A Sure Cure for the Winter Blues

Here's a prescription for fending off the inevitable seasonal funk, even if it still seems a long way off: plan a trip for the deepest of winter to somewhere warm and sunny!

Now, it only sounds so cliché because it's true and it works, and we've found some truly great deals that will put in you a right Mediterranean mood, which is a whole other shade of blue.

So go kick back on the Cote d'Azur, mosey down the promenade in Nice and see just how nice Cannes can be away from the maddening festival crowds.

For a slightly grittier, more filling take on the ravishing French Riviera, swing by the port of Marseilles, where bouillabaisse was born, and slurp till you burp before setting out to explore the rest of Provence or traipsing on down to St. Tropez.

If you prefer noodles to fish in your bowl, cross over to the Italian side for some pasta pesto in Pisa before leaning in on Tuscany and shooting off to Pistola or flooring it to Florence, or just crawling slowly, slowly up the coast to Cinque Terre.

You can also make yourself at home in Rome and do as those Romans do, whatever it is they do at home, and Venice is still very nice—and empty—in wintertime, in a gray-blue, misty-eyed, melancholy sort of way.



Or just give Italy the boot and make the jump to Malta or Cyprus instead. There are also many bargains still to be had in Spain, Portugal and Greece, and don't even get us started on Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia or Morocco!

Instead of waiting around for the mood to strike you, you may want to strike now while this iron is hot, because some of these fares might only be good for a couple of days.

While most of them should be available from almost anywhere, we only list them on our New York page where you might want to use your browser to search by country name if you're not familiar with places like Menorca, Bilbao, Lanzarote, Fez, Izmir or Sharm El Sheik.