Day Trip or Longer Stay? How to Decide What a Place Deserves

Some destinations almost come with a label attached. Bratislava is a popular day trip from Vienna. Bernal is ideally located as a day trip destination from Mexico City or Querétaro. Hoi An is less than an hour from Da Nang.

Read that advice often enough and the decision seems to have been made for you. Find an available tour, join the group for the day and be back at your hotel for dinner.

We’ve taken dozens of day trips during our travels, and most have been exactly the right decision. But staying longer in a handful of places has made us question the label.

The question isn’t whether you can see somewhere in a day. It’s whether a day will give you the experience you actually want.

Sometimes a Day Trip Really Is Enough

During our road trip through Spain, we’d originally planned to spend two nights in Ronda followed by another two nights in Setenil de las Bodegas. If you’ve seen photographs of Setenil, you’ll understand why it had found its way onto our itinerary.

Houses, shops and restaurants have been built beneath enormous overhanging rocks, creating streets that look as though the surrounding cliffs are slowly swallowing the town.

Early in the trip, we changed our plans. Instead of staying in Setenil, we’d spend three nights in nearby Ronda and visit Setenil as a day trip. Leaving us with a free night to use somewhere else.

It turned out to be exactly the right decision for us. Setenil was one of the strangest and most unique places we’d ever seen. We wandered beneath the huge slabs of rock, explored the streets and stopped for something to eat. After a few hours, we’d had a wonderful visit and were quite content to leave.

Two nights might have seriously tested my ability to convince Pauline that I’m still enjoying myself and not at all bored.

That doesn’t make Setenil any less worthwhile. A place can be fascinating without needing several days of your itinerary. In this case, much of the appeal was seeing something extraordinary, and a day gave us enough time to do exactly that.

Other places have given us very different experiences.

Cozumel: When the Crowds Sail Away

The first time we visited the Mexican island of Cozumel, we arrived by ferry from Playa del Carmen around lunchtime. There was definitely no peaceful welcome available. The town was packed.

Cozumel is one of the Caribbean’s major cruise destinations, and the waterfront area was carpeted with visitors. We collected our bags and headed for our accommodation, only about four blocks back from the waterfront. Within those few blocks, something strange happened. The crowds almost disappeared.

After checking in, unpacking and getting over the shock of finding so many people in such a small space, we wandered back towards the centre at around three in the afternoon.

Over the next couple of hours we watched thousands of cruise passengers gradually make their way back to their ships.

Then Cozumel seemed to exhale.

Waiters who had spent the day racing from one tourist-packed table to the next suddenly had time to chat among themselves, or with us as we wandered casually past.

The noise changed too. The constant drone of voices, each seemingly talking louder in an attempt to be heard over the last, gradually faded, and the sound of mariachi music began spreading through town.

Shops that only hours earlier had dozens of people crowded around their doors were easy to browse. We could wander into bars and restaurants without fighting for space. Even some of the prices seemed to relax once the ships sailed away.

We could breathe, and so could the town.

The following morning we hired a car and slowly made our way around the island, largely avoiding the craziness we’d encountered when we first arrived. Staying for two nights hadn’t uncovered a huge list of additional attractions. It had allowed us to experience the same island under completely different conditions.

Bernal: When Tourist Mode Switches Off

We first discovered Bernal while researching day trips from Querétaro and Mexico City. Instead of adding it to a list of places we could visit for a few hours, we decided to include a few nights there early in our Mexican road trip.

The first time Pauline and I walked along the main road through town with the enormous Peña de Bernal rising behind the colourful buildings, I think we both had the same thought. It looked like a movie set. We half expected Speedy Gonzales or the Three Amigos to wander around the corner.

During the day, the illusion was even stronger. The streets were busy with visitors, souvenir sellers lined the tourist areas and people wandered between shops and restaurants on their way towards the Peña.

It was colourful and entertaining, but there were moments when it felt more like a Mexican-themed attraction than a town where people actually lived.

After spending the afternoon exploring, we returned to our hotel just outside the centre for a rest. When we wandered back into town shortly before sunset, Bernal had changed.

The day-trip crowds were gone. Tourist gift sellers were closing up for the evening, bars were beginning to fill with locals and taco stands were opening for the night. Huge trompos of meat appeared beside open flames, topped with thick slabs of pineapple slowly dripping their juices down over the pork, ready to be sliced into tacos al pastor.

It felt as though somebody had flicked a switch from tourist mode to local mode.

Bernal still looked like a movie set, but the set now belonged to the people who lived there. During the day, the centre had felt like their place of business. In the evening, it was simply home.

That first night we saw the difference. Over the following nights, we felt it.

Bratislava: Living in the Shadow of Vienna

Bratislava sits less than an hour from the far more famous city of Vienna, which makes Slovakia’s capital one of the obvious day trips for visitors staying there.

Visit the historic centre, walk up to the castle, explore the Christmas markets if you’re there at the right time, then return to Vienna that evening.

We were travelling by train from Vienna to Budapest during Christmas market season, and doing the usual day trip would have meant travelling to Bratislava and back to Vienna, only to head in the same direction again when we continued to Budapest. Instead, we decided to stop in Bratislava for a longer break.

We could easily have seen the major historical sights and Christmas markets in a day. Staying longer didn’t suddenly reveal three days of must-see attractions. What it gave us was time to join a walking tour and learn some of the city’s history, then return to places that interested us for a closer look.

We could wander the streets without thinking about what time we needed to get back to the station, or sit and have a coffee and some of the magnificent pastries without constantly checking the clock.

One evening, while we were wandering through a market, it began to snow. For two Australians, snow falling while you’re walking through a European Christmas market is still capable of producing a fairly ridiculous amount of excitement.

It hadn’t snowed back in Vienna that night, so staying in Bratislava had accidentally given us one of those little travel moments we couldn’t possibly have planned.

Extra time doesn’t guarantee experiences like that. It gives them more opportunity to happen.

Our stay also raised a question we’ve thought about many times since…

If Bratislava were four hours from Vienna instead of roughly an hour away, would travellers still automatically think of it only as a day trip?

Hoi An: Beyond the Day-Trip Trail

Hoi An works perfectly well as a day trip from nearby Da Nang. An organised tour can take you into the Ancient Town, past the Japanese Covered Bridge and through the streets and shops clustered around the river. Stay into the evening and you might even see the lanterns glowing before returning to Da Nang.

For plenty of visitors, that might be exactly the Hoi An experience they’re looking for. For many more, it may be the only one they know exists.

Staying longer gave us time to stray from that well-trodden route. We weren’t restricted to the restaurants, shops and attractions that fit neatly into a day-trip itinerary, and some of the places we enjoyed most were ones we found because we had time to wander further.

One of those was Phi Banh Mi, which became our favourite lunch spot. It’s only about five blocks from the main tourist strip along the river, but that’s far enough that it’s unlikely many visitors arriving as part of an organised day trip will wander past. We found it because we had the luxury of exploring without needing to be somewhere else in an hour.

The same applied when Pauline decided she wanted some shoes custom made. Instead of choosing somewhere because it was conveniently positioned on the tourist trail, we could compare several stores before deciding where to order. More importantly, there was time for two follow-up fittings to get them right.

That’s what staying longer gave us in Hoi An. Not necessarily more famous attractions to see, but enough time to step away from the places an itinerary told us we would love and discover a few favourites of our own.

How Do You Know When a Place Deserves Longer?

There isn’t a formula for deciding how long every destination deserves. If there were, planning our trips would be considerably easier and my spreadsheets considerably smaller.

But looking back at the places where staying longer worked for us, there were often clues we could have spotted before we arrived.

The first is whether we’re travelling somewhere primarily to see something, or whether the place surrounding that attraction is part of what interests us.

Setenil had something extraordinary we wanted to see, and a few hours gave us time to experience it. Bernal also had an extraordinary sight in the Peña, but there was a living town around it that became part of the experience once we stayed.

The rhythm of visitors can tell you something too. In Cozumel and Bernal, large numbers of people arrived during the day and disappeared again later. If most visitors to a destination arrive on organised tours, it’s worth looking at what remains after those tours leave.

Restaurants and bars that stay busy into the evening, accommodation away from the main tourist strip and a town centre still being used after the souvenir shops close can all suggest there’s another side worth seeing.

Where you stay can help reveal it. In both Cozumel and Bernal, our accommodation was a short distance away from the busiest tourist area. We didn’t need to escape miles into the countryside to see a different side of either place. In Cozumel, walking four blocks from the waterfront was enough for the crowds to thin dramatically.

We’ve also learnt not to let convenience make the decision for us. Bratislava’s closeness to Vienna makes it a popular day trip, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a day is the right amount of time. Being easy to visit for a few hours and only being worth a few hours aren’t the same thing.

Then there’s what lies beyond the obvious attraction. If we’d visited Hoi An on an organised day trip, we’d probably have had a very enjoyable day. Staying longer gave us time to walk five blocks further, choose another street or try somewhere that hadn’t been selected for us.

Of course, every extra night has to come from somewhere. Spending another two nights in one place might mean cutting another destination, extending the trip or increasing the budget.

Staying longer because longer, or slower travel is supposed to be better makes no more sense than automatically squeezing every nearby destination into a day trip.

You Won’t Always Get It Right

On that same road trip through Spain, we spent a night in Cuenca. It fit conveniently into our route, but convenience wasn’t the only reason we stayed. Cuenca looked extraordinary, perched above the surrounding landscape with its historic buildings and famous hanging houses, and we thought spending the night in a town built like that might be something special in itself.

It wasn’t.

That’s not to say we didn’t like Cuenca. We did. But for us, most of its magic was more obvious during the day, when we could properly appreciate its dramatic setting and unusual architecture.

Once evening arrived, our accommodation ended up being little more than a bed for the night, in a dark town with few food or entertainment options.

In hindsight, we could probably have stopped for a couple of hours, explored the historic centre and continued down the road perfectly happy with what we’d seen.

Compare that with Bratislava. Convenience played a part in our decision to stay in both places. In one, those extra nights gave us experiences we were glad we hadn’t missed. In the other, they didn’t add much at all.

And that’s why none of this can become a foolproof formula.

Reviews, guidebooks and other travellers can give you clues, but they aren’t you. There will still be places where you leave wishing you’d booked another night, and others where you’ll be wondering what on earth you’re going to do until checkout tomorrow.

We’ve certainly had both.

The aim isn’t to turn every day trip into a longer stay. Day trips allow us to keep one comfortable base while exploring the surrounding area, without packing another suitcase, checking into another hotel or trying to decipher yet another shower control that appears to have been installed by a plumber with a very cheeky sense of humour.

The aim is to question the label before letting it make the decision for us.

Perhaps “popular day trip” should be the beginning of the decision rather than the end of it.

Have you ever visited somewhere as a day trip and left wishing you’d stayed longer? Or have you stayed for several days somewhere and realised a few hours would have been plenty?