UK/Europe Travel Recommendations

[lifini]

Well, as I mentioned in my other, completely unrelated thread, I am studying abroad in England for the next six months. And aside from all the studying I'm going to be doing (I just registered for my courses... wowie!), I want to do a lot of traveling. I've never been outside of the US before now (Canada for a day does not count), so... where should I go? I'm in Northern England, so it's easy for me to go anywhere in the UK, or down to Europe when I have a longer break. I have a friend who'll be in Scotland I'll go see, and I also saw some pretty pictures in National Geographic of the Isle of Skye in Northern Scotland, so I want to go there, if anyone knows anything about that. I'll have to do some of the basic highlights (Tower of London, London Eye, go down to Paris and go to the Louvre, etc.), but if anyone has any particular recommendations that are off of the beaten tourist path, that would be great. Especially if they're inexpensive, because I'm just a poor student and the exchange rate isn't great...

Thanks a lot!

P.S. I am SO buying the Feline Wizards books when I find them. And Wizard of Mars on its release date, no matter the exchange rate.

[rick455]

Once the winter lets up try a Rhine cruise. It's fairly cheap. You can get on and off anywhere you want. If you can afford it, get an Erail pass pass, it works on almost ant public transport, or it used to. Buy it before you go to the continent though. You should be able to buy it in the UK.

[alla]

Nice - which uni are you going to be studying at?

I've just come back from a trip through UK and Europe (and the middle east and Egypt). I was a blast. Are you going to be able to go off for a week at a time? or is it just going to be little day or two stints here and there?

Don't forget to get an ISIC card.

My Recommendations are:

• Wild In Scotland Tours - These guys do a whole bunch of small group tours and they're good value for money. My friends and I did the 6 Day Hebridean Explorer tour. The scenery was amazing, and our guide was brilliant - local boy about the same age as the rest of us on the tour. So. Much. Fun. Highlights of the tour for me were: Walking through peat bogs along the coastline of Lewis, staying in a blackhouse, and going swimming in Loch Ness (FREEZING!). Harris and Lewis were prettier than Isle of Skye IMHO.
• Edinburgh - Just go and see the city. New Edinburgh Tours run a variety of walking tours through the city - have a look under the link for what they do (the "free" one is tips based; try and tip more than GBP5, as the guides get charged by person in the group). I did their ghost tour too, which was great. Check out Edinburgh Castle, Hollyrood Palace, the Museum, and take a walk up Arthur's Seat to get an awesome view over the city. There's also tours through the "buried" part of Edinburgh - http://www.realmarykingsclose.com/.
• I had fun in Glasgow - went to the museum and saw the Doctor Who Exhibition they had running, although I think it finishes soon.
• London... Get an Oyster Card. Check out the Tower Bridge (free if you try to head up while its opening(I think), otherwise between GBP5-7), Tower of London (a little expensive; GBP14-17), British Museum (FREE), Natural History Museum (FREE), Portobello Road Markets (if you like antiques/collectables), Forbidden Planet (can get expensive), Harrods (can get expensive)... the list can keep going. Tower Bridge does open up several times a day. Their website has a list of the times it does. If you're a fan of Shakespeare, The Globe Theatre was fun. If you want to do a tour through it, you need to be there in the morning. Performances are in the afternoon. New London Tours does walking tours around London, complete with stories about the various locations.
• Bath - its impressive. The locals run a free walking tour through the town in the morning. You can also get out to Stonehenge and Avebury Circle from there with Mad Max Tours (or a variety of other tour companies).
• Paris was ok... Entry to the Louvre is free on the first sunday of every month, so try to time that - saves you EUR9 or so. The Eiffel Tower was impressive. I didn't go up it though. My friends and I went out to EuroDisney, as we'd never been to Disneyland, and aren't going to be getting there any time soon.
• I had a lot of fun in Berlin. Fat Tyre Bike Tours were a great way to get your bearings and learn about the city before exploring it on foot.
• I did a Paddywagon Tour around Ireland. It was very large-group and a little rushed, but we saw all the main tourist sites around the island. I also caught the train to Bray (as in from the book) from Dublin. It was very pretty and awesome.
• Megabus.co.uk has the cheapest bus and train fares for long-distance routes. If you're trying to get around the Continent, organize for a Eurail Pass before you leave home.

That's probably starting to get a bit out of your travel range, isn't it? I did go a bit further (Trier, Fussen, Munich, Vienna, Salzburg and Rome within Europe). I have photos of all of these places. If you would like a look, send me a PM, and I can link you to them

I hope you have an awesome time - and I hope that this is helpful

[Kathy Li]

You already know this but: keep a student ID on you at all times--you can get tons of discounts on a lot of stuff including travel tickets. And you will love shopping at Tesco's and Marks & Sparks.

I'll second the vote for Bath, particularly if you're a Jane Austen fan and have just read Persuasion, (although she kinda loathed the place, really). The Costume Museum is in partnership with the one at the V&A, iirc. So, you can do the Jane Austen tour of the Georgian stuff: Royal Crescent, Pump Room, Assembly Rooms, Costume Museum; and then go to the Baths and look at all the Roman ruins. Tea in the Pump Room is fun.

In London, there's one spot I love, but no idea if it would be the same for you. I'm something of a Christopher Wren junkie. I love the hell out of St. Paul's Cathedral. I love it more than Westminster. I love that Connie Willis feels the same way (read "Firewatch"). I hate going there, because they won't let me take pictures and there's tourists all over the place So, I also like going to the Strand where there are two churches on traffic islands in the middle of the street. One of them is St. Clement Danes. It's small, relatively intimate, and you may run into RAF folks since it's their church. It's a Christopher Wren space, and I love just sitting in it. Also his Octogon Room at Greenwich Observatory, but that's another story.

For me, London is about going to the theatre. So, here's a few tips if you're similarly inclined. Everyone and their mother will tell you about the SWET half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square. That's fine, but most of the SWET tix, like half-price tickets everywhere will be for unsold seats: typically the most expensive orchestra/stall seats on the side. Lousy view, and will cost you as much as a good mezzanine (circle) or balcony (second circle, aka "the gods" cause you're right up there with 'em) ticket would. Call the box office and ask about ticket prices (mentioning you're a student) and you can probably find a better price, if you call enough in advance. Depends on the show. If you're only in London for a few days, then learn about queueing up at the NationalNation. Oh, and Sir Terry will be at the National giving a platform on Nation in the Olivier on the 19th. The Stephen Sondheim platform for Feb. 17th is already sold out. No surprise there.

Time Out magazine will tell you everything that's going on in London for the week. If I'm planning a trip to London, I tend to grab one of those a week or two in advance of arriving just to swot up and see what's on offer. And Time Out can also help you out with Edinburgh. I'd also recommend reading Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street before going, but that's just me.

To prep for the Hebrides, I'd actually recommend reading Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter. But as I said, that's just me. I read too much Helen Hanff at an impressionable age, and like her, when I went to London, I went looking for the London of literature and found it.

Paris. Ah, Paris. How I loved you. How you frustrated me with myself, since I have no French whatsoever. It's sort of the double-whammy of not being able to communicate and being rendered functionally illiterate at the same time that makes foreign travel so much fun. Arm yourself with at least a few phrases. But the food is amazing, it's beautiful, and it's just as crammed as London with cool stuff. My recommend? the Musee d'Orsay. Had I known what I was doing I'd've spent the day I wasted wandering around the Louvre looking for Impressionists at the d'Orsay. (This is what happens when you prep with the wrong books. I'd been reading Of Human Bondage and at that time the Impressionists were still in the Louvre, when I got there, of course, all that Victorian junk had been hauled off the to d'Orsay.

Oh, and if you're time-limited go straight to the top floor. I was an idiot and communed with the Rodins on the ground floor for two hours before finding the top floor, so I only had twenty minutes before I had to take off to catch my flight back. Twenty minutes to absorb a room of Degas, a wall of Monet, a room of Seurat, a wall of Van Gogh... no finer torture could have been devised.

With travel, figure out what your personal obsessions are. Then go find what will feed them. Don't just follow a list of sites other people liked--use your own taste to guide you. I loved the English Victorians and have read nearly everything Thackeray and Wilkie Collins ever wrote, so for me, hiking out to Kensal Green Cemetary was worth it. My mother was a horticulturalist, so for me Kew Gardens was a must (next time I go, I gotta genuflect before the Millennium Seed Bank ). For other people these don't even make the top 100 lists of things to do in London.

[illiriam]

I just have to chime in with what my anthropology teacher told me. We were covering early British humans, and of course Stonehenge came up. Which is a great place to see of course. But not as many people know that there is a larger henge at Avebury. There is a large ditch and stone henge that are majorly impressive. Even more so if you imagine what they looked like when they were first built, and know that the soil is largely chalk, so the ditch was blindingly white. That is going to be one of my first stops when I finally make it over there.

[Birdhead]

I spent nearly two weeks in London and did almost nothing during the day but go to museums and galleries for free, and I didn't feel like I'd wasted my time. I especially recommend the National Portrait Gallery, which was heaps of fun and is right near to Trafalgar Square so you can also do the touristy omg-I'm-in-London thing. (It's also great if you did history in school and you live in the Commonwealth. Portraits of Elizabeth I! Portraits of William Cecil! It's great.) Obviously you do need to like art though, ditto the Tate and the Tate Modern, both of which were cool. Tate Modern has a fun location. If you're not into art but you like museums, the V&A is cool, of course the British Museum is a must - dead things! old things! A couple hundred years of colonialism and stealing other people's precious objects and the dead bodies of their ancestors! Awesome, not, but fun to look at, for sure. The V&A, I think it was the V&A, has an amazing ceramics/pottery room. It also has a very cute cafe, although it's kind of costly, so I recommend snacking there and eating somewhere cheaper. Opposite the V&A are a couple of science museums and it's near a park where bits of early Peter Pan versions were set. I personally recommend doing the art museums solo and the science/tech/anthropology/national history museums with a friend, one or maybe two. However, this is because I HATE to be rushed through a gallery. If you have a good friend who you know has good gallery habits, you might be lucky. (I have only one friend I could trust enough to do this with!)

Put aside a couple days to wander London with your Oyster card doing the Squares and stuff - I didn't do this but wish I had.

I didn't get to the Avebury henge, but it was recommended to me too, because it's so much less famous and therefore less hideously touristy/crowded/can't-go-near-anything.

And finally, don't drink the coffee in England unles jetlag absolutely requires it, and then I recommend two to three sugars, lots of milk, and skull it. Bleccccch.

[lifini]

Thanks everyone! Didn't think I'd get so many great recommendations...

Alla- I am at Lancaster University. I have one month-long break when I'll do more extensive traveling, otherwise they'll be little weekend trips. And I do have an ISIC card and an Oyster card already.

Bath was definitely on my list. My study abroad program is taking me there, but I might go back if there's more I want to see. I haven't read Persuasion, though I've read other Jane Austen, but I think I will before I go.

I'll look into this Eurail card... I still have to get a Young Person's Railcard for here in the UK.

I will also look into Avebury... if it's a better deal than Stonehedge then it is worth it.

I'm definitely going to exploit the free museums. And I will definitely follow my personal obsessions, Kathy Li. I want to go to Oxford because I am a big His Dark Materials series fan. I just found out I have a friend who's there right now, so that's even better.

And I don't drink coffee, Birdhead, but I've heard people complaining, haha.

Thanks again everyone!

[Kathy Li]

If you're going to Oxford, there are two other possible sites to hit: Blackwell's (one humungous bookstore where I once found a copy of the Shakespeare Apocrypha). And the Eagle and the Child--which is a pub. Where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and the other Inklings hung out when they talked about writing fantasy and shared what they were working on.

I also like Christ Church college: the Great Hall, Tom Tower, and Mercury in Tom Quad were all fun for me, since I'd been reading Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night and had just gotten the scene where Jerry knocks Harriet down, spilling all the little oojahs, and offers to drown himself in Mecury.

[summer-breeze01]

My family and I spent ten days in the UK in summer of 2006, so it's been a while, but I'll try to remember my favorite places. However, we started and ended the trip in Edinburgh (which I believe someone has already recommended) and I was in love. We saw Edinburgh castle, of course, but I loved just walking up and down the Royal Mile, through Princes Street, and up to Sewell's Folly (it's like a version of the Parthenon, only they ran out of money halfway through building it). Basically, I loved just walking around seeing the sights.

We only spent a day in London and it was raining, so I don't remember it that well, but we went out at night and saw Big Ben, Tower Bridge, and London Bridge all lit up. I believe we went up St. Paul's Cathedral, which is good if you're looking for a ton of exercise...

We spent one night in Wales, so I'm not sure about the rest of the country, but we were in Caernarfon, which was awesome. Caernarfon castle was my favorite of the trip, just because it was so different from the other ones. We spent hours climbing up and down the staircases there and looking into all the nooks and crannies, then walked along the seashore that night. It's a cute town and right on the sea, which gives it extra points in my book.

Lastly, I'd recommend the area around Loch Ness. We rented a car and drove up the twisty, one-lane roads around the back side of it, and although it was freezing cold and extremely windy, it was gorgeous. I've seen the NC mountains in both the spring and winter most every year, but honestly, they have nothing on the views around Loch Ness.

I guess that's about it. We're more of the "do things as cheaply as possible" like staying in hostels type of family, which means we also don't do the normal, touristy kinds of things all the time. But I had fun and typing this up definitely makes me want to go back.

Oh, I forgot to add this. We bought BritRail passes before we left for all five of us, and they were very cheap, good for anywhere in the UK, and we got a lot of use out of them. I have no idea if that's still in place or how that works anymore, but it's worth a look.

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

I also like Christ Church college: the Great Hall, Tom Tower, and Mercury in Tom Quad were all fun for me, since I'd been reading Dorothy L. Sayers's Gaudy Night and had just gotten the scene where Jerry knocks Harriet down, spilling all the little oojahs, and offers to drown himself in Mecury.

For the record, Gaudy Night is by far and away my favorite Sayers. It's crammed full of both plot and characterization, along with references to earlier stories, but still never loses the reader.

Now I want to go out punting.

[Kathy Li]

For the record, Gaudy Night is by far and away my favorite Sayers. It's crammed full of both plot and characterization, along with references to earlier stories, but still never loses the reader.

Now I want to go out punting.

But you have to admit that one should not read Gaudy Night out of order. You have to start with Strong Poison and Have His Carcase, first, and then follow it with Busman's Honeymoon and (if you're truly fanatic) "Tallboys" and "The Wimsey Papers".

While the "Harriet Vane" Wimseys are definitely my favorites, The Nine Tailors and Murder Must Advertise are damn fine books, too, and make better standalone recommendations. But for me, personally, I'd actually recommend, much like Discworld, that one start at the beginning and read your way through in publication order if you can, because they just get better. Well, except for Five Red Herrings (which I could've skipped) and The Documents in the Case (team-written).

The one so-called Wimsey book I cannot stand is that "sequel based on DLS's notes", Thrones, Dominations by Jill Paton Walsh. It's a perfectly ok murder mystery, I just wish the characters weren't supposed to be Peter and Harriet, because Walsh doesn't get anywhere near who they are or what they sound like in her writing. And by the time we got to the egregious misuse of the "faint canaries" quote (she used a lower-case c and thought it was about little yellow birdies. O.M.G.), I started screaming. If you don't even know where a quote comes from or what it actually means in said source, you don't use it. Period.

Gah.

[crazy_bookworm]

I had an entire post written, but I got booted out before I could post it, for some reason. Maybe I wasn't active for a long time... Anyway. I went to England for two weeks in 2005, and loved it. I was at a camp in Surrey for a week and stayed in London for a week, but did touristy things around England.

We went to Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Warwick Castle, Salisbury Cathedral, Bath and Stonehenge, which were already mentioned, and Madame Tussauds. Buckingham Palace apparently has a discount for students, but try not to bleed on the Queen's carpet, or do, as then you can walk down the entire length of the Grand Staircase. The Royal family also has Twitter, which I find slightly amusing. Windsor Castle was amazing, and admission prices are either 8.50 or 16 pound sterling, depending on whether or not the State Apartments are open. Warwick Castle was good, from what I remember, but I think it's the castle that's a bit more pricy, at 15-20 pound sterling. Salisbury Cathedral is free to walk around, but you need to pay for guided tours, and the best preserved of the four surviving copies of the Magna Carta is there. I'm kicking myself for not realising it's there and not seeing it. I don't know what the ticket prices are for Madame Tussauds are, but I remember seeing the Beatles when I was there, and Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes is now there, over which I squeed.

I'll post links as soon as I get my Mac fixed. Hope this helps!

[Trialia]

Oh, my. You'll be at Lancaster University, eh? In that case, you almost have to come down to Manchester at some point. I will be very happy to show you around!