
Kraków: The Weekend That Includes Auschwitz, or Does Not
Kraków is a compact, cheap and beautiful weekend city with a decision attached that no other city break involves.

Kraków is a compact, cheap and beautiful weekend city with a decision attached that no other city break involves.

A city break is a fixed number of hours, and the flight and transfer eat a predictable share before you decide anything else.

The same weekend costs three times as much in one European capital as in another, for a comparable standard of trip.

Vienna's coffee house tradition is UNESCO-listed and is genuinely one of the better things to do with a weekend there.

City break lists rank cities against each other, which is useless without knowing what kind of weekend you are after.

Rome's evening is a slow drift between piazzas rather than a night out, and the good bars are away from the monuments.

Lisbon's best eating is in small neighbourhood restaurants at lunchtime, and one custom regularly surprises visitors on the bill.

Barcelona's famous sights are ticketed and busy, and its neighbourhoods are free and mostly empty of visitors.

Bangkok's geography splits into a river half and a rail half, and a three-day trip works best when it respects that.

Japan's rail network makes short trips out of the big cities unusually easy, and a weekend reaches further than expected.

Paris in the evening runs on different rules, and a short trip that ignores them sees only the daytime half.

There are still European cities where a two-night weekend costs less than a single night in Zurich, and several are excellent.