Why we will argue with you about five cities in six days

It is the most reasonable-sounding request we get. You have six days, you have come a long way, and five cities looks like more trip than three. It is more travel. It is less trip.

What a city day actually contains

Arrive, check in, wait for the room, orient yourself, find dinner. That is the first half-day gone, every time. Then leaving: pack, check out, transfer, wait. That is the second half. A one-night city gives you an evening and a morning, and the evening was spent being tired.

Five cities in six days is therefore not five cities. It is one usable day, four half-days, and a photograph of each.

The arithmetic nobody does

• Five cities means four transfers. On our routes that is between 9 and 16 hours of moving.
• Four extra check-ins is roughly four hours of standing in reception.
• Every additional city adds a guide day, which is real money spent on the day you are least able to use it.
• The itinerary has no slack, so one delayed train removes an entire city rather than an afternoon.

What we suggest instead

Three cities and two nights each, or two cities and three. The saved transfer time goes into the things nobody puts on a list: the second visit to the square at a different hour, the long lunch that turns into an afternoon, the morning with nothing in it that people describe afterwards as the best part.

When we are wrong

Sometimes you genuinely have one trip to this part of the world and you would rather see the outline of five places than the inside of three. That is a legitimate choice and we will build it properly — with the transfers timed, the hotels chosen for proximity to the station rather than the view, and no pretence that day four is a sightseeing day. What we will not do is sell it to you as the relaxed version.

We would rather lose the booking than have you come back saying it was a lot of coaches.