Back in May, I got a hairbrained idea. I had recently discovered Lindsey Stirling and her music and I was stumbling around the internet one day, trying to see if she had any upcoming tour dates. Her US tour appeared to have been mostly completed. Sad day. But, she had announced a number of tour dates in Europe. I jokingly looked at Aaron and said, “I think we should go see Lindsey Stirling in Concert.”

He replied with an enthusiastic, “Yes!” See, he was the one who introduced her to me. “When and where?” he asked.

“Budapest. October 7. We could celebrate our anniversary!” I answered

“Ok, let’s go! Find flights.”

And that is how I found myself planning a long weekend in Budapest to see a concert.

It was crazy! We booked our flights on two itineraries because it was way cheaper that way. But, it also meant that I booked us with long layovers in JFK. I had never been through the airport and once I saw it, regretted the long layover decision. But, it was done and we had lounge access, so it wasn’t terrible. We ended up having a full 24 hours of travel there, and 24 hours back, and only 2.5 days in Budapest. We were exhausted. We were excited to be on our second kid-free trip this year (really, we’re so grateful for family being willing to help with the girls - there is NO WAY we could have done this trip with them). And we were in BUDAPEST! We got to add another country to our list, too.

When we lived in Germany, weekend city breaks were our go-to. We visited so many places this way: Barcelona, Rome, London, Paris, Brussels, Krakow, Luxembourg City, Munich, Austria (multiple times!), Pilsen, Prague. Actually, a majority of our trips those two years were 4 days long or less. So I feel like we’re pretty much pros at this European City Break thing, and almost have a “formula” down pat. But flying to Europe, from the US, for a city break is an entirely different beast! I wasn’t sure what to expect really.

I was actually really worried about jet lag. Would it be terrible? Would we just stay on our US schedules? Would we end up sleeping the days away instead of sightseeing? I have had some not great experiences with jet lag in the past. Turns out, the long travel actually helped in this manner. We were tired, sure, but I attributed that to lack of sleep rather than jet lag per say. We didn’t sleep all day (what a waste of a trip that would have been!). We enjoyed the cool fall weather exploring a new city.

Would we have enough time in the city to feel like we had explored it? I’m not sure we did, but Budapest is a decently large city, so it would take a lot longer than a weekend to really see it all.

So back to whether or not European City Breaks from the US are feasible. Sure, they are feasible. Would I recommend it? Maybe, it depends on where in the US you are flying from.

A city break from the east coast with a direct flight would be the easiest. It was a 6 hour flight from JFK to Amsterdam. Had that been our only leg, we could have EASILY spent a weekend in Amsterdam and had a fantastic time. But, we added on an additional 3 hour flight from New Orleans to JFK, and a 2 hour flight from Amsterdam to Budapest. That made it exponentially more difficult (but still worth it!). I think a trip from the west coast would be hard too - the time change is just so great that it may be hard to beat jet lag.

Aaron and I both looked at each other as we boarded our last flight from JFK home to New Orleans, our 6th flight in 5 days, and agreed that a weekend city break would only be considered again if there was only one connection we had to make, and we didn’t have young children with us. You just loose too much time if you have to make more connections that that. Basically for us, the feasibility comes down to the length of travel time. Anything over 12 hours probably means it won’t be too enjoyable, but less than that and it could possibly work.

Let us know in the comments if you’ve ever jaunted off to Europe for a weekend! We’d love to hear about your experience!