The Selection

Eight places.

Not a list of everywhere we could send you. A list of everywhere we know well enough to be useful about.

Clear shallow water over pale granite boulders, seen from directly above

Most travel sites cover two hundred destinations. It’s not a useful number — nobody knows two hundred places well, and the writing shows it.

We cover eight. We’ve been to each of them enough times to have opinions about which week to go, which beach is worth the drive, and which famous thing you can safely skip. When that stops being true of somewhere, we’ll take it down.

A ninth will come when we’ve earned it.

Stockholm City Hall beside the water

For the city break that isn’t crowded

Stockholm

Fourteen islands, an archipelago of twenty-four thousand more that most visitors never reach, and a design culture that’s really about what’s left out. Easy to reach, easy to do badly, and unusually rewarding if you go in June and refuse to see everything.

BEST IN: late May–August, or December for a completely different city

See the Stockholm selection →
Lofoten mountains rising directly from the sea near Reine, dramatic light, no people

For when the difficulty is the point

Lofoten

Two flights and a drive above the Arctic Circle, and worth every hour of it. Mountains that come straight out of the sea, a thousand-year-old cod economy still running, and the aurora if you give it three nights instead of one.

BEST IN: February–April for the lights, June–August for the midnight sun

See the Lofoten selection →
Amsterdam canal houses reflected in still water

For the city everyone loves badly

Amsterdam

The easiest of the big cities to get wrong, and the one most people rush. Skip the four square kilometres every tour bus stops at and it becomes a different city — Jordaan, De Pijp, the residential canals, and the merchant history behind every gable.

BEST IN: April–May, or September. August is not the version above

See the Amsterdam selection →
Genoese watchtower on a headland above turquoise Corsican water

For a Mediterranean week with an interior

Corsica

An island most people try to drive around and shouldn’t. The south has the water everyone comes for; forty minutes inland has villages, chestnut forests and a food culture that has nothing to do with the sea. Both, in one week, from one base.

BEST IN: June and September. July and August are a different holiday

See the Corsica selection →
Frozen lake and snow-covered fells near Abisko, Swedish Lapland, in clear winter light

For the trip where the sky is the itinerary

Swedish Lapland

A region that keeps rebuilding itself. A town moving three kilometres east because the mine undermined the ground it stood on, a hotel cut from a river every winter and gone again by June, and the driest sky in Sweden to watch the aurora from. Above the Arctic Circle, and easier to reach than it sounds.

BEST IN: February–March for aurora and daylight both. June–July for the midnight sun

See the Swedish Lapland selection →
Dense crowd filling Lille's Grand-Place at sunset, Flemish facades behind

For the city break most people time wrong

Lille

Close enough to London and Brussels to be a genuine weekend, and mostly visited on the one weekend it is least worth seeing. The rest of the year it keeps its Flemish squares and its museums largely to itself.

BEST IN: any weekend but the first in September

Read the Lille piece →
A hilltop village with a round castle tower above terraced vineyards in the Langhe, the snow-covered Alps on the horizon.

Italy · Piedmont

Piedmont

Where to sleep in the Langhe, how to time the Alba truffle market, and why Turin comes first.

BEST IN: October–January

See the Piedmont selection →

If you already have the dates

Where to go, by month.

Destination JFMA MJJA SOND
Stockholm
Lofoten
Amsterdam
Corsica
Swedish Lapland
Lille
French Polynesia
Piedmont
Go now Works, with caveats
JUN–AUG, DECStockholm as the light stretches — or December, a completely different city, dark by three
FEB–APR, JUN–AUGLofoten for the lights, the cod racks full — then again under the midnight sun
APR–MAY, SEPAmsterdam before and after the summer. August is not the version above
JUN, SEPCorsica before the crowds, water already warm — and again in September, half as full
FEB–MARSwedish Lapland for aurora and daylight both, under the driest sky in Sweden
MAY–AUG, DECLille keeps its Flemish squares and its museums largely to itself
MAY–OCTFrench Polynesia — six islands from Tahiti to the Marquesas, and how to choose between them
OCT–JANPiedmont for the Alba truffle market, and the legal season that runs on after it closes

Join

Eight places, and the weeks worth going.

We write about these eight a few times a year, when there’s something worth saying. No itineraries you didn’t ask for, no round-ups of two hundred places.

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