The mistake in multi-city planning is almost never the cities. It is the arithmetic. Four stops in ten days sounds generous until you count the half-days lost to packing, checking out, waiting, arriving and finding dinner in an unfamiliar place at nine at night.
The three-night floor
Three nights is the minimum that gives you two full days in a place. Two nights gives you one day and a lot of luggage handling. One night is a stopover, not a stay, and should be planned as such — near the station, small bag, no ambitions.
Take your total nights, subtract one for arrival and one for departure, and divide by three. That is your realistic number of cities. Ten nights is three cities. Fourteen is four. Seven is two, and honestly, seven is often one.
Route in one direction
Backtracking is the quiet killer of multi-city trips. Draw the cities on a map and find the line that connects them without crossing itself. Then fly into the first and out of the last — an open-jaw booking usually costs little more than a return and saves an entire travel day.
Every hour saved in transit is an hour that becomes a long lunch somewhere you will remember.
Let the transport choose the order
In Europe, a train under four hours almost always beats a flight once you count the airport. Above five hours, the flight wins. Between four and five, take the train if it runs city-centre to city-centre and you value the afternoon.
Book long-distance European trains as soon as the fare opens — typically sixty to ninety days out. Prices behave like airline pricing and rarely improve.
Front-load the effort
Put the most demanding city first, while your energy is highest and your patience for logistics is intact. End somewhere restful. A trip that finishes on a beach or in a quiet town sends you home feeling rested rather than processed.
A checklist that actually holds
- One fixed reservation per city. Not five. One.
- Accommodation within fifteen minutes of the station or the centre — you will thank yourself with a suitcase.
- A genuinely empty day in the middle of the trip, with nothing booked at all.
- Offline maps downloaded before you leave, for every city on the route.
The best multi-city trips feel unhurried, and unhurried is a scheduling decision made weeks in advance. Choose fewer places and give them more time. Nobody has ever come home wishing they had spent more of the holiday on a platform.