Before our 2010 Mediterranean cruise was even over, our travel group was discussing plans for our next big trip. Where to go? The general consensus was another trip to somewhere in Europe. Should we visit Germany/Austria/Switzerland, or England/Scotland/Ireland? At the time, there was more interest in England/Scotland, so the destination was chosen, and Ireland was dropped. After previous visits across the pond, we knew we wanted to go sometime in the offseason (cheaper and, more importantly, less crowded), and sometime not in the middle of the summer (cooler and more comfortable). It seemed that everyone was interested in doing something after the big tourist rush, so September 2012 was chosen. Someone luckily remembered that the Olympics and Paralympics would be going on that year in London, so we made sure that our chosen travel time would be after those events (and the crowds that follow them).
I don’t remember the exact details of how the exact travel dates were chosen, but I think mid-week travel had something to do with it. Less crowded flights and things like that. It didn’t hold true for the eastbound flights or the flight from London to Paris, but it sure did for the westbound transatlantic flight. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In fact, the first item of business, as always, was to pick our accommodations. I wasn’t terribly interested at the time about spending a lot of time in London. My thoughts were, “Heck, it’s just another big city. I live in a big city, and I like getting out and seeing the countryside and meeting the “real people.” Why would I want to go and spend a bunch of time there?” There was some general consensus in the group about those thoughts, so it was originally decided to spend only three or four days in London, then relocate to somewhere in Scotland for the remainder of the trip to relax. With those goals in mind, we began shopping for accommodations in Scotland first, with the intention of building the rest of the trip around that. Barry, one of our core group, ran across this magnificent property in Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland, not far out of the Scottish town of Perth. We figured there would be a relatively large group for this trip, and this property advertised accommodations for up to 20 people. Perfect! It was an 18th Century flax seed mill that had been converted into a self-service guest property (self-service meaning that it didn’t have maid or cook services, but was fully stocked kitchenware-wise and bath-wise). Called Locherlour Mill, it was situated roughly 2 miles west of Crieff, and would have been a perfect base of operations for our group as we toured around the Scottish Highlands. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. We reserved the property around July of 2011 for September of 2012, but a couple of days after Christmas, 2011, we got the news that the property had been sold and that all reservations after January 31, 2012 had been cancelled. NUTS!!! So we were left trying to figure out what to do. Luckily at that point, nobody in the group had made flight or other arrangements, so it was mostly disappointment at not being able to take advantage of the beautiful property just outside of Crieff.
In January, 2012, Barry made a special trip from Dallas to Odessa to meet with Reba so that Scotland accommodations could be selected. In the end, they found and selected some apartments for rent in Edinburgh that, amazingly, would accommodate our very large group of 17 people. I have to admit that in the beginning, I wasn’t terribly excited about it. At the time I didn’t have much interest in Edinburgh. “Another city,” I thought, “and too far away from the stuff I really want to see and do.” I also found out that they had decided to shorten the visit in Scotland from 10 or 11 days to just a week. I even thought about backing out, as my primary interest was seeing and experiencing Scotland. But I was committed to the trip, and as time went on, and in retrospect, I’m SOOOOO glad not only that I didn’t back out and went along, but also that we had the extra time in London.
With the accommodations and timeframe in Scotland set, the next phase was to find accommodations in London for our large group that fit the schedule for Scotland. Scheduling turned out not to be an issue, but finding something to house our large group of 13 people for a week turned into a challenge (and the group in London was smaller because several people didn’t join us until Edinburgh). During the hunt, I found a house on the northwestern outskirts of London that would house up to 18 people, and everyone was interested in it. Unfortunately, the owners of the house were not, for whatever reason, interested in renting us the property for the week we needed. So the search was on again, and once again Reba and Mom came through. Mom was visiting Reba in Odessa in February and they found The Mansions in Earl’s Court, which is west-northwest of London’s city center. The apartments were definitely not cheap (turns out nothing in the UK is what I would call terribly affordable), but across a total of three apartments, would easily accommodate our large group. Reservations and deposits were made, and we had the beginnings of a trip!
Although seven months seems like fair lead time for plans and making travel arrangements, we knew we needed to jump on making other arrangements such as air, train and possibly hotel reservations during transit. Now that we had a firm set of dates for the accommodations in London and Edinburgh, we could start arranging flights and other things. Flights were our first priority. In October/November 2011, mom and dad did a transatlantic cruise on the brand-new Carnival Magic. It started in Barcelona, Spain and terminated in Galveston – the new home port for Magic. Besides the fact that they had a great time, they discovered something: business class on long-haul transatlantic flights rocks! In short, they combined some Delta SkyMiles and American Express rewards points to be able to fly from Houston to Paris and then to Barcelona on Air France in business class, and they absolutely loved it! Superior food, superior service and, most importantly for the long flights (it is roughly 9.5 hours eastbound from Houston to any of the major western European hubs such as London, Paris, Amsterdam or Frankfurt), the seats are bigger, there’s a LOT more legroom, and you can lay the seats almost flat to stretch out and catch some pretty good sleep. Needless to say, they were sold, and vowed never to fly coach (scholarship, as dad calls it) on those long flights again if they could afford/avoid it. Needless to say, it didn’t take much convincing on my part – after all, I’ve walked past those nice-looking seats on my way to the back of the bus on many occasions. However….how on earth was I going to afford riding up there? My initial research showed that just the plane fare would cost considerably more than what I had paid for entire trips in the past.
Somewhere, sometime, dad had run across an advertisement for a travel agency out of New York that specialized in providing heavy discounts on business- and first-class seats. After contacting them, they didn’t seem terribly interested in working with a small group of three (apparently they work mostly with corporate travel departments to help provide those services). Discouraged, but not defeated, we kept searching until we found a group out of San Francisco that did essentially the same thing, and they were more than happy to help out our small group of three people. To put it in perspective, we were looking at about $1,400 per person round trip for coach airfare. Full-fare business class from Houston to London and back was running roughly between $4,400 and $5,100 per person. OUCH!!! Through this consolidator we found, we got round trip business class for $2,780 per person. Yeah, that’s still a big number, but almost half of full fare, and essentially double that of coach. Previous to this trip, I’ve made two round-trip transatlantic crossings – all in coach. With the exception of the flight on Alitalia from Rome to Newark back in 2008, they all pretty much sucked for the 9.5 hours over and 10.5+ hours back. The only reason the Alitalia flight was OK was because of the aircraft configuration. It was a 767-300ER, and the coach seat configuration is 2-3-2. I was in one of the “2” sections on the window. Also, because it was an ER (Extended Range) configuration, they had removed several rows of seats from the cabin to save weight , thus leaving more space between the seats in coach, which ultimately meant more legroom. The other flights on KLM (a 747-400) and on Lufthansa (747-400 both ways) were cramped, crowded and quite uncomfortable for that long a flight. Well, long story short, it was a no-brainer for this trip, so we booked business class air through this San Francisco consolidator on Air France for the majority of the trip (we ended up getting booked on British Airways for our flights from Edinburgh to Paris via London on the way home; those legs were in coach). Why fly Air France for a trip to the UK, you might ask? Well…it was the cheapest route! BA was more expensive, KLM didn’t offer great connections and was more expensive, and we had told the consolidator that under no circumstances did we want to fly a US airline. I won’t even get on that tirade here, but suffice it to say that they completely suck in comparison to the foreign carriers in terms of service, food quality and amenities. Oh, and the booze is free! Yeah, it’s free in business/first class on the US carriers, too, but on the foreign carriers, it is gratis throughout the cabin – even in coach.
With flight arrangements made, the next item up for bid was figuring out what we wanted to do while there, and also how to get from London to Edinburgh. I’ll go into the tours/attractions part in detail in upcoming sections of this trip story, but for this section of the story, suffice it to say that mom (with input from the group) once again did a fantastic job of coordinating guides and tours for the group. As for transportation to Edinburgh, we had several choices. The cheapest (believe it or not) was to fly. Britain has a low-cost carrier called EasyJet modeled after Southwest that offered one-way tickets from London’s Gatwick airport to Edinburgh for $69 per person. It was awful tempting, but besides the hassle factor of yet another airport, we’d heard that the train ride from London to Edinburgh was fantastic. So I began researching schedules and prices, and with some guidance from both Reba and Barry, we ultimately chose and made reservations on BritRail. The cost was roughly $114 per person for a reserved seat in first class for a 4.5 hour train ride, and with the opportunity to see the countryside, we made the call to ride the train. As mentioned, Reba and Barry were the brave ones – they figured out the right train and schedule – and BritRail’s choices are not very straightforward. Also, we found out that the closer we got to our departure date, the more expensive the tickets became. In fact, the evening we decided to purchase the tickets and finally figured out what we needed to buy to ride the train at the same time as the rest of the group, it was dinner time. We paused and went back to it a couple of hours later. The only thing I could figure was that they’d sold out the train – or the cheaper seats we were looking for – because before dinner the price was $97 per person. After dinner, the price for the same ticket on the same train was $350! Needless to say, we didn’t end up on the same train as the rest of the group. We did, however, find a train 2 hours later for $114 per person for reserved first class, so we jumped on that. At the same time, I purchased a London Travel Pass for the three of us. Basically, the tickets I bought were good for 7 days from the time of activation for unlimited travel within all public transport zones on all modes of public transport. This included the Tube (subway), light rail, trams and busses. In retrospect, I should’ve chosen the Oyster Card. Rather than being a “free pass” so to speak like the travel pass is, the Oyster Card gets you onto all of the same modes of transport, it never expires, and you can charge and recharge however much you want onto it (pre-paid of course). The nice thing is that when you’re done with it, minus a small “administrative fee,” they will refund your balance on the card. The London Travel Pass was super-convenient and guaranteed that we could go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted, but it was a smidge expensive at $98 per person for the week. I don’t think we rode $98-worth of public transport during the week we were there, but I could be wrong. We did ride the tube, the DLR (light rail) and the bus on different occasions, but again, probably not $98-worth. So note to self: if I ever go to London again, get the Oyster Card (or equivalent).
With those arrangements made, we were pretty much set with our plans for where we’d be staying and how we’d get there. Yeah, there were a lot of other things that went into it (as mentioned, the plans for what we’d do while there), but I’ll cover that stuff as I tell more of the story.