Anonymous wrote:Slightly OT, I would never ever leave the inside-security zone at a Turkish airport. The country is basically a dictatorship and foreigners are targeted both by criminal elements and sometimes for some countries by the government. Turkish prisons and jails have earned their very bad reputation. It just is not worth the risk.

I mention this primarily because Turkish Airlines has some fairly cheap airfares to Europe or Asia that stop in Turkey.

Which countries do they not like?

I've never intentionally done it, but sometimes it was the cheapest or most convenient thing available.
One time I was traveling to Marrakech and the best way to get there at the time was with an 8 or so layover in Brussels. I took a train into the city of Leuven and had several hours to go to explore.
But keep in mind, your layover is after a red eye flight you will be exhausted. If you can do outdoor things, it's better.

Slightly OT, I would never ever leave the inside-security zone at a Turkish airport. The country is basically a dictatorship and foreigners are targeted both by criminal elements and sometimes for some countries by the government. Turkish prisons and jails have earned their very bad reputation. It just is not worth the risk.

I mention this primarily because Turkish Airlines has some fairly cheap airfares to Europe or Asia that stop in Turkey.

We did it in Copenhagen. Landed in the early am hours (bags checked through to final destination, we all had full/heavy back packs with us) and put our backpacks in lockers, and took the train into town. Spent the day walking around, eating, enjoying. It's a gorgeous city, we walked over 20,000 steps (great after spending all that time on a plane), and left to fly on to our final destination around 6pm.

We had eight hours in Lisbon and we were able to see a lot. It was exhausting but worth it.

Had half a day to kill at Narita so I took the kids to the Pokémon center. They really loved it.

Anonymous wrote:That is an impossible question to answer. What airport? What time of year and time of day? What sorts of things are you looking to do? How busy is that airport at that time of day. How long is the layover? Do you have bags? Is a visa required ot leave the airport?

But to answer your question, I have done so many times. But some places it takes 15 minutes from the front door to the gate, including security. Others, it can take hours.

This.

I always find the time between landing in Europe and my first sleep to be essentially wasted because I struggle to sleep on red eye flights. So, for this to be fun, I’d need the layover to involve a sleep, to be 18ish hours long at least. Otherwise I’d prefer to get it over with as soon as possible.

But, if I did have 18-36 hours I think any city can be worth it. Even Frankfurt. Get a beer, see a museum, eat a currywurst.

That being said, my general thought is that unless you really want to see the layover city, just get the transit portion over with.

Anonymous wrote:OP needs to state the airport and length of layover to see if it's possible.

When I'm coming from the US to Europe, if I have a long layover I often book a hotel at the airport (day rate) so I can sleep. It's 7-8 hours to Europe from IAD but the flights usually leave at 6pm so my body isn't ready fro bedtime until shortly before landing.

They did at 19:34

Anonymous wrote:We just did this while on a layover in Copenhagen-- it was nice! We arrived in the late evening, spent the night at a hotel next to the airport and then in the morning took the train into the city and spent the morning there before coming back for an afternoon flight back to the US. We hadn't. been to Copenhagen before and it was nice to have a brief little introduction to it and definitely convinced us that we'd want to come back to visit for longer.

What were you able to do in half a day? Do you have to be at the airport 3 hours prior? How busy is that airport?

From what I read, it looks like metro takes you into the city in 15 minutes? Do they have luggage storage at the airport or yours were checked all the way through to US? Curious what you did with the carry ons when going into the city.