Lessons From My Multi-City Holidays

I’ve now had three multi-city holidays.

First up was Basel, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Strasbourg and Metz.

This year I did one trip to Trieste and Ljubljana, and I’ve just come back from a trip to Tallinn, Helsinki and Stockholm – still to write about any of those.

I still feel like I’m perfecting the art of the multi-city trip – I haven’t come back completely satisfied once yet.

Don’t Travel Back On A Sunday

10 days after my flight back from Stockholm, I’m still knackered.

Yes, holidays are supposed to be for relaxing and recovering from a busy life. I’m not very good at relaxing – and I’m probably getting worse at it.

Yet city breaks are never going to be like going to the Caribbean for a week.

However there is one thing I need to do in the future, when I come back from a busy holiday – not come back the day before I have to work.

Don’t Stay Miles Away

Sure, I’m never going to spend twice the amount to stay in a city centre hotel when I could stay on the outskirts of the city.

But when I went to Trieste this year, I stayed in a completely different town, Monfalcone, which was around a 30 minute train journey away, and then in a hotel 25 minutes walk from Monfalcone train station.

This just complicated all my logistics, from phone charging, to timing connecting trains/buses to my next destination, to not being able to stay out after 10pm – and then also getting the second-last train back just in case something went wrong. I can kind of easily imagine me missing the last train, and having to spend £100 on an Uber – more than I saved on the cost of hotels.

Stay The Right Length Of Time In Each City

Last year in particular I got the length of time in two places very wrong.

I found Metz quite boring – I probably could have worked this out in advance, and I stayed there 3 nights. It was also a base to get the train to Luxembourg, but then again I could have got the train there from Strasbourg, an hour longer each way – but it was doable.

And Strasbourg I stayed in one night. And absolutely fell in love with the city. Again, I could have worked this out in advance – in fact, I only stopped in Strasbourg in the first place because of research saying how good it was.

I chose better this year, Ljubljana and Tallinn I stayed in for 3 nights each, and were my favourite cities on both trips. There is an argument for having stayed in Stockholm for longer on this trip…as I don’t think I did it justice.

Though given that I found somewhere serving Sunday roasts in Stockholm, I guess I just need to go for a whole weekend.

Eat Healthily

Eating healthily is good advice for every day, but it’s amazing how difficult it can be to get my usual 5 portions of fruit and veg whilst on holiday.

For a start, some countries only seem to have restaurants that serve carbs and meat. Obviously I exaggerate here, but you try finding vegetarian sides in your average eastern European restaurant. Or even Spanish/Italian.

If I stay in the same hotel for 7 days, then it’s pretty easy to go fruit shopping on the first day, but if doing multiple cities with an already rammed suitcase, and supermarkets wanting to sell you 8 nectarines in a box, the challenges mount.

And it’s so tempting to get a hotdog when walking around, instead of finding somewhere to sit down for a healthy lunch. Especially when there is so much wonderful types of European sausages to explore. Hmmmm chorizo.

But I do need energy, and I do need to eat healthily. And this so often goes wrong on holiday, especially multi-city holidays

Avoid False Economies

I often find myself trying to save money but making other outcomes worse.

For example, tying into the last point about eating healthily, when I was in Stockholm I was feeling the pressure over how much I had spent, so ending up having a chorizo hot dog for lunch instead of a proper meal. As glorious as this was, my body required vegetables – especially as the hotel served meatballs for breakfast, which is clearly not something you can turn down in Sweden.

Booking cheap hotels can mean more time travelling to where I want to be, or a less comfortable stay.

Also I tend to look at what the cheapest day to travel is, rather than what the best day to travel is. Being in Tallinn on the Saturday and Sunday would surely have been even more fun than being there on the Monday and Tuesday, for example.

And don’t get me started on cheap beer vs good beer.

More Multi-City Holidays To Come

So I’ve still not perfected the multi-city holiday, and I do tend to come back knackered.

I really need to plan them better, yet I’m hungry to do more.

I have 3 more ideas for multi-city holidays.

1. Fly to Rome, stay there for a couple of days, then go to Naples for a couple of days, then go to Catania in Sicily – which means I’d get to go on Europe’s only train that goes on a ferry. I could easily complicate this trip further with stops/days out in Taormina, Salerno, Capri and/or Sorrento! Maybe this is two holidays???
2. Eurostar to Paris, have lunch there OBVIOUSLY. Then get the train to Bordeaux for a couple of days. Then go to San Sebastian for as long as I can afford the crazy hotel prices there, which is a train and a bus journey. Then probably fly back. This could also be done the other way around.
3. Fly to Lisbon – I’ve already been there so one night is fine. Then train to Porto for a couple of nights, train to Vigo for a couple of nights, then train to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia for a couple of nights. Or I could start in Faro and work my way up.

Of course, I should really have a relaxing holiday one day…