The other planning worth doing is logistical rather than cultural: know how you're getting from the airport or station into town, know whether you need cash, and check what closes early on Sundays. Those three answers prevent almost every short-trip stress. Everything else can be decided on the day, in the moment, over a coffee.
How do I make a two-night trip feel like a proper holiday?
Give yourself one long, unhurried meal and one long, unhurried walk — both without a deadline afterwards. Holidays feel like holidays when time stops being divided into slots, and a single stretch of three or four unstructured hours does more for that feeling than four crammed activities. It also helps to arrive on the earliest sensible transport and leave on the latest, so you buy yourself two whole daylight chunks rather than two halves.
What should I pack for two nights so I only take one bag?
Build the whole trip around one pair of shoes you can walk ten kilometres in and still wear to dinner, then choose clothes in a single colour family so everything layers together. Two tops, one extra layer, one pair of trousers or a dress, plus something warm for evenings is genuinely enough for two nights, and decanting your toiletries into small bottles the night before saves you the airport queue. The point isn't minimalism for its own sake — it's that not checking a bag can add a comfortable hour to each end of a very short trip.
