The case for travelling in the shoulder season

The best table at the best restaurant in Siena is available on a Tuesday in October. It is booked solid every Saturday in July.

Shoulder season is not a compromise. The light is better for photographs, the guides are less rushed between groups, and the towns run at the pace they run at for the people who live there the other ten months of the year.

What actually changes

Museum hours shorten slightly. A handful of beach towns close their smaller hotels. Everything else — the kitchens, the vineyards, the guides — carries on. We schedule the majority of our departures from March to June and September to October for this reason, not because the summer months are unavailable.