nineteen places, and what each one owes the sky
Where These Vacation Packages Go
Where these vacation packages go, and how much each place depends on conditions. The grouping is by exposure rather than by continent, because exposure is what decides whether you enjoy it.
Grouped by exposure, not by continent
A list sorted by continent tells you where a place is. It does not tell you the thing that decides whether the week works, which is how much of it the sky controls.
Some of these nineteen could not be moved between groups if we wanted to. You cannot make an arctic fjord weatherproof and you cannot make a city of museums weather dependent. The grouping is a property of the place.
Rain costs you an afternoon
- Malta
- Stone towns and harbours, a car, and almost nothing that closes in rain
- Cyprus
- Two bases, mountains and coast, long warm shoulder seasons
- Vienna and Budapest
- Two capitals joined by train, where the indoor list is longer than the outdoor one
- Mexico City and Oaxaca
- Markets, museums and food, in a rainy season that rains for two hours a day
- Charleston and Savannah
- Architecture and food by car, where the real cost is summer humidity rather than rain
One thing on the list is exposed
- The Faroe Islands
- Fog and wind close the boat and the helicopter to the outer islands
- The Dolomites
- Cable cars stop in high wind, and valley walking does not care
- The Tatras
- The high ridge needs a clear morning; everything under the treeline is fine wet
- Wales
- One mountain day and one island boat need weather. Castles do not
- The Ligurian coast
- The coast path closes after heavy rain, sometimes for weeks
Half the itinerary hangs on it
- Svalbard
- Ice and fog decide the boat days, which are most of the trip
- Greenland
- Weather routinely cancels internal flights and can strand you for days
- The Yukon
- Aurora needs clear nights; the daytime program survives almost anything
- Zambia
- The river and the falls swing enormously with the season
- Raja Ampat
- Swell and visibility decide what you actually see underwater
It is the whole reason you went
- Churchill
- One animal, one narrow window, and ice timing decides it
- The Great Bear Rainforest
- A rare animal in a rainforest, with no promise attached
- The Baja lagoons
- A short season, and wind closes the lagoon to small boats for days
- A total eclipse
- Minutes long, and one cloud ends it. Historical cloud data is the only honest guide there is
When you ask about somewhere else
You will be told, plainly, that the place sits beyond what this desk has worked with, and then told what sort of outfit does work with it. Nothing is charged for saying so, and nobody here will bend one of these nineteen into the shape of whatever you actually wanted.
The four sentences you will not read on any of these
- Whether a place is safe
- Nobody working here is competent to sell you that verdict
- Papers at the frontier
- Check them yourself against the passport you actually hold. This desk gives no guidance on the question
- Cover for a trip
- Not sold, not arranged, not suggested, and no provider named. Why, in full, on the short answers page
- The operating company
- Its name reaches you in the written proposal, at the point where the name starts to matter