Great Britian trip downsizing

Cindy, I've forgotten from your previous responses what you have seen before in London so I'll mostly limit myself to Edinburgh. But if you haven't before seen London's Victoria and Albert museum, I do recommend it, particularly if it is open late one evening during your stay and won't take away from your other London plans. With limited time in Edinburgh, you'll have to make some tough choices. 3.5 days wasn't enough time for my wife and me to see half of what we wanted. That said, Edinburgh Castle is a must in my opinion, but can take half a day to see fully. We also enjoyed Gladstone's Land and the Palace of Holyrood. I love history so the Peoples Story at Canongate was excellent, in my opinion. Only things I recommend avoiding: the John Knox House, and the Writers Museum. (Do, however, book the evening Scottish Literary Pub tour if you can. Much more fun than the writers museum.) I thought the Museum of Childhood was fun, and the Scottish Parliament interesting, but I'd cut them if I didn't have much time. The rest of the "big ticket items" I can't comment on, as we ran out of time or couldn't get in. (I made the mistake of assuming no problems getting an entry into the Real Mary King's Close. Turned out it was a school holiday and we were shut out.)
Enjoy.

Trying to do the "big island" in 9 or 10 days is probably going to be a frantic rush between locations. I know Rick puts the suggested itinerary that has a short trip including London, Edinburgh, Bath and York (in that order I think but I might not be getting it totally right). Getting between all those stops involves a lot of travel time. Why Newcastle? You can substitue this for York if you have specific reasons for going there. It's a 4 1/2 hour train ride from London to Edinburgh. York's about midway. Bath is a couple of hours out of London. I think you have two key choices. Either hit the "biggies" knowing you are only going to hit the high points or do a good trip in a smaller geographic area. I personally think it makes more sense to fly into Edinburgh since you can get a more direct return flight from London and you should give yourself 3 nights in Edinburgh. Take the train to York and stay for 2 nights. Take the train to London for the final 4 nights. You can easily fill a trip that way with possibly a day trip out of London. Alternatively, you could fly into London and drive to Bath for 3 nights. Spend 2 nights in the Cotswolds and end up back in London for the rest of your trip. This would be best done with a car. You will be stretched with a $6000 budget if that also includes airfare.

I agree with Ken's ideas. York is much more interesting than Newcastle. You could cut York to one night if you had to (you'll miss things, but...). You can also hit the highlights in Edinburgh in with only 2 nights. But personally, I'd just plan on staying in London for the whole trip this time. Do some day trips by train (Bath, Windsor, Canterburry, Cardiff, Dover, Brighton, Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester and others are all possible day trips). If you are interested in an article I wrote about doing just that, private message me with your email and I'll send you a copy. You could get and apartment and save some money on meals and accomodation. Alternatively, just 'do' Scotland.

We have cousins that live in Newcastle - actually Tynemouth, North Shields, to be exact - that we would like to meet up with. I could cut out Bath. We are now thinking either London in, Edinburgh out, or visa versa. Three days in London, train to Edinburgh with a stop in Newcastle (or Durham might make more sense). We could have the cousins drive to meet us there. Train on to Edinburgh. Spend the rest of the time there with a day trip to Stirling Castle. The only thing I would like to add here is a possible day trip out of London, but haven't decided on which one.

If you haven't been to Windsor yet, I'd make the day trip from London. If you have been there and don't care to repeat the trip, I'd consider Cardiff Wales, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, Winchester, Canterburry or Dover. There's also Oxford and Cambridge. Windsor is about a 25 min. train trip from Paddington Station and trains run about every 30 min. No need to purchase advance tickets for Windsor as there is no savings. For Bath (and most of the others I mentioned I think) you'll want to purchase tickets aobut 12 weeks in advance (and you'll have to commit to a specific departure date and time and return time) unless you are using a BritRail pass for your train travel. This also applies to your other rail journeys.

Thanks, Toni! Would you recommend purchasing Britrail tickets for our trip from London to Edinburgh? If we do decide to hop scotch around a little would the flexpass (I think it's called) be a wiser choice, allowing us to get off and on when we wanted in a certaiin time frame?