Where to Go in April: 12 Trips Compared, From Upper Egypt’s Dry Heat to Kyoto’s Rain

APRIL · WHERE TO GO · 12 TRIPS COMPARED

One April week, two trips with nothing in common. Fly to Luxor and your afternoons run 92.9°F with 0.00 inches of rain on the whole month’s ledger. Drive into Zion the same week and you pitch a tent at 35.7°F, cold enough to find frost on the fly at six in the morning. Between those two bookings sits 58.7°F of difference: Bangkok’s 94.4°F afternoons at one end of the twelve, Zion’s near-freezing nights at the other.

Two of these trips are timed by what April closes and what it hasn’t opened. Guanacaste sits at the tail of Costa Rica’s dry run, down to 3.2 wet days and a sea at 83.7°F. Crete has no beach season going yet: 3.9 wet days, and water holding 64.4°F, fine for a five-minute swim and useless for a swimming week. Daylight is the one thing April hands out evenly, 12h 24m on the Costa Rican coast on April 15 and 13h 09m on Crete.

Where is it hot and dry in April? Upper Egypt, Costa Rica and Oaxaca

Three April bookings put you above 85°F without charging you much rain for it. Upper Egypt runs 92.9°F with 0.00 inches, Guanacaste 92.7°F with 1.21 inches over 3.2 wet days, Oaxaca 85.4°F with 1.09 inches over 3.4.

Where the three separate is after dark, and that is what decides which one suits your trip. Nights land at 62.2°F in Upper Egypt and 57.7°F in Oaxaca, so the evening is usable. Guanacaste stays at 74.7°F, and a room without working air conditioning becomes the memory you bring home.

Upper Egypt

92.9°F days, 62.2°F nights · 0.0 wet days · 12h 49m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

Seven nights on a Nile boat out of Luxor is the classic build, roughly 11 hours of flying from the East Coast via Cairo (est.). What the booking buys is a forecast with nothing in it: 0.00 inches across the month, 0.0 days reaching a tenth of an inch. No rounding is doing any work in those figures, and nothing else among the twelve comes close.

The day-to-night spread is 30.7°F, and it shapes the itinerary more than the heat does. Karnak and the Valley of the Kings work from opening until about eleven, then 92.9°F sends the whole boat indoors until four. Bring the same fleece you would take to Zion: at 62.2°F, a felucca after sunset gets genuinely cool.

Costa Rica

92.7°F days, 74.7°F nights · 3.2 wet days · sea 83.7°F · 12h 24m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

Guanacaste is the dry half of the country in April and the shortest long-haul on this list, about 3 hours nonstop from Miami (est.). Eight nights split between the Pacific coast and Arenal is the standard shape, and it runs at the very end of the dry season: 1.21 inches, 3.2 wet days, and the warmest water of the twelve at 83.7°F. Come in June and you are buying a different vacation entirely.

Oaxaca

85.4°F days, 57.7°F nights · 3.4 wet days · 12h 35m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

Oaxaca is the one warm-city booking here that gives the night back: 85.4°F afternoons, 57.7°F before dawn, 1.09 inches over 3.4 wet days. Four nights covers the markets, Monte Albán and a mezcal valley day, on a flight of roughly 6 hours from Houston with one change (est.). We hold no March figures, so the comparison worth making is internal: nothing else above 85°F among the twelve sleeps in the fifties.

Is April too hot for Bangkok? 94.4°F days, 80°F nights, 7.1 rain days

94.4°F is the hottest afternoon average of the twelve, and it belongs to the one destination here you cross on foot, by boat and in traffic.

The rain has started too. April brings 2.79 inches over 7.1 wet days, nearly three times Sedona’s 2.4, so the trip carries heat and showers together rather than one or the other.

Bangkok

94.4°F days, 80.0°F nights · 7.1 wet days · 12h 29m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

No other booking on this list asks as much of a traveler physically: 94.4°F afternoons, 2.79 inches of rain, and 17 hours or so in the air from the East Coast with one stop (est.). The flight alone argues for making Bangkok part of a longer Asia itinerary in April, not a week of its own.

The low is the real obstacle, and it is 80.0°F. Sleep, breakfast, the seven o’clock boat up the Chao Phraya: none of it happens in cool air. Luxor and Oaxaca hand a visitor two comfortable hours at each end of the day. April in Bangkok hands over none of them.

It still works as a three-night hinge: temples at opening, an air-conditioned afternoon at the National Museum or a mall, an evening on the river, then a short flight south. Pick a hotel with a pool you will actually swim in, keep the sightseeing before ten, and treat the 7.1 wet days as the hour you spend over lunch.

Warm places in the US in April: New Orleans, Savannah, Zion and Sedona

Four domestic trips sit in April’s comfortable band, and rain sorts them faster than heat does. New Orleans records 5.22 inches over 5.0 wet days, so roughly an inch lands on each one. Savannah takes 3.39 inches over 4.2 days, Zion 1.10 over 3.2, Sedona 0.95 over 2.4.

New Orleans

78.5°F days, 61.7°F nights · 5.0 wet days · 12h 58m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

The 78.5°F afternoons make a walkable long weekend and the 5.22 inches make a plan. An inch on a single wet day is not drizzle: it arrives, it floods a corner of the Marigny for an hour, it leaves. Three nights, a courtyard lunch under a roof and one museum held in reserve is all the insurance this trip needs.

Savannah

78.2°F days, 55.2°F nights · 4.2 wet days · sea 69.7°F · 13h 02m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

Travelers agonize over Savannah against Charleston, and April gives them almost nothing to work with: 78.2°F against 77.1°F, 3.39 inches against 3.29. The one gap that shows up is in wet days, 4.2 in Savannah and 5.4 in Charleston. Two nights in each, about two hours apart by car (est.), settles the argument better than either forecast, with a 69.7°F sea for the people who insist on wading.

Zion

60.9°F days, 35.7°F nights · 3.2 wet days · 13h 14m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

Hiking at 60.9°F is close to ideal, and the 35.7°F nights catch campers out every spring. A 25-degree fall after sunset in the canyon means a sleeping bag rated below the forecast and a wool layer for the early shuttle. Three nights out of Las Vegas, roughly a two-and-a-half-hour drive (est.), with 13h 14m of light to spend on the trails.

Sedona

69.0°F days, 43.2°F nights · 2.4 wet days · 13h 08m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

Sedona is the second-driest booking of the twelve, behind Upper Egypt: 0.95 inches, 2.4 wet days, 69.0°F afternoons. That last figure is the one that changes the schedule, because it puts Cathedral Rock and Devil’s Bridge at noon instead of only at first light. Nights at 43.2°F ask for a jacket on the patio and nothing more. Four nights, flying into Phoenix and driving two hours north (est.).

Is April a good time for the Mediterranean? Crete, the Algarve and Lisbon

Three Mediterranean trips work in April, and not one of them is a swimming vacation. The water reads 64.4°F off Crete, 63.5°F in the Algarve and 62.2°F off Lisbon, all of it measured as a mean of daily maxima. You will walk far more than you swim.

Rain does the sorting instead. Crete logs 3.9 wet days and 1.43 inches, the Algarve 4.0 and 1.68, Lisbon 5.7 and 2.09. Daylight is generous across all three, at 13h 09m, 13h 13m and 13h 17m on April 15. Our year-round read on the Portuguese coast sits in the best-time guide.

Crete

70.0°F days, 53.5°F nights · 3.9 wet days · sea 64.4°F · 13h 09m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

At 70.0°F, Crete is the warmest Mediterranean booking of the twelve, a good 5°F over Lisbon. A week based in Chania, with the gorge walks to the south and Knossos saved for whichever of the 3.9 wet days turns up, is the trip April actually supports, about 12 hours from the East Coast via Athens (est.). Nobody flies this far in April for a beach club at a 64.4°F sea.

The Algarve

65.3°F days, 55.9°F nights · 4.0 wet days · sea 63.5°F · 13h 13m of daylight on Apr 15 · $ tier

The Algarve keeps the mildest nights of the three at 55.9°F, with 65.3°F days, 4.0 wet days and a 63.5°F sea. Five nights between Tavira and Lagos, roughly 8 hours from the East Coast into Faro with a change (est.), buys cliff paths, boardwalks with nobody on them and golf that starts at a civilised hour. Lifeguard cover is the one thing we will not put a date on, since that calendar is set locally and our data set here is climate only. The region month by month is in the Algarve in April.

Lisbon

64.4°F days, 53.9°F nights · 5.7 wet days · sea 62.2°F · 13h 17m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$ tier

Lisbon takes the longest day of the twelve, 13h 17m on April 15, and pays for it with 5.7 wet days. Climbing to Graça at 64.4°F is a pleasure rather than a chore, which is the argument for coming now instead of in high summer, and a four-night city trip with a Sintra day holds together as long as one tiled-museum afternoon stays in reserve. Detail on the city sits in Lisbon in April, and the wider country in Portugal in April.

Is April a good time to visit Kyoto? 5.28 inches of rain over 9.4 days

At 5.28 inches over 9.4 days Kyoto is the wettest booking of the twelve, by a clear margin, and travelers take it anyway.

Kyoto

64.1°F days, 47.1°F nights · 9.4 wet days · 5.28 in · 13h 07m of daylight on Apr 15 · $$$ tier

Five and a half times Sedona’s 0.95 inches falls here, and 9.4 wet days is close to a third of the month. On a nine-night Japan trip, roughly 13 hours nonstop from the West Coast into Osaka (est.), plan on three days meeting rain and one of them losing an afternoon to it.

What the umbrella buys is blossom, plus 64.1°F walking temperatures and 13h 07m of light to use them in. Build the days so the wet ones cost nothing: Sanjūsangen-dō and the Nishiki arcade under cover, Fushimi Inari at seven when the sky is clear, an onsen afternoon when it isn’t. Nights at 47.1°F still want a real coat.

Where to go in April: Upper Egypt, Costa Rica or Oaxaca

A week that cannot absorb a washed-out day points straight at Upper Egypt, the only 0.0 in April’s line-up, with Sedona’s 2.4 wet days as the domestic fallback and Crete’s 3.9 as the European one.

Sleep decides more April bookings than heat does. Oaxaca at 57.7°F and Zion at 35.7°F give the night back; Bangkok at 80.0°F never does. Anyone who wilts after two humid nights should read the low column before the high one.

Then let the flight set the length. New Orleans, Savannah, Zion and Sedona are three- to four-night trips out of a domestic hub. Seven to ten nights is the minimum that makes Upper Egypt, Kyoto or Bangkok worth the air time, while Crete and the Algarve sit in the middle at five to seven.

Best places to travel in April: Bangkok, New Orleans or Savannah

Averages hide the shape of the rain. New Orleans and Kyoto look equally wet at 5.22 and 5.28 inches, yet New Orleans packs it into 5.0 days and Kyoto spreads it over 9.4, so one drowns an afternoon and the other greys a fortnight. Zion’s 60.9°F average covers a 70-degree afternoon and a sub-freezing dawn on the same date. Ten of these twelve lines come from ERA5 grid cells, a model reanalysis rather than a station record, so read the decimals as direction. Tiers are relative April signals for flights and rooms, never quotes.

The last word

Book the constraint, not the fantasy: if your April week is fixed and cannot move, put it in Upper Egypt, where 0.00 inches leaves the flight as the only thing capable of going wrong. If the dates are loose, thirteenth place went to Marrakech and it was close, at 75.3°F days, 49.1°F nights and 3.2 wet days.

Sources & data for this guide

• April climate normals 1991–2020 for Upper Egypt, Costa Rica, Oaxaca, Bangkok, Zion, Sedona, Crete, the Algarve, Lisbon and Kyoto · Open-Meteo / ECMWF ERA5 grid cells, a model reanalysis rather than station observations · checked Sep 14, 2026
• New Orleans, Savannah and Charleston · NOAA NCEI monthly normals 1991–2020, stations USW00012916, USW00003822 and USW00013880 · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Sea surface temperatures (Crete, the Algarve, Lisbon, Costa Rica, Savannah) · Open-Meteo Marine API, mean of daily maxima 2015–2024 · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Daylight on April 15 for each destination · sunrise-sunset.org sunrise and sunset calculation · checked Sep 14, 2026
• Flight and drive times are our own estimates from US hubs, marked (est.) in the text, and shift with routing and season
• What this guide does not carry: festival dates, lifeguard calendars, room rates, airfares or crowd counts for April. Where the text calls a season dry or a shoulder, that framing is editorial judgment, not a dated source, and the $ to $$$ tiers are relative signals rather than prices