We've only been to London, but we love it. No matter how many times we go there, we have a great time. We never run out of museums to see or pubs to pop into.
With so many direct flights, you're not stuck with one carrier. We've flown United Airlines and British Airways. They both get the job done. Now, assuming you arrive into Heathrow, you have a few options for getting into town. We've taken the Tube, and while it's inexpensive, it is slow. If time is of the essence, take the Heathrow Express.
Hotels in London can be expensive. One less expensive option is to stay near Paddington Station and take the Tube to and from the heart of the city. It's convenient, too, if you are catching a morning flight home from Heathrow, since it puts you right by your train.
This is raclette, and I mean the real deal like we had in Switzerland years ago--the best cheese experience of my life! We were exploring Borough Market and came across a food stall with the hot iron melting the raclette cheese from the top. They even served it with the potatoes and gherkins. It was magical.
Don't tell England, but I think I like Scotland better. (And it's not only because of its vote to remain!) It's a little more relaxed, a lot friendlier--you could almost say it's like Canada in that regard--and there's no shortage of attractions, pubs, and amazing restaurants.
Normally, Scotland is not difficult to get to; however, when you're flying to Glasgow from the Gibraltar airport, that's another story (see Gibraltar). In terms of getting around the country, though, that was easily done with trains and buses. We flew into Glasgow, moved onto Oban via train, took a bus to Fort William where we picked up a tour bus with Highland Experience tours. That tour took us to Loch Ness and Pitlochry before dropping us off in Edinburgh.
We had just finished watching the entire series of The Prisoner on DVD, and we decided a visit to Portmeirion (where it was filmed) would be fun. Everything about it exceeded our expectations--the food, the accommodations, the depth of the town! It was fun for us as fans of the TV show, but I recommend visiting there even if you've never watched a single episode. It's a really cool village with historic buildings transported from different places to create this town. Cardiff was very enjoyable as well, and it's a great way to break up the long journey to and from London.
First there's a plane ride to London. Then there's an easy, efficient train from Paddington Station to Cardiff. To get from there to Portmeirion, it's a lengthy, not-so-pleasant train lasting seven hours with a connection. There's no better way to get there. The nice thing about the train ride is the scenery. I've never seen more sheep in one sitting in my life! And I think they've taken all of the stones in the world to build the short stone walls keeping in the sheep. So in short, it's a hassle to get to Portmeirion, but it's well worth it.
This is when we decided to walk out onto the estuary during low tide in Portmeirion, Wales, because Patrick McGoohan did it in the intro to "The Prisoner". Also, when we walked out there, a lot of other people were out there, too. But then suddenly, they weren't.
So we didn't realize that high tide comes twice per day. Like I said, others were out on the estuary when we went out there, but suddenly they were gone. And the path we took to get out there was cut off by water. The water was actually circling in on us, and at a rapid pace. Oh, also--no joke--when the estuary fills up, the sand becomes quicksand. The hotel warned us about that. Why did I take the time to film the water creeping up on us? I really don't know. We were lucky, though. We were able to go another way and climb up some rocks to get back on land. Within five minutes, the entire estuary was under water. Yeah, I know...we were dumb.
We would go back to Ireland. We saw Dublin, Galway, and Cong, and there are still so many places we want to explore. And although we saw a lot during our time there, it was all very relaxing. It was not a stressful place to visit.
We flew on Aer Lingus, which was okay. The service was lacking, but the economy seats had video games which kept us entertained for the 7-hour flight. The AirCoach bus is a decent way to get downtown, depending on where your hotel is. Once you get downtown, the city is very walkable. No car required.
Trains take you to most parts of the country, but if you want to reach really remote areas, you might have to rent a car. We're normally against this whenever possible, but we had to rent one to get to Ashford Castle. It was challenging to navigate without street signs in many places, we nearly murdered each other a couple times, and at one point, I wanted to pull over and have a good cry--but in the end it all worked out.