Planning basics
How many days do you need in a city?
Three to four full days suits most major cities, which is enough for two or three neighborhoods and one large museum or landmark at a reasonable pace. Compact cities like Savannah, Porto, and Charleston are covered well in two. Add a day for jet lag on a long-haul trip, and another for each day trip you want to take.
Count full days rather than calendar days. A flight landing at 6pm and one leaving at 11am are not two days of a trip; together they're about one. Trips feel short mostly because the arrival and departure days get counted as whole ones during planning.
The variable that changes the answer is density. Rome and Paris hold more than four days of things worth seeing, so the question becomes what you're willing to skip. Somewhere like Sedona or Moab is set by how many hikes you want rather than by a list of sights, and the right length follows from that.
For reference: two days works for Savannah, Porto, Amsterdam, and Prague. Three to four covers Lisbon, Chicago, Barcelona, Mexico City, and Seoul. Five or more is right for Maui, Bali, Costa Rica, and Iceland, where driving distances eat into the day.
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