Here’s a Bit of the Lowdown on the High Season

Half a dozen international flights circling London plummeted through an opening in the fog and sidled up to adjoining gates at Heathrow Airport.

The empty immigration lounge was suddenly stuffed with hordes of sleep-deprived, overly-ripe tourists fuming about the ill-omened start of their holiday.

Standing in the immigration line I overheard the officer asking the chap ahead of me the purpose of his visit. Wearily, the man shrugged and said, “Just to get away from it all.”

The officer squinted past the fellow at the madding crowd and replied, with ice in his voice, “It appears, sir, that you have brought it all with you.”

Welcome to the world of high-season travel.

There’s a reason “high-season” is so-called. Volume is higher and so are prices. Travelers looking for bargain packages are better off waiting until the winter months before sallying forth.

But those who want to enjoy the best weather, to take advantage of school breaks and space their holidays equidistant from Yuletides, will be on lanes, trains and planes no matter how many others squeeze in beside them.

For years I’ve packed up the old kit bag during high season and I have learned a trick or two about both surviving and enjoying that oft-feared time.

For starters, never wait to reach your destination before beginning your holiday. Begin the moment the front door locks behind you. From that second on, relax and be open to adventure and excitement.

Patience and a good book are essential traveling companions. The former will keep apoplexy at bay during inevitable delays; the latter will fill the time pleasurably until the situation clears.

Instead of approaching crowd-burdened, high-season holidays with agoraphobia, jump at the opportunities they afford. The sport of people watching in airports offers more entertainment than a box at “Phantom of the Opera.”

One ugly offshoot of high season is overbooking. This means major hotels will be filled to the gills. That’s when out-of-the-way inns become valuable commodities. Finding them may be difficult, but consider it a challenge.

One hot summer in my salad days of travel I drove in an open car from France into Italy along the Moyenne Corniche. I couldn’t get through the pollution of Genoa fast enough, and by the time I arrived in La Spezia, night was falling and there was no room at the inn. Any inn.

But a wizened soul in a tourist kiosk whispered directions to an unpaved mountain road that led to an orphanage about 20 miles from town. Brand new, he confided, and the Catholic priests took in travelers to help fund the facility. There were no brochures and no guarantees it even existed, but I hit the gravel and grabbed for a brass ring.

The mountaintop retreat was spare but spotless. A gaggle of youths from 7 to 17 ran out to greet my car. I was fed a sumptuous meal. Five lads hovered around my table at all times, panting for a chore. There was only one other guest.

I slept like a hibernating bear, awoke to a spectacular vista of northern Italy and when I emerged from my private bathroom showered and refreshed, I discovered that the orphans had laundered my dirty clothes, polished my shoes and washed my car. The whole shebang cost me the equivalent of $25 today. Moral of the story: Don’t be afraid of back roads. They lead somewhere, too.

My criteria for lodgings are few. I don’t give a yam about luxury. I only need cleanliness, quiet, a firm mattress, a light bright enough to read by and bathing facilities, preferably private, but absolutely on the same floor.

Most civilized destinations offer a plethora of small pensions, inns and B&Bs; that answer all these criteria but aren’t listed in travel brochures. Yet they are not difficult to find. If the exterior looks a bit shabby, ask to inspect a room before you plunk down a deposit. And don’t be afraid of places Michelin and Mobil don’t patronize.

Like highly publicized hotels, guidebook restaurants usually offer long waits during the high season. Yet with the exception of developing nations and uninhabited islands, there are few places where one can’t ferret out a fabulous meal in a cafe, trattoria or diner that is not listed in any book.

Such a meal will usually cost a fraction of what you’d pay at that quaint cafe bragged about in the brochures. If you speak even a little of the language of the country you are in, ask a shop girl or a grocer or even a passer-by where they go for a good meal. I usually ask someone on the plump side; the fashionably thin tend to be baffled by the question. If you don’t speak the language, ask your hotel desk clerk or concierge for a recommendation. Tell him you want to go someplace the out-of-towners haven’t discovered.

Once found, another potential dining problem arises. Restaurants that don’t cater to tourists rarely print menus in English, so ordering can be dicey. One technique I learned in the beer halls of Germany (where the prefixes and suffixes on the menu make it impossible to figure out if you’re getting steak or stomach lining) is to wander around the dining room with a menu, looking for a tempting entree on someone’s plate.

I politely ask the diner to point to it on the menu. I hold my finger in place, return to my seat and wait for a waiter. It works every time.

It’s important to remember that many other countries favor cuisines spicier than those generally served in the United States. Most of the time this is not a problem, but caution should be exercised in certain Latin American and Asian lands.

This was made plain while passing through China’s Szechwan province, a locale where none of my romance languages proved useful. The first morning I sat down to a seemingly innocuous dish of scrambled eggs decorated with flakes of what I thought was tarragon.

In one explosive moment I learned the difference between comestible and combustible. After a single bite the roof of my mouth qualified for benefits under the arson rider on my homeowner’s policy. So afterward when a plate of food was put before me I whipped out a cigarette lighter, flicked on the flame and rapidly pointed to it and the victuals. The waiters had no trouble understanding my question.

Travel tricks aside, the one absolutely indispensable item to pack in order to enjoy a high-season holiday is a good attitude. If you expect to be harried, hassled, cheated and double-crossed, your vacation is doomed. Suspicion and ire are self-propagating. Put your best self forward and expect others to do the same. You will be amazed at how this technique works.

A dear lady who is a good friend but a bad traveler scoffed when I offered her the above advice. “You’re such a Pollyanna,” she jeered. “What do you do when you’re stuck on an airplane for eight hours sitting next to a screaming, squirming 2-year-old . . . who smokes!”

“Order double brandies,” I suggested. “One for the mother. One for the kid.”