How long should one allow for a satisfactory city break?

Q What is the ideal duration for a city break?

Caroline M

A Goodness, it is 35 years since The Independent launched the first in our city break series with 48 Hours in Istanbul (yes, I was very young at the time, thanks). In 1989 short trips to great cities were beginning to become popular, London, Paris, Barcelona and dozens of other destinations followed Istanbul, with regular revisions. I returned to Turkey’s largest city last year to research the latest edition.

The brand remains the same, and for destinations in the UK a Friday night-to-Sunday night stay looks right. But for European locations I think “48 Hours Plus” is a better plan. You can immerse yourself in a city great or small for two days, then escape somewhere nearby for a day to add an extra dimension: Paris plus Fontainebleau, for example.

Better still, time permitting, knit together two (or more) great cities in a single trip. Amsterdam makes a city break par excellence, yet within an hour or less you can reach Leiden, the Hague, Rotterdam or Utrecht. Belgium is a natural, and the Eurostar ticket to “Any Belgian Station” makes it straightforward to add Ghent, Bruges, Antwerp or Liege to a Brussels short break.

Spain is a superb location for two-centre city breaks, thanks to the high-speed, low-cost rail network and the profusion of flight links to and from the UK. Madrid can be combined easily with Barcelona, Alicante or Valencia. In the south, consider Malaga plus Seville.

If, like me, you love cities and could happily spend a week in them, consider a string of short stays along Europe’s great waterways. On the Rhine, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Bonn are easily combined. Further upstream, Strasbourg, Freiburg and Basel go together well – and open another category of city break trips: border-hopping. The Danube delivers Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest; Austria, Slovakia and Hungary also provide some lovely scenery along the way downstream. So, to answer your question truthfully: the ideal duration for a city break is as long as you can afford.

open image in gallery

Q My son has claimed two sets of compensation for consecutive days of flight cancellations from London to Texas. The first flight was cancelled shortly before boarding. Passengers were rebooked on the following day’s departure. They actually boarded that flight but the plane went tech and was cancelled. Third time lucky: eventually he arrived in the US 44 hours behind schedule.

It looks to me that compensation is payable for two separate flights rather than the overall delay. But the airline insists cash is payable only once. The response says: “Although I appreciate your reasons for asking, I’m afraid there is no further compensation due in this situation.” This doesn’t sound right to me. On this basis, an airline could keep cancelling for days with customers getting no more than the initial compensation for a single flight.

Peter K

A UK air passengers’ rights rules, known as UK261, stipulate that passengers are entitled to cash compensation if they arrive three hours or more late at their final destination “in case of cancellation of a flight”. The only exception: if “extraordinary circumstances” such as bad weather, a security alert or striking air-traffic controllers grounds the flight, which does not appear to be the case.

My reading of the rules is that each cancelled flight should be treated as a separate event. If you are ticketed for long-haul flight XY123 on 4 February but it stays on the ground and you are rebooked on the corresponding departure the next day, you can expect £520. If the same thing happens and you are delayed for another 24 hours or so, that looks like two separate events. So, in theory, your son may be due £1,040 for the inconvenience, which I imagine may be more than the airfare he paid.

I daresay the carrier will argue that the rules apply to the overall journey taken as a whole and were never intended to compensate twice for the same issue. I am not aware of a test case that can support the airline’s refusal, though there may be one. I suggest you ask for the carrier’s legal justification for paying out only once – and, if it looks flimsy, consider either Money Claim Online or alternative dispute resolution (ADR). The latter has the advantage of being free, but in my experience ADR decisions do not always correlate exactly with the facts.

open image in gallery

Q I was booked on an early flight on Monday morning from Manchester to Sydney. Airline staff prevented me from boarding, saying my passport was damaged and would not be accepted in Australia. They added that the airline would be fined if they flew me. My passport has some minor water damage, but I have travelled by air out of Australia, in and out of New Zealand and to Spain and France since the damage with no comment, let alone problem. I can’t tell you the distress, cost and inconvenience of this rejection. What can I do?

Tony I

A What a nightmare. Such a refusal is, in my experience, very rare. In three decades I have encountered precisely two cases: the first involving a passport chewed by a dog, in which the passenger reached Indonesia but was turned away at passport control; the second also at Manchester airport, for a flight to Africa.

Airlines are concerned about damage to the laminated photo page, because that could signify interference with a passport. The rules from Virgin Atlantic (not the airline involved in this case) warn against “missing or badly torn pages, holes, stains, material alterations, mutilations, evidence that the laminate is lifted enough to allow possible substitution of the photo or any other damage that affects the integrity of the passport and/or the identification of the holder, such as the name, date of birth, citizenship and document number”.

Because you have successfully travelled with the passport, you may simply be a victim of over-zealous ground staff. In your position, and with a credit card limit permitting, I would buy a ticket on another airline and possibly from another airport. As you live in York, Newcastle or even a London hub may work. If you are able to travel to, and be admitted to, Australia, you will be in a strong position to claim the cost of your new flight from the airline once home – along with £520 in cash compensation wrongly denied boarding. But this is a high-stakes strategy. Were you to be refused again, you could lose yet more money. So you might prefer to obtain a passport as fast as possible and see if your airline will offer any flexibility.

Email your question to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder