Scotland/Ireland Tours

From the "Our Tours" option in the upper left of the website, open a specific tour description and you will find reviews. In my opinion, they're more for marketing tours than offering valuable information. The system has been dumbed-down from the previous format that included more feedback from tour members. Ahhh, the good old days.

Well the following is just my opinion: If you are going to see different areas of a country, you've got to travel to do it. That means car, bus, train, ferry, boat or air time. No way around it. I just completed the Best of Scotland Tour. Sure, there was a lot of time on the bus. It isn't like Inverness and Edinburgh are right next to each other. So if you want "more", think about staying in one or two places. If you want to get a sampling of a country you have to travel around. The advantage of a RS tour (as opposed to the times when I planned my own trips) is stopping at interesting points along the way. I have driven abroad and never plan to again, so I am at the mercy of buses and trains. With public transport there is no stopping and it takes extra time to check out of a hotel, get to the station (early), travel, get off and check in. On a tour, you walk out to the bus and go to your destination (as I said, often with an interesting stop or two in between.) Also, there are (IMHO) good informational tidbits from the guide.....sometimes lectures (the importance of Stirling Castle and the role it played in Scottish History) or little blerbs (this is the shortest street in the world.) Now I read in your post that you "know there's a lot of travel to get from place to place." So that's the decision then. I personally did not find the bus time excessive on the Best of Scotland tour. We saw a good portion of Scotland and left more to explore if I am lucky enough to return. As usual on a RS tour, most stops are for 2 nights to minimize travel, except the last night in Edinburgh. So I was glad I went.

I've done the Ireland tour. It did not seem like an inordinate amount of bus time as there were plenty of stops. For instance, there is a day on the bus to do Slea Head Drive from Dingle but there were frequent stops and lots to see. I have also done the 21BOE which had some very long transit days so this is sort of my personal benchmark.

I have not done the Scotland tour altho it is on my list.

On this tour and on another one some of us got in to a discussion about how to combine tours. On the Ireland tour one couple had done the Best of England and had moved on to the Best of Ireland and they felt the food, etc were kind of similar and wished they had not done them back to back. On my Best of England tour, again the discussion, and one couple was combining Portugal and England which they thought was wonderful because the cultures were so very different. I combined the Best of England and Paris and the Heart of France and I really enjoyed the very different scenery, cultures, food. Just throwing that out for your consideration and certainly not meaning to say Scotland and Ireland are "the same"!

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful replies. The dates just got posted and they work for a back to back Ireland/Scotland tour in April. I'm super-excited!
(Also, I'm glad to see I didn't miss the magical search button.)
Thanks again,
Lillian

Back to back tours (I've done this several times) to the same area can be great as can those to very different regions. I think of a back-to-back tour of Scotland/Ireland and getting a really good grasp on a specific part of Europe. Possibly like doing a Paris tour followed by another of the French tours. They do compliment nicely. Have fun, sounds like a great trip. I've traveled to Ireland on my own and done the RS tour of Scotland and it should be an amazing journey.

You'll love the Scotland tour! And I'm sure the Ireland one too, but I haven't taken that one yet. It's a beautiful country! I loved the bus time - there was so much beautiful scenery and we stopped at lots of neat places. It will fly by for sure!

We took the Best of England tour in May of 2015. There was a family of three (father, mother and grown daughter) that had just finished the best of Scotland, took the best of England and then we're going on the best of Ireland. That's a lot of travel. They had 2 days from the end of the first tour to the start of the second. I'm not sure of the time after England. They were getting tired at the end of England. I'm sure they were really tired by the time they headed home.

Not a review, but we are doing the Scotland tour next summer and I have been enjoying viewing/reading the scrapbooks from previous years. If you search scrapbook, you should be able to find them--they are listed by year and destination.