the suddenness of the rain makes you hurry to duck into any nearby cafe. You don’t have time to ask yourself if the folks inside might speak English, or if the place looks welcoming, or even reputable.

Just as suddenly as the rain began to fall you’re in the company of strangers. But wait, the strangers are all in the same predicament! And they’re animated about it. There’s something to talk about. The weather. Do you have weather like this where you come from?

Read more...

In the Off-Season, It's Even More Laid Back

By Diane Roberts Special to the Washington Post
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Key West

Katharine Hepburn lies supine across Clark Gable's long body. From the other side of the veranda, Yvonne De Carlo watches, narrowing her green eyes. Hepburn yawns, sticking out her pink tongue, stretching her paws over her head. De Carlo switches her tail. Gable keeps sleeping.

Key West is famous for its exotic creatures: skinks, conchs, feral chickens, feral poets, parrotheads, drag queens, pirates manqu and, of course, Ernest Hemingway's polydactyl cats. There are four dozen of them, at least half descended from Snowball, a six-toed cat given to Hemingway by some ship's captain he met in a bar. Or so the story goes. The cats, named for movie stars, disport themselves throughout the big-windowed antebellum house Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, bought in 1930. I hang out with them every time I'm in Key West.

Read more...