Travel
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Best way to plan/book trip to England/Scotland?
DH and I are planning a trip to England and Scotland for this Fall. I am overwhelmed by all the different websites. Any recommendations on websites to book the travel through or to gather information from? It's our first time going overseas.
We plan to be in London for 3-4 days, Edinburgh for 3-4 days and then St. Andrews for 2-3 days.
We've checked with a travel agent and she gave us a quote of $8,000 for flight and hotel but I'm positive we can do better than that. Just feeling a little lost at where to start. Thank you!
Re: Best way to plan/book trip to England/Scotland?
how much of this is airfare vs hotel? This seems incredibly high. We are going to the UK in the Fall and tickets seem to be about $1300-1400 pp from Atlanta. Even if you spent $3k on airfare there is no way you would spend $5000 on hotels for 11 days.
What types of hotels are you planning to stay in? In London I stayed in a B&B about 20 mins outside of central London (by tube) and it was really reasonable.
Edinburgh also has loads of B&Bs which are about a 15 minute walk or 7 minute bus ride form the main attractions.
They're not as fancy as a hotel would be but you won't be in your room too much anyway.
Try laterooms.com
Where are you flying out of? That quote is crazy. I would check out Travelocity, etc. Many of those sites now let you book multi-city trips. At least consider using it to price out your flights.
We got a package deal on Travelocity with 2 non-stop round trip flights plus 5 days at the Hilton in Dublin in May/June for only $1,300. (Out of NYC.)
Anything you can achieve through hard work, you could also just buy.
That is quite expensive. I would recommend booking the trip on your own versus using a travel agent. Start getting ideas for lodging by looking at Tripadvisor.com. Also, you can often save a lot of $$ on lodging by renting an apartment instead of staying in a hotel room. I have used VRBO.com on several past trips.
Another great website to look at for ideas and money saving tips is www.ricksteves.com. He has suggested itineraries and also has a message board like this, although it gets a lot more activity than this one.
I'll do it for you for $7K ;-)
That is an insane amount of money for flights and hotel unless it's 5* all the way and you're flying from the West coast of the states. Those are three really easy destinations to manage although you'll need to think about how you're getting around from place to place. I use Trip Advisor a ton for trips, basically I narrow it down by price and then start looking at the websites of the top B&B's or hotels or restaurants or whatever I'm looking at and put a list together with options.
It's really easy to take the train from Edinburgh-London (or vice versa obviously) and I'd highly recommend that over flying but that's a personal preference thing. Train tickets go on sale exactly 3 months before your travel date and that's the date you want to book if you can - they can increase exponentially in price. If you do fly, look at flying from London City Airport instead of Heathrow to save the journey out to Heathrow airport.
Are you looking at flying into London or Edinburgh? St Andrews is an easy train/bus ride from Edinburgh (unless you're planning to rent a car?). I think it takes about 3 hours to get there from here? I've been twice and it's gorgeous, it's a great pick for a couple days.
I'm totally happy to help you put your Scotland trip together (Hi meg!) and there are tons of nesties in London on the International Nesties board who can help with that part. Honestly, it will be a lot cheaper and you'll have so much more control over what you do.
BFP Apr 2012, EDD Dec 19 2012 * twin h/b at 6wk, 9wk scan * Baby A lost at 12wks, Baby B was my rainbow born at 36wks
I agree. Getting from London out to the airport (any one of them) will cost around ?30. The trains take you city center to city center.
I will add a suggestion to this: To fly into Edinburgh you'll have to go through London (or another large international European airport).
Check to see if you can do a multi-destination flight, in to London and back home from Edinburgh. It can be quite reasonable (but sometimes not), and will save you time/money having to go back to London so you can fly home.
Agree with all this unless you happen to live on the East Coast (there are direct flights to Newark from Edinburgh). A multi-destination trip might work and it's worth looking into - even if it's a bit more expensive, you'll save a full day's travel and obviously the transport costs going in a circle.
BFP Apr 2012, EDD Dec 19 2012 * twin h/b at 6wk, 9wk scan * Baby A lost at 12wks, Baby B was my rainbow born at 36wks
That is extremely high! England/Scotland is very easy to get around and plan yourself so skip the travel agent. I actually lived in England for about 6 months while in college so maybe I can help a bit.
1. Airfare - check out kayak.com they search most major airlines and give you a lot of options with flights. If you have flexible dates you can look at the calendar to on the right side. It can help you find the cheapest days to leave.
2. Hotel - I like using tripadvisor.com for reviews and help deciding hotels then you can search various sites for the best deal. For london I recommend staying around Kensington, it's a very pretty/safe neighborhood, a little pricier than some others but easy to get around the city and very charming.
3. Travel throughout - Definitely by train. It's been a while but when I was there train travel in england was more expensive than in a lot of other european countries. You can get a train pass through eurail.com, I got a pass where I could do unlimited train travel throughout england and scotland for a certain # of days/3 months. It was really nice and I went all over. Around london just use the tube, very easy. To and from the airport use the heathrow express.
4. I don't know if you had decided exactly where to go/what to do but I recommend London, a day trip to Bath (about 1.5 hours from london, very nice town I may be biased because this is where I lived), if you want to see a college town I preferred Oxford over Cambridge (another day trip from london), stop overnight in York on the way up to Scotland (very nice town), then Edinburgh.
Hope this helps a bit
Coming back a little late. Haven't had time to respond.
Thank you for all the suggestions and for putting my worries at ease about the $8k. We are flying out of MSP and were planning on spending a few days in London before we head to Edinburgh.
All of your input helps so much. It sounds like taking a train from London to Edinburgh is the way to go. I'm glad to see I wasn't missing anything with St. Andrews we could be done in a day or day and a half versus 3-4 days.
Thank you for offering to help and answer questions! I will definitely be hitting you up once we figure out how long we will be there. I'm so excited to dig into the planning phase. UK looks amazing!
Thanks for the tips! I will definitely check out VRBO and Rick Steves.
I would try another travel agent. Some agents just pick a flight and pick a hotel and put them together with their preferred supplier (whichever one is offering bonuses that month), and say "well this is the price". Others take the time to research and explore with multiple suppliers. Go in with a budget that you would like to spend- the right agent will be respectful of that.
When you are booking overseas, it is SO worth it to book with an agent- especially with multiple destinations, and especially if it is your first time traveling overseas. Nothing is worse than being stranded in a foreign country with no one to call. If you book online and have issues, more than likely, you will not have someone to call.
ETA: I agree that eurorail/train is a great way to travel between different cities/countries. I have booked several clients this way.