Best places to visit in October

The Aegean holds its summer heat long after the crowds go home, and the caldera path is walkable without queueing. Boats to Thirasia and the volcano still run all month. This is the island doing what people imagine it does in July.

Seville spends its summer behind shutters. October is when the tables return to the squares and an evening needs a jacket for the first time since spring. In even-numbered years the Bienal's closing week runs into the month.

The Bosphorus ferries stop being a sweatbox and the small fish arrive on the grills along the water. The end of the month is a national holiday, so expect fireworks, closed offices and very full museums. Rain comes in short bursts rather than settling in.

The Table Mountain paths are dry and the light lasts long enough to finish a traverse without hurrying. Two hours east, southern right whales calve close enough to the cliff path that you do not need a boat. The wind is what decides your mountain day, not the forecast.

Cairo becomes a walking city again this month and the cruise boats start moving south in numbers. The Grand Egyptian Museum has taken the Tutankhamun collection out to Giza, which has changed how a first visit is arranged. Afternoons are still long and hard-lit.

Korea's autumn is short and Busan gets the mild end of it. The beaches are empty enough to walk end to end and the hills behind the city are clear for the first time since spring. For ten days the film festival owns Haeundae, and the rest of the year it is a working port.

The city's warm, clear stretch arrives once everyone else's is over, and the fog that owns July has mostly gone. Golden Gate Park runs free music across the first weekend. The evening still turns cold at about six, which no amount of sunshine changes.

October belongs to the Señor de los Milagros, when hundreds of thousands walk behind the image in purple and the centre reroutes around them. It is also when the coastal grey starts to lift and the cliff-top walk south is worth doing. The food is the reason to stay a week.

The sea is warm and the rooms are cheap for a reason. October is when the western Caribbean makes its own storms, and one of them can eat a week you cannot get back. Even without a named storm the water is often too churned to see the reef.

The south-west monsoon saves its worst for the end. The Andaman swell shuts the west-coast beaches for swimming days at a time and cancels the boats to the islands. The place is beautiful and largely unusable, which is the frustrating combination.

Central Vietnam's flood season arrives with the north-east monsoon and the Thu Bon comes up through the lanes nearest the water most years. Shops board up, boats replace bicycles, and it clears in a few days. It is a remarkable thing to watch and a poor thing to have booked.

The first week is the largest annual movement of people on earth, and every gate, wall and train seat is spoken for. The autumn light is genuinely good and you will be sharing it with an enormous number of people. The sky is clearer than the air actually is.

The valley spends October between jobs. Lifts run in short windows or not at all, the high paths are under new snow, and the ski season is two months away. The town is lovely and half-shut, and the mountain is out of reach either way.