The Accidental Tourist

Why travelling in the low season has unexpected highs.

By Rémy Charest

1   |   2   |   Home

Photo by Michael Wells/Getty Images

It wasn’t warm and the sun wasn’t shining, but it was probably the best swim of my life. Why? Because we were at the beach in Cape May, New Jersey, in glorious mid-October.

Now wading into the ocean in July (or into the Caribbean in January) is perfectly normal, but putting on a swimsuit in sweater season is all about rebellion. It’s a guilty pleasure that tastes twice as sweet. In fact, many of my most memorable trips have taken place during the low season: Wales in March, Iceland in February, Boston in January.

Do you have to be a little crazy to want to visit places so cold, so austere, so foggy, so humid that they become almost inhabitable for whole chunks of the year? Maybe. But it’s only by checking in when nobody else wants to that you get to see a city or seaside village without its tourist gloss. Call it the time less travelled.

And that’s the joy of the low season: that priceless feeling that you’re getting the real deal. When only you and the locals are crazy enough to stick around, a place can look remarkably different.

Yes, it’s freezing in l’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland in November, but stand outside on the rugged terrain in the wind at night, and you’ll start to understand the stoic and resilient character of Newfoundlanders. Stare at the lava fields of Iceland at twilight when they turn a kind of wintery blue and the black rocks and mountains are dusted with snow, and you can see what inspired the strangely wonderful music of Björk and Sigur Rós.

Then, duck into a neighbourhood pub to get some relief from the cold or the wet, and you may just discover what I did – that nursing a pint of beer or lingering over a plate of comfort food beats sightseeing with the hordes any day. Especially on a damp day in the middle of March.

Local Wisdom

Beyond the bargains, travelling in the off-season is a different state of mind. “When the tourists descend on a town, locals put their best face forward and get the cash registers ready,” says Rick Steves, author of his eponymous travel guides. “In the off-season, they’re less aggressive and more relaxed because they’ve reclaimed their beautiful towns and villages.”

1   |   2   |   Home