My Best Travel Advice

Travel in the summer. Seriously. No ifs, ands, or buts. If you are not going to a tropical island, just travel in summer.

In the summer, you can pack a daypack with a couple pairs of shorts and a couple of T-shirts. If they get dirty, you can wash them in the sink and they dry overnight. You can take sandals for your extra shoes, which take up much less space.

In the winter, you need 4x as many clothes. Don't even bother doing sink laundry- it won't dry. If your shoes get wet, you're out of luck. And you might need a hairdryer to avoid hypothermia.

You can never sit in a plaza. It's cold and wet. You can't enjoy a castle or even a hike. And if you dress warmly enough for sightseeing outdoors, when you go inside, you must either take up an entire table with your pile of clothes or swelter. Those coffees bought just to get you indoors add up. And worst of all is the 8 hours of daylight you get- if you're lucky. You can easily see twice as many things in one day in the summer: things are open longer, you're not cold, and you have twice as much light.

I just booked a return ticket to and from Paris, so I'm coming back and I'll be in Europe in the winter. But not to travel. I'm going to plop myself down in a nice warm hostel, buy a public transportation pass, and take a nice, indoor language class.