I’m looking for an idiomatic translation of the phrase to hit the town:
to spend time in the area of a city or town where there are a lot of restaurants, bars, etc.
The suggested translation
in der Stadt ankommen
seems very ‘formal’ for me, and I would not consider it hitting the town actually.
I would like to say something like this in German:
I’m hitting Munich today!
In der Stadt ankommen is not only a formally-seeming translation but also does not capture the intended meaning: it means little more than to arrive in a town.
A direct and equivalent idiomatic translation probably does not exist, it will most likely depend on what you want to emphasise. If it is mainly going there, I would suggest in die Stadt gehen.
Wir gehen heute Abend nach München in die Stadt.
If the implication is also partying, I would probably use feiern gehen:
Wir gehen heute Abend nach München feiern.
And finally, if you’re going all-out, you may decide to use die Stadt unsicher machen, which is the only phrasal translation I can think of but whose meaning is a tad closer to to paint a town red.
Wir machen heute Abend München (or: die Stadt) unsicher.
I'm hitting Munich today!
I'd translate this as
Heute geht's (weiter) nach München!
I'd insert the weiter if you want to express that you are at one place now and are continuing your travels. For example:
Letzter Tag in Nürnberg - heute geht's weiter nach München!
In that sense you could also say:
Heute ist der letzte Tag in Nürnberg. Weiter geht's nach München!
You could also say Heute geht's nach München if you live in another nearby town and want to say that you're going shopping in Munich or something.
In the sense of Merriam-Webster, which I understand as we're going to the place in town where people go to go shopping or to go out, a possible translation would be:
Heute gehe ich in die Stadt.
Heute geht's in die Stadt.
where die Stadt does not refer to a specific city. In that case die Stadt refers to the area in a city where things happen - cafés, shops, shipping centers, etc.
In Germany, this tends to be the center of the city (in former times, this was the central market place. The cities grew from there). Ironically, this is also sometimes called die City in German. When you talk about Munich you will often hear people say Heit gemmer in die City (Heute gehen wir in die City).
Due to the fact that the so called Stadt used to refer to some more or less central area of a city, you could also say
Heute fahren wir nach ... rein.
assuming that you stay anyway outside that inner city.
For example if your hotel is in the outskirts of Munich, you could say:
Heute fahren wir nach München rein.
The closest translation I can currently come up with
Wir sind heute in München aufgeschlagen
is a quite literal translation and at just about the same level of hip speech (or colloquialism) as "hit the city".
EDIT: There has been some discussion in the comments about the exact meaning of "to hit the town". It definitely seems to mean more than "to arrive". Whether or not my original answer below is appropriate depends on how much emphasis is put on having fun when saying "to hit the town". Just sitting in a restaurant and having a coffee is definitely not "die Stadt unsicher machen". I tried to describe what it usually means - namely, that it's a slightly tongue-in-cheek way of saying that someone wants to have "excessive" fun. So the asker can figure out whether this is what he actually wants to say.
A common phrase in German that seems to have the same meaning is
Die Stadt unsicher machen
Literally, it means "to make the city unsafe", and is a somewhat ironically exaggerating phrase for having parties, visiting clubs, maybe having some drinks, or having fun in general.
You could say something like
Ich mache heute München unsicher
but it's such a coined phrase that you could also say
Ich mache heute in München die Stadt unsicher
(even though "die Stadt" is München in this case)
