Pre Departure - UK

I only had twelve days to plan the UK itinerary after coming back from Eastern Europe. Planning this trip was so tiring, it was even worse than my full time job as I sat in front of my laptop everyday from the time I woke up until dinner time.

After I bought the Britrail passes, I found out that there was no rail service at all across UK on 25th and 26th of December. It was really a disaster as we need the rail service from Edinburgh to Glasgow on 25th and Glasgow to Liverpool on 26th. The hotels were already booked, so if we missed one city it would be a domino effect. I spent a few days searching for alternative transportations, direct buses, intercity buses, taxi, but none looked promising.

Since we couldn't use the railpass for two days, we asked the agent to change it to the cheaper pass with lesser days. We really have to be calculative because the railpass was expensive and we had to budget for extra hotel accomodations if we couldn't get out of the city, and luckily they agreed. The problem didn't stop here, until the day prior to our departure the railpass was still nowhere in sight. So in the end, the agent told us to pick up the passes in his London office.

It was a headache for us because our first day train schedule was very tight: Paris - London - Cambridge - York in one day. With no solutions to our transport woes on Christmas day plus this "road block", we began our own amazing race in UK...

Day 1 >>