Don't know why you think I'm arguing with you, just having a conversation. I'm not moving any goalposts, I'm talking about my own experience from work travel to less exciting places, that are sometimes not easily explorable in a couple free evenings without a car.

In places like Paris & London it should be easier to have some fun. Although still you might not always be able to - sometimes you only travel for a few days & want to get the most of that work session, or e.g. want to go back home as soon as you can so you can spend the weekend with your spouse/kids.

For example I had a colleague visiting here in Berlin for one week, that required 16h of travel either way. When he came on Sunday (flight took off on Saturday morning in his original time zone) he was tired from the long flight and his flight back home was the Sunday afterwards. During the week we worked like mad in order to get the most value from the visit, so he had some evenings and one Saturday, in which I think he got to see some of Berlin, but not much (simply due to not really having a lot of time + being tired).

In a city less accessible he would have seen next to nothing. When I did the reverse trip to a small Canadian town with a metropolitan population of less than 100k people & no transit, I've not managed to do much sight seeing.