We will be leaving a Danube cruise in Nuremburg and want to go by train to London for 3-4 days, then on to
Edinburgh, also by train. What day trips or tours should we take from Edinburgh?
I need as much train info as possible.
This cruise begins in Budapest and we plan to arrive 2 days before the cruise begins...what to see and do?
How long are you going to be in Edinburgh? There is a lot to see there and if you are only going to be there a few days, you may not have time for a day trip. When I was there, I spent a half day the Holyrood park and Arthur's seat, a full day with the hop on/hop off tour and did the castle and used the bus to get to the Britannia, Then I spent a full day walking the city, royal mile. And I felt like I could have had more time.
I think an easy day trip would be Stirling Castle of William Wallace fame. You could drive it or take one of the tours. St. Andrews and Glasgow are also both a good day trip distance by train.
I did a full day tour through Greyline tours where we drove through some of the Highlands and up to Loch Ness. The sites were beautiful but I would not recommend doing something like that. It is too much ground to cover and we spent most of the time in the bus. I think if you really want to appreciate that part of Scotland, you need to devote several days.
Funny enough, I asked this same question about ideas for day trips from Edinburgh last spring and I received several eat ideas. I will try and find the post and give you the link.
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/to-the-north/highlands-or-st-andrews-or-both
Try this link. And try posting this question in the "to the north " forum. Good luck!
There are connections from Nürnberg to London with an ICE to Frankfurt, an ICE to Brussels, and Eurostar to London. There are two 9 hour connections each day. With advance purchase, I see fares of 59€/person. Buy these tickets from the Bahn website.
Thanks for your responses. As of now, we haven't any timeline for Scotland. We are very flexible.
Any ideas for Budapest must sees?
The 59 euro tickets mentioned by Lee above are in limited quantity, so go and book them NOW. If you can't get them, it may be cheaper to book Nuremberg-Brussels on the DB website and Brussels-London separately on eurostar.com, although this may lead to less willingness to help on the part of staff at Brussels if you are delayed.
Alternatively, it is possible to fly by Cityjet (www.cityjet.com) directly from Nuremberg to London City Airport - given the length of the train journey I would suggest this unless you have real objections to flying. I did this last summer and the flight was very comfortable.
Two wildly different must-sees in Budapest for me are the very local experience of the outdoor Szechenyi Thermal Baths and the very sobering House of Terror museum to gain some appreciation of a country that lived under both Nazi then communist domination. (Budapest has a good underground tram system. Figure it out early and it will be much easier to see the city.)
