Off Season Vacation Weather – It’s The Reason to Go

I love to travel in the off season. No, it’s not that travel is cheaper. It’s the weather.

Really.

As I type this, the rain pounds down in San Francisco, the first big one of the fall season. It reminds me of Salzburg’s famous Schnürlregen. No, a Schnürlregen is not a pastry, it’s a type of rain, called “string rain,” that comes down hard at an angle, in piercing strings of water that pound the dust and oil out of the streets.

Then, it’s gone. Sudden as it came. Everything’s the same as before, except for the streets. They’re clean. You could eat off them.

But the fun part is that the suddenness of the rain makes you hurry to duck into any nearby cafe. You don’t have time to ask yourself if the folks inside might speak English, or if the place looks welcoming, or even reputable.

Just as suddenly as the rain began to fall you’re in the company of strangers. But wait, the strangers are all in the same predicament! And they’re animated about it. There’s something to talk about. The weather. Do you have weather like this where you come from?

Just as suddenly, you’re not a tourist walking in the stifling vacuum surrounding a fish out of water. You’re the interesting and drenched visitor from the strange land.

The cafe is warm, even as rain pelts the windows. A waft of steaming pastries fills your nostrils. Waitresses snake through the gathering crowd with glasses of beer and coffee in a celebration of life that gets repeated in some fashion everywhere on earth.

And if it wasn’t for the rain, you wouldn’t be a part of it.

Maybe I’m just a cultural and “weatheral” relativist. It’s life; it’s all good. A little rain makes you see things more clearly.

Then the rain stops. You say goodbye to your new friends. You go out to the clean street. You consider eating off it–but, if you have any sanity left at all, you pass on the notion.

The next part of the story is, of course, the question of where you go next. You could go back home, to your cozy vacation house besides the Salzach river, like the one over there to the right. Or you could think, “has the maid been in to pick up the towels yet, or should I stay out here a while?”

Your choice, but I’d go with the vacation rental. Think of the smell of that freshly mown grass after a rain.