The arrival hour decides the tone
Most people waste the first two hours after landing or stepping off a train: they check in, scroll for somewhere to eat, get overwhelmed by options and end up somewhere forgettable near a station. Try treating that first hour as the most important part of the trip. Drop the bag, wash your face, change your shoes, and go straight out for a walk with no destination — thirty to forty minutes, phone in pocket, just to learn where things are in relation to each other.
You'll pass a restaurant you want to try, a bar with the right kind of light, a bridge or a square that becomes your landmark. By the time you sit down for the first meal you're already oriented, and orientation is what makes a place feel like yours. On the way back, buy breakfast for the morning: fruit, something baked, whatever the local equivalent of a good yoghurt is. It means you can wake up slowly instead of hunting for food in a strange grid of streets.
Book one thing, leave the rest empty
Short trips collapse under itineraries. My rule is one anchor per day and nothing else in the diary. The anchor might be a table you've reserved, a market that only runs on Saturday morning, a museum with a small collection you actually want to see, or a thermal bath if the city has one. Everything either side of it stays unplanned, which is the only way you'll ever end up in a second-hand bookshop for an hour or sitting in a park watching people walk dogs.
