Looking for travel tips - Scotland (with a little bit of London thrown in)

[dreamshark]

I have now booked airfare for a mother-daughter trip to Scotland in July. So it's official - we're going! Now I have the basic dates I'm trying to fill in the rest of the details. I'm looking for tips on:

* Car rental overseas (specifically UK). I'm particularly baffled by the constantly changing information regarding insurance, collision damage waivers, and credit cards. I have several credit cards to choose from: which should I use? Do I need to pay the exorbitant rental car insurance? Should I rent from someplace familiar like Hertz, or can someone recommend a reliable European car rental agency? How hard is it to drive a stick shift with the gearshift on the wrong side?

* Someplace affordable to stay in London for 2 days. We won't have much time there, so we'll need someplace centrally located. But I don't want to pay $200/night. It doesn't have to be fancy, just relatively safe. Has anyone ever used Priceline to find hotels? Does it work?

* Trains. We'll be taking the train from London to Scotland and back again. I see that Britain no longer has a national rail system, and there are a bewildering number of choices. Yikes! Where do you start?

* If you only had two days in London and wanted to be leisurely about it, what would you see? I'm leaning towards the Tower, the Eye, and the British Museum.

* How about Edinburgh?

* Have you been to Scotland? If so, what was the best part?

Comments

[tesla-aldrich.livejournal.com]

At least one of your credit cards probably has some kind of rental vehicle policy included for free; you can look up the details online and if the coverage is sufficient, waive the expensive rental agency stuff.

I had no trouble driving a car in Britain, although when you get into the singletrack roads in Scotland, it can be hard to remember to veer LEFT to let people pass!

Eric & I spent about the same amount of time in London as you will, and those are the things we saw. No complaints, but I don't think I have enough perspective to be utterly helpful. I would recommend booking the Eye in advance (you can do it online) and I really liked the fact that we timed our ride so that we saw the sunset.

I liked the inn we found in London; it was very close to and Underground stop and quite reasonable. I'll see if I can find the details and send them your way.

Edinburgh was delightful, though I spent most of trip to Scotland riding around the countryside and visiting castles and distilleries. Definitely take a stroll down High Street between the Castle and Holyrood, and plan on spending some time in the castle. I had a very good tour guide there.

As we cull books, I think that I have some travel guides to Scotland. It's been 8 years since I was there, so I don't promise that they're completely up-to-date, but they might be useful nonetheless. If you're interested I'll pull them out for you.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"At least one of your credit cards probably has some kind of rental vehicle policy included for free; you can look up the details online and if the coverage is sufficient, waive the expensive rental agency stuff."

That's exactly the problem. All of them vaguely claim to have rental vehicle coverage, but it is impossible to tell from their websites what they actually cover. A little googling on travel sites reveals that the coverage varies quite a bit from card to card even within the same brand. Apparently this has all been in flux in recent years. The travel sites that compare cards say that Amex and Visa are currently the best and Mastercard blows chunks.

Sad, because my platinum MasterCard used to be my most premium credit card. I looked at the latest version of that card and it no longer says "Platinum" on it (although it is still silver colored). In fact, it is impossible to tell by looking at the card which of the current Mastercard products it actually corresponds to. I rarely use it any more, but hesitate to get rid of it since I've had it since 1985. Apparently this makes it valuable in some way that I don't entirely understand, probably something to do with credit ratings.

"As we cull books, I think that I have some travel guides to Scotland. It's been 8 years since I was there, so I don't promise that they're completely up-to-date, but they might be useful nonetheless. If you're interested I'll pull them out for you."

I'd love to take them off your hands! We have a Minnstf meeting at our house in about a week - that would be a good time to drop them by. Or I could come get them. Let me know if you find them. Thanks!