I originally had set out to write down each step of how we planned our trip as we did them, but like most things I plan on doing, I didn't do it. So here is a run down of what we have done in preparation for our up coming trip to England, Scotland, and (briefly) Ireland.
I got my passport!
One of the first things I had to do was get a passport. Luckily Brynt already had one, so it was just me who needed one. It was really pretty simple, I got on the web site, filled out all the paper work, printed it off, got my picture taken, and took it all in to the County building. It was about $150 dollars and took about 6 weeks to get my passport. I was glad I did this early because if there had been any issues (people tend to transcribe my name wrong...a lot) it would have taken even longer to get it back and having a passport is pretty crucial to international travel.
As it happened, the whole process was smooth and easy.
Side note- You do not need a visa to be a tourist in the UK, they have a handy website where you tell them a little about yourself (where you are coming from, what you will be doing, how long you will be staying) and it tells you if you will need a visa. Thankfully we don't, one less thing to worry about!
We bought plane tickets!
This was by far the most influential step, as it determined the start and end points of our trip, the duration of our trip, as well as the timing of our trip.
We looked at (literally) hundreds of different flight options, trying to find the best options for us. Our priority list went something like this:
- Open ended flights (we wanted to arrive in London and leave from Edinburgh)
- Time of year ( we wanted to go in Spring, or shoulder season, when the weather is decent but it is not the height of tourist season)
- Price (we needed to be able to afford the trip, ha ha)
- Getting at least two weeks in the UK ( we ended up with three, more on that later)
- Reasonable flight lengths ( we were fine with having some layovers and longer fights, but no one wants to spend 36 hours on a plane)
So did we get all that we wanted? Yes, I believe we did.
We looked at so many options and so many travel sights but in the end Google flights was by far the most useful and usable. We were able to get flights going into London and leaving from Edinbugh, with the added bonus of getting a day in Dublin (Trinity College Library, here I come!). We are going during early May, right when we wanted to be there. We were able to get the tickets for a price we were comfortable with, although I will add that I wish we had bought them earlier. I started looking at tickets roughly 8 months before our intended trip time, and tickets were cheaper at that time than when we bought them, 6 months before the trip. We had originally wanted to have 2 weeks in the UK, but the way the flight prices worked out, it was significantly cheaper if we stayed an extra week, it was a tough choice (just kidding, it wasn't), but we opted for the extra week AND cheaper flights. Reasonable flight lengths- There were some pretty cheaply priced flights out there, BUT they often had such long flight times that we felt the savings weren't worth the time we would loose. So we found flights that we thought would be reasonable in both price and length.
So on our 5 year wedding anniversary we bought our tickets! By far the most expensive gift we have ever gotten for one another :).
We Bought Bags!
Luggage should not be a big deal right? HA! Leave it to me to turn something simple into a full time job. I honestly spent a good two or three months researching, debating and agonizing over what bags to take on this trip.
We really did not want to have checked bags, for two main reasons.
#1- If you don't check a bag, they can't loose it. We have a couple of flight changes during our trip and I really didn't want to get to London and be sitting at the baggage claim for 2 hours only to find out that our bags were still in Chicago.
#2- We want to travel light. We are huge Rick Steves fans... Rick is the Man. Anyway, one of the things he talks about A LOT is that packing light will make your trip so much easier. He often says that in 40 years of traveling he has never met anyone who said they wished they had packed more. Brynt is a light packer anyway, so it was a no brainer for him, and I am not a girl who needs lots of wardrobe changes or a huge selection of make up, so packing light makes sense for us.
And so the hunt for the perfect carry-on began. for a while it felt like hunting for a unicorn.
We knew that we wanted convertible backpacks, bags that your can tuck away the shoulder straps on, which narrowed down the search quite a bit. I read blogs, I watched videos, I read reviews, I compared features and prices... Basically, I made a mountain out of a mole hill. After about 2 months of this, we ordered what we Thought was the perfect bag.
The E-bags tls Mother Load Weekender Convertible. They arrived and they were awesome. Just perfect and everything we wanted. Yay! But then....
We read the bag restrictions on some of our flights. Some European airlines have different size and weight restrictions on baggage than American airlines do, and our bags, though they met the American requirements, did not meet the European requirements. Sad Day.
So it was back to hunting. I wont go into too much detail, but I will just say that I think luggage manufacturers might be in cahoots with airline companies to force people to to check baggage, 90% of bags seemed to be just a hair too big one way or the other. After much more agonized searching, what we decided on was the Osprey Porter 30.
In the end I am really glad we ended up with these bags. They are light and comfortable to carry, they hold a ton of stuff for how small they are, they are easy to compress, and they look great (I know that is not important, but always an added bonus).
I will end by saying that if I ever need to order more luggage ( I really really hope not!), I would order from Ebags.com again for sure. They have awesome deals and they were so great to work with when we needed to send back the first bags and get the new ones. A+!
Oh, one more quick note on baggage/packing. With our bags we will be using packing cubes- these little things are an organizational dream come true, plus you can fit SO much more stuff in your bag. I am fairly sure this is how Marry Poppins packs her bag.
We booked a night train!
Towards the top of my bucket list ( right under "Go to England") is "ride a train". I have never been on a train before and have always wanted to. So in the course of trying to figure out how we wanted to get from London to Cornwall ( Brynt wasn't too keen on learning how to drive on the other side of the road in one of the biggest cities in the world) we came across the Night Riviera Sleeper train. You get to stay in your own little sleeper compartment while the train whisks you out of the city, across the British countryside to the lovely sea side town of Penzance. Sounds dreamy right? Lets hope it is as awesome as it sounds! I am very excited about it :)
We Found Places to Sleep!
Finding places to stay, from Land's End to John O' Groats, at affordable prices was a huge undertaking. We will be staying in Hostels, Hotels, Inns, B&B's and even a Castle or two (happy dance for that last one).
A big chunk of our budget was set aside for lodging, because its just a really expensive part of travel. But I was actually surprised at how many affordable (and awesomely cool) options there were to choose from.
London was by far the hardest place to find an affordable room, but we were able to get a private room, in a cool hostel about 15 mins walk from St. Paul's Cathedral, for a price that didn't make me cry, ha ha.
We chose to stay away from big hotel chains, mainly because we want to be more immersed in the places we are going and we want to get to know the people we are staying with. We found some great places (for great prices) and have even been contacted by several of the B&Bs we are staying at asking if we have any questions or if there is anything they can help us with. Talk about friendly, and we aren't even there yet!
All of these pictures are of places we are going to stay at- I am so thrilled and can't wait to be there in person! It was a lot of work to find them all but I think it will really be worth the effort.
We Reserved a Car!
We knew when we started planning this trip that we would need to rent a car because- #1 we are going a lot of different places/covering a lot of ground and #2 we like to get off the beaten path and take our time. So we started shopping around.
There are lots of different car rental options, some of which are really expensive, but through the Rick Steves web site we found Auto Europe. Their prices were great, they had pick-up and drop-off options where we needed them (Penzance and Edinburgh) and their site was very easy to navigate and understand. We opted to pay for full coverage insurance on the car because in the unlikely chance that something does happen to the car, we didn't want to deal with insurance/legal trouble. Some times peace of mind is worth the extra cash.
Odds and Ends
There have been all sorts of odds and ends that we have done/bought/researched in preparation as well, so many that I can't really remember them all at the moment. But they range from things like buying outlet adapters to finding great hikes we want to take. My odds and ends list still has quite a few items on it and we are only 36 days away from take off, but I think we will get it all done... hopefully.
I can't wait until I am making blog entries on British soil, I have butterflies just thinking about it!
So very excited for guys to take this trip. Can't wait to see all your h a rd work pay off.
ReplyDeleteThis is so exciting!!! Congrats you guys!! :D
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