Where to go, and when · with the homework done
SIESTA KEY BEACH · FLORIDA · THE 12-MONTH VERDICT Ask when to go and you can get twelve answers, one per month, none of them a decision. The short answer is April: highs of 82.5°F, a sea averaging 77.4°F, 2.46 inches of rain across three measurable days, and 12 hours 52 minutes of daylight on … Read more
TAVIRA · THE 12-MONTH VERDICT · 37.1° N Most people book the Algarve for water and sun, then land in a month when the sea sits at 61°F. Tavira, on the eastern stretch of the coast, runs a bone-dry summer and a wet, short-day winter, and the gap between the two ends of the year … Read more
SINTRA · PENA PALACE · THE 12-MONTH VERDICT Pena sits on a hilltop that makes its own weather. The palace stands about 15 miles from Lisbon’s airport and roughly 1,300 feet above it, high enough that Atlantic air condenses on the way up, which is why the red and yellow towers spend so many mornings … Read more
SINTRA · PORTUGAL · THE 12-MONTH VERDICT The palaces are why people come: Pena’s painted towers on the ridge, the Moorish castle walls running along it, the spiral initiation well at Quinta da Regaleira in the woods below. The hill they stand on is the complication. Damp Atlantic air lifts over the Serra de Sintra, … Read more
ERICEIRA · PORTUGAL · THE 12-MONTH VERDICT Ericeira is a whitewashed fishing town on an exposed stretch of Atlantic coast north of Lisbon, with a surf break at the end of most streets and a harbor that still lands fish for the restaurants above it. Visitors rarely arrive wondering what to do here. They arrive … Read more
PORTO & THE NORTH · BEST TIME TO VISIT · 1991-2020 NORMALS Porto is a granite city built on a river mouth, and the north behind it climbs fast: terraced vineyards up the Douro, the stairways of Braga, the castle at Guimarães, and the Peneda-Gerês uplands where the weather stops resembling the coast altogether. Nearly … Read more
