To watch Samantha Brown is to feel like you’re catching up with an old friend. The longtime travel show host is the face of the PBS series Samantha Brown’s Places to Love, the eighth season of which began airing on January 2. It’s Brown’s approachable style of humble storytelling combined with practical tips that has given her an enduring following as a travel personality we can trust.
The first episode of Places to Love’s latest season is all about exploring the rich biodiversity and culture of northern Costa Rica during the rainy months of late spring to fall, which are considered the country’s off season. She points out that the weather leads to smaller crowds and a deeper connection to the rainforests and lush landscapes that make Costa Rica so special.
In addition to her show, Brown dishes out travel knowledge on social media, where she recently caught our attention when she pointed out a great tip for passionate travelers: “dead weeks.”
“Do you know what a dead week is?” read the subject line of her recent Instagram reel that already has more than 2 million views. And as she poured herself a cup of tea, Brown waxed poetic about the periods of time throughout the year when there are “lulls” in travel—the week after Thanksgiving is one example—when travelers can find deals and fewer people in choice destinations throughout the world.
I recently got on a video call with Brown to get the scoop on what travel industry insiders call “dead weeks” (which she admits is a terrible name) and to talk about her favorite lesser-known travel spots, the places still on her wish list, and the items she never leaves home without.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
What kind of travel information and inspiration can travelers get when they watch Places to Love?
We’re really proud of how we shape our seasons to include a list of under-the-radar places you would never think about and even thinking about going to [places] at different times of the year as well. So, we make sure you understand [that] when I was there, it’s clearly not high season and how to enjoy places better. It really is purposely meant to be the show that you can watch and then do that exact itinerary.
I love that and we’re all about that. So tell me about “dead weeks.” What are they, when do they happen, and where should we be traveling during dead weeks?
A dead week basically is a massive lull in travel. There’s a few of them throughout the year. The main one is that Monday after Thanksgiving; that is a dead week because we’ve all come back and we’re still kind of gearing up for the holidays. There’s another big dead week period, and it’s not just a week, it’s really a dead month: If you want to save the most money you possibly can, travel in January. And a great indicator of that is Restaurant Week in New York City, where I live. And there’s also a Hotel Week. Come to New York City during our dead weeks. You can eat at all the top restaurants for a reasonable price. But then there’s one more, and that’s the Tuesday after Labor Day, and it’s only for that [short] week because weekends are still really popular in September. So if you can travel from like Tuesday to Thursday, maybe it’s a quick jaunt somewhere that’s usually crazy busy. It’s lower crowds, lower anxiety, and it’s just a win-win for everybody.
Speaking of getting away from the crowds, Afar is big on helping travelers get off the beaten path and seeking out destinations that aren’t over touristed and overcrowded. What are some of your favorite lesser-known places to go?
One of my favorites is Corning, New York, a large town located in the southern Finger Lakes. So, a beautiful wine region [with] great vineyards, a lot of nice riesling. But it’s also the home of the Corning Museum of Glass, and Corning glass is phenomenal. NASA used Corning glass in the first spaceships, and Steve Jobs called Corning and said, “I don’t want my iPhone to have a plastic screen. Can you make me a glass screen?” It’s fascinating. There’s wonderful shops, places where you can learn to blow glass yourself, great restaurants. It also has another really famous museum called the Rockwell Museum, which is Native American art. So it’s just this little jewel.
Another one of my favorites is the Crystal Coast of North Carolina, which is basically 85 miles of the Outer Banks. It has wild horses; it’s the only place on the Eastern shore from Maine down to Florida that protects its night sky. Out of the 85 miles, half of it is a protected seashore. I [also] love Madison, Wisconsin, and Lafayette, Louisiana.
What about international destinations?
A three-hour drive from the Dublin airport—Donegal. Everyone likes to go to the Cliffs of Moher. [In Donegal], they have that sort of a geological setup as well, but it’s called Slieve League and it’s 2.5 times higher than the Cliffs of Moher. And yet there’s not a soul there. There’s Leo’s Tavern, which is where the Brennans are, a famous music family. I mean, the music history and it’s just kind of off-the-beaten-path and not a lot of huge crowds.
And then, Xi’an, China. They have the Terracotta Warriors. What I love about Xi’an though is that it was an ancient capital. So it still has all of that history and that romance. But it’s a walled city so you can just kind of wander and then you hit a wall and you turn around and you go the other way. You can’t get lost.
As a mother of 11-year-old twins, what are some of your best hacks for traveling with kids?
We all fly economy because it’s the only way we’re going to be able to afford a family of four traveling to, say, Europe. What we do is we book our hotel for the day before so that when we arrive that morning at 7 or 8 a.m., we can immediately go to our hotel, take showers or take a nap. You can’t push your kids with jet lag and then a long plane [ride] and then say, OK, it’s 8 a.m.—we have to make it until 8 p.m.
When my kids were young, I used to always travel with balloons, the big ones, because we were always waiting for our bags to arrive or our car from the rental. And so you could just blow up a balloon and hit it and it’s not going to hurt anybody. It’s not going to break anything.
I am with you on the balloons. That is such a great travel hack and I use it, too [with my young kids]. Where have you not been that you’re dying to go?
Oh, so many places. The world just gets bigger. I would love to go to Oman. And I would still love to see the aurora borealis. I’ve never seen the northern lights. [Maybe go to] Finland to [stay in] a yurt, would love to do that. I would love to do much more of South America. I would love to go back to Colombia.
Lastly, what are some of the travel items you never leave home without?
I never leave home without a very large battery pack. You know, a thick one, the one that could charge my phone and my laptop. And a longer cord than you think, like a 6-foot or 10-foot [cord] because you never know where that outlet is. The other thing I always pack is a merino wool under layer because you never know how cold it’s going to be. I put merino wool in my luggage year-round because all of a sudden it’s cold, and just put it under whatever shirt you’re going to wear and you’ve just made something a lot warmer and you don’t have to go out and buy something. That’s what annoys me so much is spending money on things I had.
