Beautiful places and some travel tips!

Now that we have a few trips under our belts, I would like to share some travel tips we have figured out.
When embarking on a cruise, plan 2 days to spend at your embarkation place. Then 2 days at your disembarkation place or the last place you visit before sailing to your disembarkation place.

Take for instance our trip we just took, we allowed 2 days in London to see the sights, then we hopped a bus tour from our hotel that took us to Stonehenge and then to our cruise port where we boarded the ship. Worked out great!

On the return trip our last stop was Le Havre/Paris, many people disembarked there and left the ship for good to spend a couple days in Paris before flying to their homes direct from Paris. We did not think of that...hmm would have been nice, but many excursions were cancelled that day and the rain and flooding had just started the day we docked in Le Havre, so now looking back I am glad we did not plan a couple days in Paris. But it is a great plan to have a couple days to see a new place and then relax before flying home. Something to think about!

Plan your flights with plenty of hours to spare, I had a mishap happen to me, My flight home was at the minimum already- at 4 hours of disembarkation of ship, when Virgin Atlantic changed my flight to an hour earlier! Who does that?? Most flights get delayed not moved up!! So now I had no chance of leaving ship at 7 am, driving 2 hours to the airport and then getting through security and customs in order to make a now 10:30 (board at 9:30) flight!!! I had to book an extra night in Gatwick to make the next flight the next day. Had I booked my flight home at say 6:00pm I could have had no problem making the flight the day of disembarkation of ship. Instead it costed me about 300.00 extra, which I am hoping to get back from my travel insurance.

Long flights: I thought booking a non stop to Southampton London would be the best thing, just 10 hours and I am there, but now I am reconsidering long flights, I think having a stop over where you actually get out of the plane walk around, recharge, and take a break from flying is a much better plan, Break up the monotony of being packed in the plane like sardines with no chance of any rest. So next time I am going to find a flight that goes 5 hours with a 2 hour break then 5 hours more...I really think that would be the best thing! Unless of course I can fly first class! Those people have it made!

We do need one more trip to Europe, we need to see Germany, Switzerland and Holland! So I hope to remember these tips in say 4 years....

Now for some more of London, Scotland and Ireland:

London

Big Ben

Changing of the guard, Buckingham Palace

Stonehenge

Herm Island, Guernsey

Blarney Castle, I did not kiss anything while here!

Christy and Jeff at Powerscourt Waterfall

The view a top Conway Castle, Wales

Another view, it was amazing!

Duke and Baron, the Kelpies. 115 foot tall metal horse heads, we only got to drive by, no excursion to this place!

Christy wanted to wrap him up and take him home, he was so sweet!
Gotta love a man in a kilt!