My first experiment—renting in the low season—yielded mixed results and an important lesson. February in Anda-lusia means sunny blue skies and temperatures in the 70s . . . except when it doesn't. Just our luck, we arrived on the very day that the agriculture gods decided to end the valley's years-long drought. For almost- the entire week we were there, rain drizzled—to the delight of everyone but us—winds blustered, and temperatures were in the 40s and 50s. The chilly wea-ther did not prevent us from exploring Granada and its environs, but it did keep us from utilizing many of the house's best features: We couldn't eat alfresco in the courtyard, never used the solar-heated pool, never touched the outdoor bar for sunset drinks on the roof terrace, and couldn't gaze out at the views because we had to keep the shutters closed to prevent the indoor heat from escaping. Did I spend most of the trip wishing I'd gone in May? You bet. On the other hand, February is still preferable to August, when the weather is oppressively hot, the hills have turned brown, the city of Granada shuts down because the locals have fled to the beach, and the road construction—which happens in August because everyone's gone—whips up dust and dirt on the highways (and yet peak-season villa prices apply). In February, not only were we the only tourists but it was orange-harvest and almond-blossom time, with heavily laden orange and lemon trees and pink almond blooms dressing up the landscape. My two sons, ages four and five, loved helping the farmers pick oranges almost as much as we loved the unlimited and virtually free supply of fresh-squeezed orange juice. There was even an upside to the rain: It made for excellent snow conditions at the ski resort an hour north in Spain's Sierra Nevada. Indeed, skiing at Sol y Nieve was one of the highlights of our trip. Thus, lesson one: If you're renting in the off-season, make sure it's in an area where there's plenty to do outside the villa, no matter what the weather.

My second experiment—steering clear of hot spots such as Tuscany or Provence—yielded mixed results too. The Lecrin Valley has not been prettified and made user-friendly for tourists, as, say, Chianti has. There are no cute shops, fabulous restaurants, or postcards to buy. Many of the houses and roads are in disrepair, and the villages can appear uninviting: Regardless of the hour of the day you drive through, everything looks closed because the doors and windows are kept shuttered against the cold (in winter) or the heat (in summer). The farmers who inhabit the valley don't speak a word of English—indeed, their accent is so thick that other Spaniards often can't understand them—and it's hard to know where the few stores or many bars are because there is so little signage. But the fact that the Lecrin Valley has not yet been discovered, restored, and polished for visitors is precisely what made it refreshing. It's a primitive side of Europe that Americans usually don't see, and the more we got to know it, the more we liked it. After all, how often do you find yourself in a place where the locals still live off the land, buy staples from the fish truck and bread van that stop by the town square each morning, and use mules instead of tractors to get to their orange groves? We loved that we could pull our car over to the side of empty roads and climb the deserted ruins of the ancient Moorish castles and watchtowers which dot the landscape. By comparison, when we rented a villa in Tuscany two years ago and went to check out the medieval castle nearby, we parked in the lot and paid admission. In Tuscany, we visited tasting rooms. In the Lecrin Valley, we visited farms. In Tuscany, we walked to the little food shop down the road. In the Lecrin Valley, we had to drive 20 minutes to find a grocery store the size of a 7-Eleven. Lesson two: If you rent in a region no one's heard of, the authenticity you'll find may come at the expense of ease, convenience, and sophistication.