I had been planning this trip for the better part of over 2 years now, a graduation trip for my daughter, Madalyn. She was given a choice between money or a trip to anywhere she wanted to go in the world, and she chose the trip and she chose the UK.
The places that she wanted to go to and see and do were:
Stand on the inside of Stonehenge
Shop in Bath
Shop on Grafton Street in Dublin
See the Giant's Causeway
Walk across the Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge
Visit with our friend Billy in the Highlands of Scotland
This would be my 4th time going over there and her 2nd as the last time she was in the UK, she was 3 years old, some 16 years ago. We had stayed with Billy when he lived in Mallaig and we were in the UK when Princess Diana had died, we were just down the road from Balmoral, where the Prince and the sons were staying.
Now, returning back again, we were there when the baby was born who would have been Princess Diana's first grandchild! We had landed and got to the hotel just as they announced on the tv that Kate had had the baby. Although they had not named him yet, I had guessed they would name him George. For some reason, I just thought after seeing the distant past relatives of their's scrolling past on the tv, George stuck out to me. They would call him Georgie boy for short and I thought yea, King George. Wouldn't that be amazing?! :)
Anyway, back to the trip! I love to plan for trips! The planning is almost as much fun as going on the trip itself! After having done a coach tour for 2 weeks, I knew this trip, I would have to put it together on my own as the places Madz wanted to go to, were not all a part of just one tour. I also wanted to avoid driving as much as I could and completely if I could help it. I can drive over there, just would rather sit and relax and not have to worry about the car nor petrol nor any of that.
I figured this should be a good 3 week trip to really get to see everything and set it all up properly. I also wanted to add in a few places that she had not thought of and one (Paris), I wanted to make a surprise for her.
So here is what got added in:
Harry Potter tour--2.5 hour black cab taxi tour
Day trip to Paris---2 course champagne brunch atop the Eiffel Tower, cruise along the Seine and into the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa
Stop at Lacock in England for breakfast--part of the Stonehenge/Bath tour
Train across Ireland and then fly over to the Aran Islands
Tour to the Isle of Lewis to see the Callanish Standing Stones
Tour to the Orkneys to see the Ring of Brodgar and Skara Brae
Tour through Highgate cemetery
And last minute, I tossed in a Jack the Ripper tour.
The Setup:
The first thing to worry about is the air fare and reservations. Flying across the Atlantic Ocean, fondly called 'the pond', is really not that expensive when you plan and schedule it way ahead of time.
As this was her graduation trip, I wanted to really spoil her rotten and fly First Class but of course, that is just crazy, silly money to toss away.
However! her father travels a lot for his job and he saved for about 2 years for enough frequent flyer points to fly us both over first class for free! And when I say free, yes, the tickets were free, we only had to pay taxes. Oh man! Those taxes were about how much a flight would have cost us to fly a domestic flight if we paid in full! So yup, the cost for that was: $598.60 total for two people. I booked and paid for it in October 2012 for the July departure date.
We chose American Airlines, since we had the points with them, and also chose them and not British Airways as it would actually cost more in taxes than American Airlines. Funny that, as I would have thought it the other way around but no, American Airlines was the cheaper one.
The tours were next to set up and I was able to make a lot of them with Premium Tours and I'll have a link off to the side for them. Those I could set up fairly early, however a lot of the other tours and the train travel, I had to wait as they do not open up those dates we were to travel until it was much closer. So every now and then, I would check to see if the dates were released so that I could make the reservation and pay for the tour. This made it so that the paying for each tour would be staggered out for me as only one or two would be available each month or few weeks and so it made the costs very affordable in that way rather than paying for the entire trip all at once.
The trains were last to get reserved only because they were the last to open up for reservations. I had gotten the hotels fairly early on and most just reserved the amount they were to charge on the card and not actually charge tho' I would have rathered they just charged it but that was ok.
One thing to take note of here is that when you look at a calendar for the UK tours, you have to be careful to take note what day it is you are booking because their week starts with Monday, not Sunday so their calendars were off. I almost made a mistake because of that.
Now to set this up, I pulled out a map and a calendar and marked what day we were to do what and tracked what we would need to do to make that happen, what hotel, or would we need a taxi or train to get there? How close was the hotel to the train station? All these questions and locations had to get mapped out strategically to make the transitions be as smooth and easy as possible.
I almost set up an account with a taxi company for I knew I would probably be using them a lot but I felt that might be too expensive and most of the places I was choosing seemed to be in relative close proximity to each other and at times, we might walk, take the train or take the underground (the London subway kind of system). What I should have done was to have gotten a season travel pass on the underground as we ended up using that quite often as it was the cheapest way to get around London and if you are not in a hurry and don't mind the frequent stops, it is very convenient.
So nearly all tours and travel and hotels were paid for before the actual trip! That was really great! All we would have to spend our money on then was food and fun basically! How grand that is!
Now for what to pack?
21 days, actually was 23 days away when I recounted it. We wanted to travel as light as we could so we took half the tops and figured to wear them twice and then a few pants, shorts, skirts and just wear some of those a few times. As for shoes, we are lucky in that we have about the same size foot so we could share the two pair of sandals we took and then we wore our own sneakers. Brought socks of course, bras...etc. We would share the shampoo, cream rinse, soap, and other assorted toiletries and then we took our own makeup.
Camera and rechargers, headphones, iPod, and I picked up an iPad too so she would be able to Skype with her boyfriend and I could keep in touch with her dad who was covering for me at work and I could answer questions and of course to post pics along the way on Facebook. (If you would like my Facebook, feel free to look me up at: ghostpeeker@hotmail.com and add me. Tons of pics there!)
We also brought an umbrella for each of us as I knew it got rainy at times in the UK. Brought all the reservations and credit cards we would use and had used for the reservations.
She had a backpack and I had a carryon luggage as well as a purse that could hold the iPad and I had a smaller purse/wallet. Billy's address in case customs was a pain.
A light, thin jacket/sweater type of thing, two of those.
We left our cell phones at home for they would not be of much use without an international plan and I thought that the iPad would cover us as to keep in touch with family and friends.
This was an overnight flight, so we would be sleeping on the plane. We made sure we ate before we left that evening.
Picked up some snacks for the plane and during the trip.
That is all I can think of for setup, if more comes to mind, I'll edit and add it in here. :)
I took notes each day on my iPad and I will share these here of our journey as well as pics!
Blog posts to come!!
