Vacation days or nights
 

Have noticed that a lot of people develop their itineraries by nights (we have 3 nights in Rome) rather than by days. Granted the number of nights is important for budgeting hotels etc - but the vast bulk of the vacation is activities during the day, so I always measure my vacation that way:, for example, I need 4 days to see the sights I want in wherever. Do most people here schedule in days or nights?

I look it at three ways: 1) nights (because each one requires lodging - - or for those who do such things, an overnight train ride), 2) days with no moving accommodations/bags, and 3) days where you sleep somewhere different than the place you woke up.

Hopefully you have (way) more of #2 than #3, though I have been on perfectly enjoyable trips where #3 exceeded #2. If anything, #3 days seem to involve more precise planning, so that there is SOMEthing of interest combined with the transit. But they have to have more fudge factor built in.

For expensive cities, like Venice - - if the trip permits, it makes much more sense to have two days and one night (i.e. arrive in the morning and depart the next evening - - then the converse of two nights and one day (which too many people do).

Best wishes,

Rex

I plan by days in order to fit in the sights I want to see, and then factor in the nights afterward before booking everything.

I always refer to it as nights. If I say 3 nights in Rome, 5 nights in Paris, then 4 nights in London, I know that means that one day before Paris and a half day before London is lost to travel. Five nights in Paris in that case really means 4 days. When people quote in days, I never know how much of each of those days is one city or the other when they are traveling between two.

I think its kind of funny when a hotel quotes you three days and two nights. They let you check in at 3 pm and kick you out before noon on the final day. You really only have 1 day with 2 nights, not three! If you lined up four of those stays in a row, it would add up in their terms to a total of 12 days and 8 nights. Tell me how that is possible?

I count as days only those days actually spent in the city (from the night before). Days between cities I don;t count towards either one - they are just travel days - or , when by car, which we usually do, they are credited towards where we see sights or lunch that day. So for me 4 days in Rome is actually 5 nights. And you're correct about the hotel quotes - to me one night is not evne one full day of sights - never mind two.

To further clarify my post above, I've seen posts here that say something like this, "We will be flying to Rome on July 5. We plan to stay 5 days in Rome, 4 days in Positano, 3 days in Florence, 3 days in Venice, then take a train back to Rome and fly home on July 16." If you do the math on many of those posts, you'll see what I mean. They're counting some days twice as two different cities. If instead they said 4 nights in Rome, 3 in Positano, 2 in Florence, and 2 in Venice -- I'd understand more fully what their schedule was.