The Albanian Riviera, Montenegro, Sardinia, Lyon and the Algarve. Five destinations that in September have the same weather as August, fewer people and prices that suddenly start to look like something normal. Two of them are a few hours' drive from Skopje.

Albania: the same sea, a different price

Himara and Dhermi are the core - small beaches squeezed between mountains, with water you can see the bottom through. Porto Palermo and Ksamil continue the line down the coast. It is the same Ionian Sea the Greeks look at from the other side, except their part has paid for the marketing and the Albanian part has not yet.

Montenegro: 117 beaches along 293 kilometres of coast

Five national parks in an area smaller than Macedonia. The route starts in Kotor, inside the walls above the most dramatic bay in the Adriatic, continues through Perast - a village of stone standing directly on the water - and reaches the medieval fortress of Budva. Sveti Stefan is among the most photographed points on the entire Mediterranean coast.

For anyone who wants to leave the shore: a boat trip on Lake Skadar and the Lovćen national park, from whose peak you see the whole bay at once. For a reader from Macedonia this is the only destination on the list you reach by car, with no airport and no waiting.

Sardinia: the water above 20 degrees in September

In Alghero the sea in September is still above twenty degrees, which means swimming is not an act of courage. The best of it is only visible from a boat - trips through the Gulf of Orosei reach Cala Goloritzé and Cala Mariolu, which are practically unreachable by land. At Capo Caccia are Neptune's Grotto, and the La Maddalena archipelago is a story of its own. From the south, Cagliari is a base for Chia, Villasimius and Costa Rei.

Lyon and the Algarve: two different logics

Lyon is not the sea. It is a city with air and rail links, an old centre under UNESCO protection, Renaissance streets you enter on foot, and an eating tradition that has its own name - the bouchons, small restaurants where the menu does not change with the seasons. The Saint-Jean-Baptiste cathedral, the Notre-Dame de Fourvière basilica overlooking the whole city, Roman theatres and the Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse market.

The Algarve works in the opposite way: Tavira as a base, long sandy beaches, small islands and wetlands. The Ria Formosa nature park is a lagoon of channels and salt pans where the birds are the main show. Cacela Velha is a cluster of white houses above the lagoon itself - a place that looks invented in a photograph, and is not.

All five share the same thing: in September they offer almost the same weather as August, and the bill is another story. The question is why a holiday here still means the first two weeks of August, when everyone else is in the same place.