Best places to visit in December

The Costa del Sol keeps its terraces open all winter, which is not true anywhere else on the Spanish mainland. Calle Larios turns into a nightly light show, and the crowd for it is the only crowd in town. Nobody is swimming; the point is walking, eating and sitting outside after dark.

This is the fortnight the city stops working and moves down to the water. The mountain paths are dry, the wine farms are open, and the evening lasts long enough to waste. Kirstenbosch puts a stage on the lawn beneath the eastern slope for the whole season.

The rains stopped a month ago and the hills north of the city are still green. This is the gap between the wet season and the smoke, and it does not last. Two hours up Doi Inthanon the mornings are properly cold, which surprises everybody.

The floodwater has drained out of the barays and the causeways are walkable at dawn. Visitor numbers are down for reasons that have nothing to do with the temples, and it shows on the terraces. Bring a torch: the good hour starts before the ticket office is properly awake.

For two days in the middle of the month the north of the city belongs to pilgrims. It is among the largest religious gatherings on earth, and almost nobody outside Mexico plans around it. The rest of December is clear, cool and long enough in the afternoon to walk everywhere.

The mountains behind the city thaw this month and the Cajón del Maipo road fills with day walkers. Glacier and lagoon trails that are shut all winter reopen, and the evening light runs late. The city itself is emptying for the summer, which makes it calm and a little closed.

Colorado's high resorts do not wait for the valley, and this is the month the terrain fills in. Four mountains sit within a shuttle ride of each other, which is the actual argument for coming. The town is expensive and entirely unembarrassed about it.

Most of the Alps spend early December hoping. Zermatt skis terrain that begins where other resorts finish, so the question is weather rather than cover. The village is car-free, which is charming until you are the one carrying the luggage.

A London Christmas works right up to the day itself, when the railway simply stops and barely restarts for Boxing Day. Museums shut, a taxi across town costs what the hotel does, and the parks become the plan. The dark arrives mid-afternoon whatever you had booked.

New Year in Downtown is a managed event: streets closed in phases, a metro station shut, a crowd counted in hundreds of thousands. Rates peak on the 31st and the city knows exactly what it is charging for. What the brochure leaves out is what you are breathing while you queue.

The Andean wet season is at full volume and the high passes are slick clay rather than stone. Showers pass and the sun returns, so the sky lies to you; the ground does not. Peru's own answer to this season is to close the trail network and repair it.

Réveillon is the largest New Year gathering on record, and Copacabana absorbs a city's worth of people for one night. Hotels sell minimum stays at holiday rates, and the rest of the month is the heavy end of the Brazilian summer. Wonderful to attend, expensive to be stranded in afterwards.

The week people actually book is the one between Christmas and New Year, by which point most of the stalls have gone. What is left is the square in front of the town hall and a couple of palace courtyards. It is still Vienna, and not the thing the photographs sold.