Spending only hours in a country
 

Have other people had situations where due to lengthy connection times, they had hours to visit a country and did.

For this thread I'll ignore hotel overnights, and only count the time spent actively touristing.

In my case, I've had three such situations. In Amsterdam after I missed a connecting flight due to weather. (I had a through ticket on a single airline - their problem.) I didn't really take full advantage of that as much as I could have. I walked around the city, but did tour the palace.

In Japan, I had seven hours. I spent much of that at Naritasan, the temple complex in Narita where the airport was. Fantastic place, well worth a visit.

In Taiwan, I had two half-day stopovers (and overnight stays). The first half-day was a washout, due to such rain that I was sitting on the steps near Ximen station looking at the rain and deciding that with my non-waterproof carry on bag and etc. that it wasn't worth it. I did get to walk around the city a bit. The second half day included about four hours in central Taipei, and they were fantastic. I really enjoyed them.

I don't know when I will be flying next (see username), but I'm very tempted to look for flights that give me half-days like this and where it's not too difficult/expensive to get out of the airport.

I'd very much like to hear of other people's stories of micro-visits to countries.

I always force a longer connection in Narita in order to stock up on snacks and umeshu (plum wine). Japan is one of my most visited countries, so I don't feel so bad when there's not enough time to leave the NRT vicinity.

Also, a bit of advice-- try not to do the long layover thing in much of Europe on a Sunday, as many shops and restaurants are closed.

When I feel like to or don't want to risk a too short connection I just leave half a day early and spend a day at the transit point. Done this for ZRH, VIE, CDG, LGW, HKG and they were all OK (but CDG is a bit of a stretch, I just did it because otherwise it was a 1h stressful connection in the middle of a 30+ hour flying trip and didn't feel like visiting the AF lounge)

Would it be possible to ask you to tell us about some of the sights/activities/locations you've enjoyed at these locations?

I spent about 2 hours in Macau, having taken the ferry over from Hong Kong. Just walked through a few casinos and malls. Checked it off the list (has it's own money and immigration so I consider it a country).

I've spend less than a day in Liechtenstein, San Marino, Gibraltar among others.... dont feel like I missed out on too much.

I know that lots of "pin in the map "travelers" do quick turns, which, obviously runs contrary to the idea of being a traveler. Like BuildingmyBento and OccasionalFlyerPerson, I will build myself a long layover in a city I like that has good connections to the airport. Last week: Tokyo and Singapore. Amsterdam and Brussels seem like candidates. I spend of my time on the African continent where currency hassles, visas, marginal infrastructure all inhibit this.

I've done this in Liechtenstein as well. There's not a ton to do there. I think I spent more time getting there from Zurich than I did there.

I intended on doing it in Doha but decided at the last minute not to.

I've done 9 hours in SYD after arriving from LAX four times. It was when Virgin Australia and Delta started LAX-SYD so the fares were ridiculous and you could do this on a weekend.

I've done more than a few hours in SIN. It's one of my favorite places so I always try to take the time to get into the city for Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice.

Did it from LHR as well since transportation is simple and I didn't have much luggage.

Eurostar RT from London to Paris for lunch.

AMS was a true layover - quick train ride to Leiden (great town, BTW) for a walkabout and then back to AMS

My wife's only time in a Swiss city was an hour and a half in Lucerne. A little issue involving paying for train passage (we'd intended to buy tickets on the train from Ostend but never saw a conductor till we got to Switzerland) meant we had an unexpected layover there that gave us enough time to see the ducks and buy some quiche which, very surprisingly, turned into a rhubarb tart when we bit into it. :)

I've done that for Istanbul between TK flights - visited a few museums and hop between Europe and Asia using trains, buses and ferries.

And the most extreme case of visiting a "country" for me was visiting Hill of Crosses near Shiauliai when I was staying in Riga - less than 2 hours and back - although it just felt like a domestic side trip as there was no border involved and the currencies were the same.

I do this all the time if I'm able to connect two overnights and have the time to spare. I'd probably never venture out of my way to see Helsinki but structured a 14 hour layover and did some sightseeing. Hong Kong, Paris, and Lisbon are others that were pretty easy to get in and out of.

Since you've eaten and stretched your legs, it makes the second leg go by a lot easier.

Sure, I've done this in Frankfurt, Liechtenstein, Vilnius, Colombo, Jakarta, Brunei, Dhaka and Vientiane. I've also done short trips to Vatican City, Gibraltar and Macau as part of longer trips to Italy, Spain and Hong Kong, respectively.

I did a BOS-AMS-BKK outbound, SIN-CDG-BOS return for a three-week trip a couple of years ago and I found exactly this -- I had 9h30 in Amsterdam on the way out and 11h in Paris on the way back. I barely slept on the BOS-AMS flight and was a bit of a zombie when wandering around Amsterdam that day (I'd been before so I just went to get some stuff to eat and walked around the city), but then basically passed out on the AMS-BKK flight and arrived in Bangkok feeling much better than I had in Amsterdam.

I did this in 2016 and 2017 and am planning to do this next year also.

In 2016 I planned a trip to Seoul via the Island Hopper on UA and ended up returning to SFO via a 12hr layover in Tokyo since I'd never been to Japan. I arrived in NRT around 12pm and my flight out to SFO was from Haneda at 12:30am, so ended up having a good 7 hours or so to check out Tokyo. I took a ferry up the Sumida river, explored Asakusa and Senso-ji, and checked out the crossing at Shibuya. Also had good sushi in Asakusa and a bowl of udon at HND before I left. I slept very nicely on the redeye back home!

2017 I had an award flight to New Zealand and planned long 23hr and 18hr stops in Tokyo, stopping in HND each time. On the outbound stop, I took a day trip to Omiya to visit the railway museum. Coming back I visited Ginza, Harajuku/Shibuya, Akihabara, and back to HND.

Next year, I built in a 7hr stop in AMS on the way to VIE. I've been to AMS before, so planning to do some stuff I missed on my first time around.