Multi-city Europe: how many cities?
The first draft of a Europe itinerary almost always has too many cities in it. Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest — in twelve days. It is a lovely list and it is about four cities too many.
Here is how to work out the real number.
The arithmetic nobody does
Each city change costs roughly half a day, and often more:
- checking out and getting to the station or airport
- the journey itself
- getting to the next accommodation and checking in
- working out where you are
Do that five times in twelve days and you have spent two and a half days in transit. Worse, the days you lose are the good hours — mornings, when things are open and you are not tired.
A rule that holds up
Nights ÷ 3, rounded down, minus one.
Twelve nights: twelve divided by three is four, minus one, is three cities. That feels brutal when you write it down and generous when you are there.
Three nights per city is the floor for somewhere you want to actually see. Two is a taste. One is a stopover.
Order by geography, not by preference
Once you have the number, the order is mostly decided for you by the map and the rail network. Fighting it costs you the half-days above.
Two practical rules:
- Do not double back. If the route crosses itself, one of the stops is in the wrong place.
- Open-jaw if you can. Flying into the first city and out of the last removes an entire return leg. It is frequently no more expensive.
Put the difficult city first
Jet lag, if you have it, is worst at the start. Put the city that demands the most — the one with the museums you actually care about — in the first half, while you still have energy. End somewhere you can be lazy.
Trains change the maths
Where there is good rail, a "city change" can cost two hours rather than half a day, and city-centre to city-centre beats an airport every time. That can buy you an extra stop that would not fit otherwise.
Where there is not, be honest about it. Some European routes look short on a map and are genuinely slow.
What to cut
Cut the city that is:
- furthest off the line,
- the one you are adding because it feels like you should,
- or the one nobody in the group has actually asked for.
Write it down as discarded rather than deleting it. Next time, it is the obvious first stop.
Doing this in heytripp
heytripp lays the trip out as a trail, so an order that doubles back is something you can see rather than something you discover. Each stop carries its own nights, and the total tells you immediately whether the arithmetic works.
Cities you cut go to the discarded column and stay there — visible, recoverable, and a ready-made shortlist for the next trip. Ask Tripp to cut a city and it moves that one stop; everything else you had already decided stays put.