Winter Travel To Europe

By James Martin

Why not travel in winter? Hotels and airfares are cheap, sweaty summer crowds are a dim memory, and there's plenty going on:

• Attend Cultural events: Opera, Theater, and Symphony Winter Seasons.
• Have Fun in the Snow: skiing, snowboarding
• See Christmas Markets, Festivals and Carnival
• Enjoy Winter food - an entirely different animal from summer's simplicity!

Why Travel in Winter?

While it's great fun hanging out under the August sun slurping spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce at an outdoor cafe in Rome, winter travel offers some interesting opportunities you may not have considered. There are the obvious ones, like skiing and snowboarding. But what about the opera and orchestra season? European cultural events in historic halls are going full blast in winter.

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Visiting Venice in the Off-Season

I travel a lot but have never to been to Venice, mainly because I am fearful, as I have heard, that it is always so crowded with tourists. I can travel whenever I want and the weather doesn’t concern me at all. I was thinking of late November and early December as those seem to be times when the travel season is the lowest and you can get the best fares.

William Yeago,
Paris

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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.

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