What to do on the last day of a trip, before your flight

Working out what to do on the last day of a trip usually starts with an awkward gap: check-out at eleven, a flight at eight in the evening, and a suitcase in between. Most advice stops at the suitcase: ask for a late check-out, find somewhere to store the bags. Both are useful, and neither tells you what to put in those hours, in what order, or when the day really ends.

The last day is planned backwards, from the moment you have to leave the city, not forwards from the moment you wake up.

Work backwards from the flight

The departure time on your ticket is not the end of your day. The end of your day is the last minute you can still be in the city, and it sits a long way before the flight. Count it once, honestly, and write it at the top of the day:

• Start from the time your airline asks you to be at the airport. Check its own advice rather than a rule of thumb: it is usually longer for international flights, and longer still if you are checking a bag.
• Take away the journey to the airport at that time of day, door to door, including the walk to the station and the wait for the train.
• Take away the time it takes to collect your bags, wherever they are.
• Take away a margin for the one thing that goes wrong: a late train, a queue at the lockers, a taxi that does not come.

A flight at 19:00 with an airline that wants you there two hours early, forty-five minutes of train and a fifteen-minute margin means picking up the bags at about 15:30. The day that looked like it ran until seven ends at half past three. Everything that follows is easier once that number is on paper.

Decide where the bags spend the day

Wherever you leave the luggage, you have to go back for it, so the bags fix the shape of the last day. There are three usual options:

• At the accommodation. Many places will hold bags after check-out if you ask in advance. Ideal when the accommodation is on the way to the airport or close to where you want to spend the day.
• Lockers or a left-luggage office at a station. Best when that station is on the airport line, because collecting the bags and setting off become a single stop. Check the opening hours and the size of the lockers before you count on them.
• With you. Only works with a small bag, and only for a day without museums, crowds or stairs.

The arrangement to avoid is the triangle: bags at one end of the city, the day at the other, and the airport in a third direction. It turns the afternoon into a crossing and back. A late check-out is worth asking for when the flight is very late or you want a shower before a long one, but it is a favour or an extra charge, not a right, so do not build the day on it until it is confirmed.

What to do on the last day of a trip, by departure time

As with arrival, there is no single right last day, but there are four kinds.

Morning flight, before about eleven. There is no last day, only breakfast, if there is time. Pack the night before, settle everything with the accommodation the evening before, and treat the previous day as the real end of the trip, with the farewell dinner on that night.

Midday or early afternoon. A proper breakfast and one short thing near where you slept or on the way to the airport. A walk, a market, a café you liked. Nothing with a ticket.

Late afternoon or evening. A morning and a lunch: half a day, close to the bags and the route out. This is the case where planning makes the most difference, because the hours are real but the edges are hard.

Late night or an overnight flight. Almost a full day, with three problems a normal day does not have: you carry everything you own, you cannot go back to a room, and you will be tired before boarding. Plan a slower afternoon, an early dinner near the route to the airport, and somewhere to sit or wash rather than a long walk at the end.

What belongs on the last day, and what does not

The test is the mirror image of the one for arrival day: if this ran late, could you simply walk away from it? Good fits pass that test without effort:

• Anything near the bags or the route to the airport.
• Places with no entry time that you can leave after twenty minutes or two hours: a market, a park, a neighbourhood you have not walked yet.
• A long lunch, which is a good way to spend the hours that remain.
• Going back to a place you liked earlier in the trip. You already know how long it takes.
• The food or gifts you meant to buy, bought now so they stay fresh. If they are liquids, check what you can carry in hand luggage.

Poor fits:

• A timed ticket late in the day. One delay and you choose between the visit and the flight.
• The one thing you came for. If it slips, there is no tomorrow to move it to.
• Anything across town from your route, or a day trip out of the city.
• A beach, a hike or anything that leaves you sandy or soaked, unless you know where you will shower afterwards.
• A famous sight with an unpredictable queue.

Do the work the night before

Most stressful last mornings were created the evening before, by leaving the packing and the checks for later. Ten minutes the night before buys a calm morning:

• Pack everything except tomorrow’s clothes, and put a change of clothes and a toothbrush where you can reach them without opening the whole case.
• Check the flight time and the terminal again, and check in online if your airline allows it.
• Confirm how you will reach the airport at that time of day, and buy the ticket now if you can.
• Check when the lockers or the accommodation will let you collect the bags.
• Settle anything still owed to the accommodation and agree how to hand back the keys.
• Decide what to do with the local cash you have left: spend it at lunch, or keep it for next time.

Save the boarding pass to the phone so it opens without a connection; the reasoning is the same as in what to download before a trip.

An example: check-out at 11:00, flight at 20:30

The airline asks for two hours at the airport, so you need to be there at 18:30. The train from the central station takes forty minutes and runs every quarter of an hour. Take the 17:30, collect the bags at 17:15, and the day in the city ends at five. The lockers are at that same station.

• 09:00. Breakfast near the flat. The case was packed last night.
• 10:45. Check out and walk fifteen minutes to the central station. Bags in a locker.
• 11:15 to 13:00. The old quarter next to the station, which the trip had only passed through.
• 13:00. A long lunch, paid with the last of the cash.
• 14:45. Back to the park with the view you liked on day two, ten minutes away.
• 16:15. Coffee near the station and the cheese you wanted to take home.
• 17:15. Collect the bags, catch the 17:30.

What is not on that list matters just as much. The museum across the river with a 15:00 entry slot was the obvious choice and would have put the whole return at risk. It moved to an earlier day of the trip, where a delay costs nothing.

Write the end time into the plan

The difference between a rushed last day and a pleasant one is rarely what is in it. It is whether the time it ends was written down before it began. It is the same logic as planning arrival day, applied at the other end of the trip: the first and last days are partial, and planning them as full ones is how a trip starts and ends in a hurry.

If you plan with Traveley, write your return flight in the “Anything else?” box, something like “our flight back is at 20:30”. The last day then ends in time to get to the airport, with only the stops that fit before it.