'nights' vs.'days'

I find it easier to judge timing based on nights because that indicates the number of full days and not partial days. It causes less confusion when evaluating an itinerary because you have to have some agreed-upon understanding of how much time one actually has.

I’ve been on this forum for 17+ yrs and the question of how many nights is almost always followed by ie, how many days that person will have in a location. If someone says “2 nights in Venice” it is almost always pointed out by a poster trying to be helpful that 2 nights is actually one full day.

It's not an "either or" situation -- one must take into account both days and nights. Days, because for the most part that's when you will be doing/seeing things, nights because that's when you (hopefully) are sleeping. You need to plan both. Many people make mistakes when counting either. You typically pay for nights of accommodation, but 2 nights in someplace means you have one full day there, and how you count (or fail to acknowledge) the time it takes to get from place to place that often leads inexperienced travelers to get themselves committed to impossible, hellish, death-march style trips. So, to plan a successful trip, one needs to account both for days (when you're doing stuff, and also moving from place to place) and also nights (when you should be recovering from what you did during the day).

While I may pay per night, I tend to think of the actual trip by days/time on the ground--last trip I arrived in London at 7 am and that was indeed a very full day of activities. If I had arrived at 6 pm it would not have counted, to me. I tend to leave in the morning, so I don't count that as a "day" since I am usually just getting myself to the airport.

thank you all for your replies! great to know how others go about figuring out their travel schedule/cost. just so you know i use one of those fillable calendars with days and nights highlighted in different colors! i need a 'visual chart' otherwise i get confused. also, i am always afraid that on a multi-stop trip i might forget when i am supposed to be where, and having that calendar on my phone/pad is assuring. i suppose it's the teacher in me!

I count nights, because that is what I have to make reservations for.

I find it easier to count nights because I tend to think about hotel reservations. Travel days are spent in two locations and you lose time in transit. When someone says they have “2 days in London”, it can be hard to discern whether they really only have 2 half days (e.g., one night with travel on both days) or 2 full days (e.g., 3 nights).. People count the days differently. Nights is pretty clear.

Days are more important to me because that is when I am sightseeing. I always ask myself, how many days do I need to spend in this location to see what I want to see. I don't explore too much at night. Also, I always, whenever possible, travel first thing in the morning to get a jump on the next location so I don't waste all the daytime traveling. Good question.

When determining the duration of my stay, I go by the number of nights.

It's not an "either or" situation -- one must take into account both days and nights

David’s right, in his post upthread. Depending on how transport, check-in, check-out, and predetermined activities happen, I’ve gotten to a place pretty early in the daytime, spent the night there, and spent most of the next day, before leaving to stay elsewhere that night. That’s 2 days and 1 night in that place.

Other times, i arrive just in time to check in and have dinner, spend the next day and night in that place, then check out early the next morning. That’s 1 day and 2 nights.

With some companies’ organized guided tours, a 14-day tour is really just 12 days, because the tour company considers your flight over as Day 1, and your flight home is on Day 14. They’re only actually guiding you for 12 Days, and probably 12 nights. Even Rick Steves’ “Best of Rome in 7 Days” tour starts at 3 PM on “Day 1,” and ends after breakfast on “Day 7,” so there are just 6 nights in that itinerary, and only a partial 7 days.

I count nights but plan based on days at a location. It's funny to consider a poorly planned itinerary based on nights, especially one night per location to pack a lot in, means you'll see much less than you expect. This would be a good plot for a comedy. Get up, get on the train, and fly to the next location. Next morning, rinse and repeat.

Then again it works for the Tour de France.

I look at nights for the most part, but I’m aware that arriving at 3 pm means that it isn’t a full day in that city. Even an experienced traveler like myself messed up last trip and realized I’d forgotten to book a room for one night on my trip. Thankfully that was corrected in time for the trip!

I look at the nights to figure out how many full days I have. On the partial days time can vary depending on your arrival and departure times.

My husband are starting to plan for 2023 and our conversation went like this ...
21 days total of which 3 are travel days (two flying over and 1 flying back) so that leaves us with 18 full days and 19 nights to plan. I don't count arrival day as "a day" jet lag flying from the west coast means we are pretty much just looking to stay awake until local bedtime. We might walk around grab a bite but not a "planning day"

Counting in nights removes all ambiguity. When you say "I am spending three days in Rome and three days in Venice", do you count the travel day in between? If I know how many nights you spend there, I have my answer.

And when I plan a trip, I just have a notebook or piece of paper where I write down all the dates, and the starting/ending point on each date. E.g.,
23.7 Paris-Madrid
24.7 Madrid
25.7 Madrid-Toledo
and so on.

I love Rick's advice to arrange lodging so that you get at least 2 consecutive nights per stop. But that doesn't mean that travel days are not sightseeing days or somehow a waste.

Wake up in Florence, train to Rome, and accomplish fully-satisfying visits to the Forum and the Colosseum by lunchtime. After lunch, visit the Capitoline Museums, Victor Emmanuel Monument viewpoint, and Pantheon. That's not a lost day.

European 'travel' days can be some of the best days of your itinerary.

Wake up in Rome, train to and spend more than enough time in Pompeii, and enjoy a sunset dinner in Sorrento in the same day.

The reason nights are important is because you really can't plan a day of sightseeing if you have to get to a destination first.

For me. There are travel days and tour days. A tour day is a day where you wake up and go to bed in the same lodging. One tour day, then, requires two nights. Add a second tour day, three nights (and so on). A tour day can focus solely on sights (plus meals). I still plan for only two main sights on a tour day. One in the AM and a second after lunch. Sometimes sights might take all day, others are quicker than half day, but I've found it's a decent way to plan. I also keep a list of additional sights in my back pocket (actually in my phone) in case I find myself with more time/energy than I expected.

A travel day is a day where you wake up in one location and plan to sleep in another. On a travel day, you should keep your travel time to a minimum (four hours is my rule). I like to plan to stop at a site along the way for a visit and lunch before moving on.

Travel days have a real risk of going off schedule. Train delays, flight cancellations, car issues, traffic delays, getting lost, having difficulty checking in to your new hotel, any number of potential problems. One recent example - I arrived to my apartment in Chania Greece by car, with no difficulty. I then found the parking spot for the apartment blocked, or so I thought. So I had to find a parking garage, spend time on the phone with the owner, and eventually move my car back to the parking spot when the issue was figured out. Point is, a quick check in can turn into a couple hours of hassle easily. Sure, if all goes well you might only have 3 hours in transit. But you can’t count on that.

So transit days have to have a lot of time slack built in. I don’t count them in my plans for visiting a city, they are a nice bonus of time to explore and get oriented but not an integral part of my plans for the city. As such, I count nights and full days (full days = number of nights - 1). Three nights is two full days and so forth.

I think in planning I consider both days and nights, but when figuring expenses, I go by the number of nights. Since I arrive (usually) close to mid-morning in Europe, and leave at approximately the same time on the final day, counting nights makes it 24 hr periods. And overnight accommodations are usually a big part of my expenses, so by considering nights, it makes the "daily" expense a more accurate average.

I hate the way tour companies (even Rick) "sell" their tours as X number of days. Since the tours normally get together around dinner time the first day and disband right after breakfast on the last day, what you really get is X-1 nights and X-2 full days plus two very minimal partial days.

For me days determine the nights I’ll need. I start with what I want to see and do in a location. That sets the number of days I’ll need and consequently the number of nights. I do that for each city I’ll be visiting. Then I go and determine the transportation between cities. Sometimes I need to rejigger the days due to various issues such as hotel costs, holiday schedules, number of total days available, etc. it’s an iterative process.

What's the travel in a travel day?

A one hour flight and a five hour train ride are more or less equivalent, when you consider getting to and from the airport and getting through airport security (and baggage?). Then there's more time getting to your hotel from the train station and checking in. After a five hour bus ride from Vienna to Zagreb (faster than the train) and getting into our hotel, we only had time for a quick, one hour tour of Zagreb - which was quite enjoyable - and a leisurely dinner.

Arriving after an overnight flight from US to Munich, with a stopover and change of planes in London is also different You arrive in Munich mid-to-late afternoon, exhausted and with your biological clock out of synch.

A one hour train trip from Paris to Chartres - or two hours from Florence to Rome - is different yet.

Generally, a travel day is just that.