We all sometimes drive to visit multiple places that are perhaps 100 or 200 yards/meters apart, maybe a shopping center. However far apart they are, let’s just say it’s a hassle.
Where do you normally park?
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Park next to the first place you intend to visit and walk to the other afterward?
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Park next to the second place you intend to visit and walk to the other first (delayed gratification)?
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Park in between and walk to both places?
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Park next to one place and make a very short drive across the parking lot to the other (then feel guilty afterward)?
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Other?
Do you have a normal practice or rule of thumb?
I was in this situation and was trying to figure out the best place to park. I chose option 1.
I would say 5. Other.
My wife and I just park typically at the first spot we see. If it is a distance to walk, so be it. I HATE driving around a lot to find the ‘perfect’ spot, and so does she. So if we go to say the mall, we just drive in and park, and that usually means we park pretty far from the entrance. I guess we don’t mind walking 
But it has been my experience that if I go and try and park near the entrance, invariably I will encounter someone who is waiting for someone to get in their car and thus I am stuck behind them. I have found if I park–I end up getting in the store faster then those people who drive to the entrance and try and find a spot there. YMMV obviously
#3-I’ll tend to park in between, more parking spaces and fewer “parking stalkers”.
Edited out -quoted the entire OP :smack:
#3, because that’s where I can park closer to the buildings, so it minimizes the distance.
Unless I know I’ll get a large purchase at one of the locations, then I’ll park near that one.
I park wherever’s easiest to park. If one store has a parking lot and the others have on-street parking, I’ll park in the lot. If they both have lots but one is easier to park in than the other, or one of the lots is trickier to get to (left turn with no signal, blind intersection, that sort of thing) I’ll park in the easier lot. If they both have street parking, I’ll take a space without a meter or with a driveway in front of or behind it over one without those features. What can I say- I’m a lazy driver who doesn’t like making difficult driving maneuvers.
I would only do 4 if both had parking lots and the weather was bad, or I was going to buy something heavy or otherwise hard to carry at both.
Park near the store from which I suspet I’ll be carrying the biggest and heaviest bags to my car?
First I don’t take other store purchases through another store if I can help it so I will park by a general entrance. I park near the entrance that has the most places I wish to visit.
I figure first which store I’ll have the most to carry from and park closest to that. I go there first, put things away, then walk to and back from the second place.
Unless perishables are involved in which case the locations are the same, but the order I visit them is reversed.
Either #1 or #3, depending on where I find an open spot. Usually I just stop at the first open spot in the lot.
Last weekend I got screwed doing #1. I went to a supermarket adjacent to a Target. Literally adjacent, as in the outer wall of the supermarket doubled as the outer wall of the Target garden center. I parked in front of the supermarket, bought my groceries, put them in the car, then went to the garden center to buy 80 pounds of fertilizer. After paying I head back to my car. The second I pass from the front of the Target to the grocery storefront, the wheels on the cart lock up. That’s right, it was one of those anti-theft carts where the wheels lock up if you try to take it from the parking lot. The managers of this Target are such dumbasses, they set the perimeter to be the portion of the lot directly in front of their store, but not the part of the lot in front of the supermarket. My choices were (a) carry 4 20 pound bags of fertiziler by hand to my car, (b) move my car 3 rows closer, or © get a cart from the grocery store, hope they don’t have an anti-theft device on them, bring it to the Target side of the lot, and switch everything to the new cart. I did ©.
Generally, I’ll park out in Guam, or as we call it at the Renaissance Faire, BFE (Bum-F*ck Egypt) as my daily driver is a large pickup truck. The trick is to find a Guam that’s midway between my destinations.
Both one and “other”.
We usually head towards the first place we’re going to go, and park wherever. We don’t circle looking for a space close, so often we do end up in the middle of both places.