Black Friday city trip ideas: a winter day out with a city game

You pay less and keep the freedom to choose the day. City Game tickets have no time slot: you start the game whenever your team is ready, any day within 12 months. That makes a Black Friday purchase different from a discounted hotel night or a flight, which tie you to a date. This year our Black Friday offer runs from 20 November to 1 December.

The best winter cities have a compact old centre, warm places to stop on the way and something extra in December. These are some of our favourites:

• Amsterdam: canals with lights, and the most games of any city we have, including the Ghost Hunters game for dark evenings.
• Cologne: Christmas markets in the old town, a few minutes' walk from the cathedral.
• Strasbourg: the old town on its island turns into one large Christmas market in December.
• Vienna: grand squares, coffee houses to warm up in and markets in front of the city hall.
• Edinburgh: an old town full of closes and stories, at its best on a crisp winter day.
• Bruges and Ghent: short distances, medieval streets and plenty of places for hot chocolate.
• Copenhagen and Hamburg: harbour cities where a walk past the water ends in a warm café.

Our games run in many more cities. You can see every city and its games on the city overview.

Start early and dress for two hours outside. Most City Games take about 1.5 to 2 hours, and in December it gets dark between four and five in the afternoon in much of Europe. A few tips from our players:

1. Start before 2 pm if you want to see the sights in daylight.
2. Take a power bank: phones use more battery in the cold.
3. Wear gloves that work on a touchscreen, or take turns holding the phone.
4. Plan one warm stop halfway. You can pause the game and pick it up again.

Choose by the kind of afternoon you want. Secrets of is a self-guided scavenger hunt past the sights and hidden corners of a city, with riddles and photo tasks. Our detective murder mystery game lets your team solve a case on foot by questioning suspects and checking alibis. The Syndicate is an outdoor escape game in the streets for teams who like a race against the clock. In Amsterdam, Ghost Hunters takes you past the city's ghost stories, which suits a dark winter evening.

Every game is played outside, without a guide, in the browser of your phone. One ticket is one team: one phone and up to 4 players.

Yes, because the receiver chooses the city and the day. A City Game gift card is valid for 12 months and works for any game in any of our cities, so it does not end up unused in a drawer.

Split the group into teams of up to 4 and let every team play on its own phone. At the end you compare scores, for example over dinner. This works for a team outing, a birthday or a bachelor party. For larger groups you can ask for a group quote.