The art of... loving a low-season city

Some glow when the temperature falls, others are strictly fair-weather destinations. ANNA HART ponders the secret formula for a city that delivers all-year-round.

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WHEN IT COMES TO AN OFF-SEASON CITY break, not all destinations are created equal.

I live in Barcelona, an amazing city by most metrics, but Barcelona in a rainy February manages to be bleaker than Belfast, my hometown, and this is saying something. Barcelona is spoiled by a blissful Mediterranean climate for most of the year, and its personality is built around sunshine. The whimsical Art Nouveau architecture of Antoni Gaudí and his Belle Époque-era associates is designed to be appreciated from the outside, from wide and tree-lined streets designed for promenading along. The city does pavement and plaça terraces so well that I've barely seen the inside of some of my favourite bars, cafés and restaurants. And since a successful coastal regeneration project two decades ago, Barcelona has developed a busy city-beach scene on a par with Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and Miami. All of the above makes a sun-kissed Barcelona delightful. But when it's rainy and cold? The city doesn't know what to do with itself. Stripped of her usual charms, Barcelona sulks in bad weather, like a supermodel with a cold sore. This is when I wish I was in a sensible higher-latitude city accustomed to rain, hail and dreariness, a city that offers visitors and citizens plenty of Plan Bs, Cs and Ds if the sun doesn't shine, because it regularly doesn't.