I had a Japanese friend, a boxer, who flew over to Vegas for a match, then got on a plane and came back, without staying over night. :eek:
When I asked if he was crazy or really fucking crazy, he just shrugged. Work was busy and he couldn’t take time off.
Of course we would do it if money were no object. We both love Amsterdam [not for the weed!] It is a pleasant city, at least in the canal district with one of my favorite hotels - CitizenM. Great beds, very comfortable rooms. The people in the canal district tend to be pretty nice as long as you are not the typical rude American tourist type, and hanging out in a cafe with coffee or tea and a stroopwaffle is a great way to pass an afternoon in the late spring or early summer. If it is winter, then somewhere in Germany with a good Christmas Market going on - Stuttgart has a nice one. I have enough friends scattered around western Europe that I could go a fair number of places and meet up for a nice leisurely Saturday with no problems at all.
Used to fly from Nevada to Vancouver and Guadalajara in 1990s on a few weekends and that wasn’t too bad. Leave Friday morning or afternoon and get back Monday morning early enough to go to work. But I was younger then.
I flew to Jamaica from Chicago one time in the winter and then got stuck when bad weather shut down O’Hare. Fortunately my boss was cool ( I didn’t tell him i was in Jamaica, though) and let me take Monday as a vacation day. I didn’t get back until early Tuesday before day and I didn’t any sleep until Tuesday night.
I would be less inclined to try it now as the chances of getting stuck due to a weather cancellation are too high and if you have TOO good a time, you are going to feel like crap all day Monday.
If I got an amazing deal on airfare and I couldn’t take more time I probably would but in reality I would just rearrange some meetings and make it 4 or 5 days if I got a great deal. My life is generally flexible enough to allow for some pretty last minute decisions.
It would be kind of disappointing to not get to stay longer than a weekend but breakfast overlooking the Seine would make up for it I think 
I did it once for a long weekend booty call. My wife and I had been married for only a few days when I posted overseas (she was to follow a month or so later), so we were still boinking like bunnies at that point. She bought me a ticket on miles from Lisbon to WDC for some whoopie time after I’d been gone a couple of weeks. My ass was dragging when I got back to work.
Never overseas, but when we lived in Toronto, my ex used to travel a lot on business in North America. It wasn’t unusual for me to fly to Vancouver or Calgary or Halifax for the weekend; and once, I spent the weekend with her in San Francisco.
I would. 
It was longer than a weekend, but I tagged along for 4 days to Lake Geneva; it was fun! The lag is killer eastward & a breeze westward. Excitement/adrenaline seems your enemy on the flight; you need to zone out the noise around you
and make yourself sleep on the flight though. You are either going to sleep on the plane or sleep through your visit; simple math.
Zombie or not…
I might do it if I was invited to something overseas that I really wanted or needed to go to, AND I had the money, AND I could book a doctor visit beforehand to get all of the necessary anti-anxiety meds. :rolleyes:
Very likely not on my own dime.
It’s 20 hours to the west and a “mere” 18 hours to the east. Between transit time to and from the airport and time spent at the airport, that means that half of the weekend would be in transit.
If the tickets (and lodging) were free? Probably.
No. I’m also not as young as I was (which applies to every human being on the planet, but I digress) and when I travel overseas I need at least 2 days before I feel “right” and can enjoy myself.
A cheap ticket is cheap, but FF miles possess a value equal to the normal value of the ticket that they can buy. So if I can buy a $600 ticket for $100, great, but if I normally have to spend 50,000 miles to get that $600 ticket, then using 50,000 FF miles to buy that ticket is not cheap.
I’ve flown shorter domestic flights for a long weekend (Friday morning departure, Sunday evening return), but longer flights (5+ hours, not including drive to/from each airport, time spent in ticketing, security, and gate areas) start to represent too much overhead for just a weekend. Waiting in lines for immigration/customs adds even more overhead for international travel. “Overseas” from Detroit means a flight of at least 8 hours, so no, with all that in mind, I ain’t going for just a weekend. And if I’m going for a longer period of time, that means I’m also dealing with a jet lag adjustment, which means I’m going to stay for a LONG time to make that adjustment worthwhile. Been to Japan three times now (~12 hour flight each way), and each time we stayed for two weeks; I wouldn’t want to go for less time than that, even if the flight was free.
Weekend shopping trips in Miami are practically a ritual for expats living in the Caribbean. You can fly Cayman to Miami on a 7am flight, pick up a rental car, and be in the stores shopping before 10am.
Some even do the round trip in a single day, enough so that Cayman Airways is offering a promotional special same-day fare.
I would be happy traveling for a weekend elsewhere around the Caribbean basin. Seasonally we have direct flights to Panama with fast connections all around Central and South America from there. And by limiting the east-west aspect of the travel it minimizes jet lag.
Back in grad school, a group of us saw a $49 ticket ( one way ) to Brussels on People Express and figured we would get away for the weekend. We only had a day and and a half on the ground but it was something to brag about later.
A boxing fan, or a boxing participant?
I’d probably only take advantage of this for either going to a place where I’m going to be on a bender (Ibiza, Macau, Monaco) or for a destination wedding. Otherwise, regardless of how good the deal is, I would wait until I had 4-5 days lined up.
Yes, I would–say, Seattle or Portland to Japan wouldn’t be too bad. I’ve been to Southeast Asia twice for stays not much longer than the travel time.
Oh that reminds me - I went through 6 months of flying 3 weekends a month. I was on a project in Ottawa, kids were living with my ex and my husband was on a project in NY. First and third weekend of every month both of us would fly to Toronto to spend with the kids, second weekend I’d fly to NY, 4th weekend he’d fly to Ottawa. Our corporate travel agent was our lifeline. Depending on the project schedule some of those trips required more time in taxis and planes than we had on the ground. Luckily this was all pre 9/11 so the airports were at least easier to get through.