Travel progress

[dancerjodi]

We've decided to go for 10 days. We'll leave 4/6 (a Wednesday). We'll spend Thurs, Fri, Sat and Sun in London, the rest in Scotland. We won't be able to do it "all", but since we have to fly into London anyway and there are things there we want to see, its worth it to us to split the trip.

Brian's going to give AAA a call today to see how their travel agent services work. It doesn't hurt to meet with them if its free. I got free passport photos from them yesterday (since we're Plus members, its free) and if the post office is still open by the time I get home from work I'll drop in and apply (brought my birth certificate to work today). So now we just need to work on planning plane and hotels, and coming up with the $ for all of this. Hopefully we'll have the basics figured out by the end of the weekend.

The worst part of vacation planning is finding a pet sitter(s). THIS is why we never travel. Finding someone willing to come to your house at 6:30 AM to give your cat an insulin injection for 10 days straight . . . it will be a challenge :/. We've had 2 friends do this for us, and they are really great at it. However, I feel like an ass having to put friends out (I mean, we hate having to get up that early each day and he's our cat!). I'm not against hiring a petsitter, but most of them don't do insulin injections (if they do they are in Boston or Cambridge and don't want to come out to Waltham) and/or don't want to come out at 6:30 am on the dot each day. Blech!

Comments

[silentq.livejournal.com]

Hrm, I guess I never did finish typing up my travel diaries from my Scotland trip. Here are the photos I took at least:
http://silentq.org/photos/Whitby02/
My highlights of Edinburgh from memory:
- touring Edinburgh castle and getting tea and scones (mm, clotted cream) at the cafe there, then watching the firing of the 1pm gun
- Palace of Holyrood
- free museums and art galleries
- wandering along the royal mile from castle to palace
- climbing Carlton Hill, wishing I'd climbed Arthur's Seat
I also really enjoyed Glasgow, but I had more friends who lived there, so we went clubbing and shopping (I can dig up a couple of great used book stores). The Necropolis and Cathedral are definitely worth a visit. My sister spent a year on exchange in Dundee, I can ping her for things not to be missed there if you think you'll get there.

Take a look at http://www.silentq.org/diary and search for trips that include London, I gave quite a few details on shops and museums that I hit. I think you'd like the Victoria and Albert museum as much as I did. :)

Travel tips

[dancer.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I was thinking of you actually, and meant to dig up that diary :)

I'm a total newbie at this. I can count the times I've taken trips that required a plane on 1 hand (and, don't even need to use all of the fingers for it either)! :)

Re: Travel tips

[silentq.livejournal.com]

I'll try to get the Scotland diary up sometime within the month, I started entering it via voice recog and got fed up with the program and gave up for a bit. :)
I still get a little thrill each time I show up at the airport or a hotel with just a confirmation number and find that they're expecting me, and everything's all set. The internet makes travel planning a lot easier, barring too many choices with flights. :)
Plus, once you get on the ground at your destination, you've got a lot of local knowledge to draw on, from the concierge, shop keepers, random people you can ask for directions on the street or in a pub. :)