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Destination in late march/early april

Hi all,
I'm looking for help and inspiration for planning a babymoon for late march/early april. We'd like to take the kind of trip it's hard to take with kids, focused on food, cultural activities, and natural beauty. We don't need beach weather, but ideally we're looking for weather nice enough to enjoy a meal outside and maybe even get lucky and spend an afternoon poolside. I'm trying to avoid rain at all costs. (I know - a tall order in the spring).

Any suggestions? I've been to Seville/Grenada or else that's where we'd be headed. We went to Italy the last two years (amalfi coast, tuscany, puglia) so it's not at the top of the list, but then again, you can't go wrong with Italy. We're also pretty well traveled when it comes to the big cities (rome, paris, madrid, barcelona, prague, milan, amsterdam, stockholm). I've been to Lisbon, but only briefly, so I would head back, but the algarve doesn't sound interesting in the spring and the rest of portugal looks potentially damp.

I'm seriously considering just booking a flight to a major flight hub and then picking our final location the week before when we have a better sense of weather, but as a planner, that makes me a little anxious. Unfortunately, our dates are not flexible because I don't feel comfortable traveling past mid-april.

Posted by
8159 posts

Well, there's always Turkey or Greece - both have culture and history and natural beauty coming out the wazoo, and the temperatures should be milder than the rest of Europe at that time. Turkey has Fethiye, which has gorgeous beaches and beautiful deep blue waters, and Green has the islands and Crete, although both countries have areas all over that entice travelers.

One benefit of Turkey is that its rainy season should be over by the end of March - most of its rain is in the winter months.

Posted by
6813 posts

Not long ago, my spouse turned to me and announced that we needed to go someplace warm-ish (or close enough to warm-ish) for a late-winter/early-spring destination for about 10-14 days, and I should put something together (this is how she rolls: I'm her personal travel agent, she gives me a command, I start planning...). Here are some of the places in/around Europe that I/we considered:

Minorca
Corsica
The Canary Islands
Madeira
Tunisia
Crete
Cyprus

We have already been to the following places, so my spouse (who prefers to always go someplace new) nixxed them, but if we hadn't already been there done that, I'd also take a good look at:

Sicily
Morocco
Sardinia

We're going to Malta and Turkey in September so those were not considered.
We hope to do Egypt soon-ish but needed more than 10-14 days for that.

Some of these places will be in the "off season" to various degrees. That's OK, it mitigates the crowds. Most would be nice enough in your time frame. Some of them should be pretty much free of rain, at least somewhat warm, a few maybe even a bit hot. Some might require a bit of effort to get there than more popular destinations (I view that as a feature, not a bug...YMMV).

(We also considered non-European destinations, and ultimately ended up choosing a tiny island in the Caribbean, so not in your target area).

Hope this list gives you some ideas. Cheers.

Posted by
5097 posts

Weather is such a tough thing to plan around, but I feel like Spain and Italy are safe bets. How about Sicily since you have been to to other parts of southern Italy recently? I would not count on any pools being open though.
Spain is a place where it is easy to "play it by ear," plus flights to Madrid are easy. I spent time in Extremadura and La Mancha in May--it was pretty hot already, so early April might be just the ticket. There are parts of Extremadura where cherries bloom in spring, might be a nice option. https://cerezadeljerte.org/en/jerte-valley/

Posted by
2 posts

This is all helpful, thank you!

Just FYI, I'm trying to focus on places where I'd feel more comfortable if there was some sort of medical emergency, which mostly rules out Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey (unless I'm wrong about that). I'll have to look into what sort of facilities are available on some of the smaller European islands.

Posted by
17562 posts

How about Cadaqués on the Costa Brava?

https://wild-about-travel.com/things-to-do-cadaques-spain/

I don’t know if the swimming pools will be open in late March/early April, but you could email hotels and ask. We stayed at Hotel Sol Ixent, one of the recommendations in that blog, and it was very nice. They say their pool is “seasonal”. Hotel Calina also looks appealing, and they do not says their 2 pools are “season”, but they do not open until April 1 so that may answer the question. This one is further from town. We walked into town numerous times from the Sol Ixent.

Posted by
28247 posts

How much time will you have? If you've got 2 weeks, I think Sicily would be a great idea. If less time, how about Malta?