New plan - hopefully the final one

I called our travel agent and asked about getting to Dublin in order to fly out. She says the best way is to fly from Edinburgh to Dublin. In order to do that and still make our flight from Dublin to Los Angeles, she's recommended that we stay overnight in Dublin instead of trying to fly in and back out in a short duration (our Dublin to Los Angeles flight leaves at 11am). The price hasn't changed and this is basically GREAT news as it means we'll be able to do this trip after all and all we're going to have to give up is a night in Stirling and now we also get to stay in Dublin :)

So here's the new itinerary:

Mon- Apr-21
Leave LAX via Aer Lingus

Tues-Apr-22
Arrive in Glasgow
Pick up rental car
Stay 2 nights

Thur-Apr-24
Travel to Fort William
Stay 1 night

Fri-Apr-25
Travel to Portree (Isle of Skye)
Stay 2 nights

Sun-Apr-27
Travel to Inverness
Stay 2 nights

Tues-Apr-29
Travel to Aberdeen
Stay 2 nights

Thur-May-1
Travel to Edinburgh
Stay 2 nights

Sat-May-3
Fly out of Edinburgh & into Dublin
Stay 1 night

Sun-May-4
Fly out of Dublin & into Los Angeles

Mon-May-5
Arrive home!

Maybe for the best?

I called Aer Lingus and apparently they've scheduled their flights in such a way that the Glasgow to Dublin flight just misses the Dublin to Los Angeles flight. Our new strategy? Fly in and out of Dublin and then travel to Scotland. It knocks about $300 off our my original budget so in essance we could spend $300 on getting to and from Scotland & Dublin and still be where I thought we'd be money wise.

Now, just to figure out how...

On a completely related rant: How the HELL is it the same price to fly ROUND TRIP between LAX & GLA as it is to fly one way?! You guys think I kid - I DO NOT! Go onto Travelocity.com and price out the difference between a one-way flight to Glasgow from LAX and a round trip flight.

It'll blow your socks off.

This is likely the sign

Since Aer Lingus told me to call back in two weeks in order for them to get their LAX schedule together, I've been checking pretty much every day. This afternoon I logged on and the search took a little longer than usual which I felt was a good sign.

Well it was a sign. They have a flight available TO Glasgow but not from - as all of their returning flights are completely booked. I pushed my return date in and out a good week (not even possible - but I just wanted to check) and nothing.

I'm so upset. Its not fair. How can it be all filled up already?! I think this is the sign that Paul & I shouldn't go. If we have to spend an additional $400 on the flights - we can't stay any more than a week - if that. I don't think I even want to go if I can only go for a week. I'll be able to see next to nothing and that would just disappoint me.

Tester book: Ordered

I decided to give Blurb a try anyhow - and so proceeded to fight with their program to create a mock up of what my book would look like so I could get a feel of how the quality of the pictures and the pages were. I published only the posts I had currently created - but that only equaled to ten out of the minimum of twenty pages - so I added in another ten of nothingness. Three chapter pages, seven maps of our stops, and one page full of clouds - just because :) Those twenty pages cost me approx $25 so averaging about $1.25 per page when ordering soft cover. I can't remember how much the hard cover was. I'm thinking that I'm going to be keeping the blog for about 8 months, 3-5 posts a week, one post per page so that equals to...160 pages at $1.25 per page...so about $200. That's definitely expensive - but if it's a book about 8 great months of my life then I don't mind :) I'm a story teller - what can I say?

It should be here within two weeks, and I have to admit I'm excited. The more and more I used the program the easier it became (not better, just easier) and I learned to adapt and edit my posts where it was needed. I'm excited because if this prints out as nicely as I'm hoping it does then I'm going to be even more encouraged to keep the blog up as we're planning the trip. If it doesn't work out... well I'll be very active right before the trip and right after.

Money, money, money

Yesterday I had a very depressing and discouraging day in regards to the Scotland trip.

The fact of the matter is that we don't have $1,600 to spend all at once on the plane tickets - so I decided to open a Discover card. The card's limit wasn't enough for us to put the entire cost of the plane tickets on it - and that started a lot of my woes. I'm so disappointed in myself in regards to my credit right now. I keep trying to make it better but I know that one $60 Verizon bill is going to haunt me for a very long time. I also know that I have too many credit cards and I need to just combine them and get rid of half. I feel I manage my balances pretty well though, so it frustrates me to know that me having too many - even if they aren't in trouble - is backfiring.

Moving on. So I decided I would just put as much as I could on the Discover card and then the rest we'll pay out of our savings. Then I go to the Aer Lingus site and I see that they - like many - do not accept Discover cards. Argh! So I called and canceled that card and tried to open an America Express card. I don't know what I was thinking with that move. American Express has some pretty high standards - so of course I was declined for that. Instantly I regretted closing the Discover card and also applying for the American Express card. I'm not stupid and yet I did a very stupid thing. I had been making too many inquires within a 12 month period on top of credit that is not perfect to begin with. It's a never ending circle and that frustrates me so much!

So last night was pretty hard and I became very discouraged about the whole trip. I thought to myself maybe we shouldn't do this at all if we can't do it the way I want to. Maybe we shouldn't do it because of the cost. Maybe we shouldn't do it because of the stress!

This morning I'm in a much more optimistic mood. I've realized that I'll just reopen the Discover card (they said I had a period of seven days to reopen it), transfer some of my balances from my other cards onto the Discover (enjoy the 0% APR for the first year!), use the space on the other cards that are accepted by Aer Lingus and then use our savings as I had already planned.

This is going to work out. We're going to Scotland, even if its only for a week rather than two. I'm not going to ruin my credit anymore than it already it is with this trip. I'm going to pay off the Discover card long before my one year of 0% APR is up and I'm going to make it work for me!

I feel so defeated!

The whole reason I started this blog was so I could dedicate a space to my Scotland trip but also so I could eventually use Blurb to publish the blog into a book. I thought, "What a great idea! Two birds with one stone!" Well I have news for anyone who has been considering doing this: Blurb sucks. Sure, the idea was nice but the execution of the idea was so half-fulfilled. A blog is supposed to be full of writing, right? But it's also supposed to have photographs, right? Well how the hell do you expect me, a long-winded, picture posting self to fit onto one page when you have margins the size of NEW YORK?!

Seriously?!

To top it off, all of my pictures are either too big or too small for their template so I either get a message that says "this photo will print poorly at this resolution" or a get an image the size of a postage stamp.

Who is this blog-to-book supposed to be for anyhow? People who just write? People who just post images? Where is the happy medium?! And why can't I move the text boxes or make the bigger?! I HATE WASTED SPACE COMMONLY WRITTEN OFF AS MARGINS!

Stoer Point

I've done some very fancy investigation (all right, I simply read the caption on the photo I used as my banner) and have found out that the picture was taken at Stoer Point. I now want to go there desperately. I've found that it's 2 hours away from Inverness & 3 hours away from Portree - so very obviously we'll likely go there from Inverness. That actually works out perfectly because we'll be in Inverness the longest (aside from Edinburgh) so we'll be able to take the time and go out there.

clipped from www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk One of the best walks in the area begins at the lighthouse car park and heads north above the cliffs for two miles to the remote Point of Stoer. The coastal scenery is spectacular, and the views still better if you head a few hundred yards inland to the summit of the 141m high Sidhean Mor. But the highlight is the Old Man of Stoer, a 200ft high rock stack just offshore, a little south of the Point of Stoer. You might even see climbers swimming across the 30ft wide channel to the platform at the foot of the stack or scaling the stack itself.

When do they shear the sheep in Scotland I wonder? Will I even be able to see any fluffy ones? Are sheep nice? If I see one will the Scots let me pet it? Paul always says I should just open a petting zoo or live on a farm.

Finally, a bit of color on this blog

I got bored with my blog and changed a lot of the layout. I wanted the blog portion wider as I'm a very long-winded writer, so in order to do that I basically had to change everything. But it looks good now, so I'm pretty satisfied :)

Realizing that I could a photo behind the title made me go hunting for pictures of Scotland. I thought I had decided on one and had edited with the blog title and whatnot until I realized I didn't take down the photographers name in order to give credit. Giving credit has been a hot button recently on a lot of the photography based sites I go to so I couldn't very well be a hypocrite and not credit even if I didn't know who to credit. So I had to reopen my search and I went looking for the picture again. Then I ran across a different one.

Lazy Day, originally uploaded by valsworld98.

The photograph above (and my new banner!) is the epitome of what Scotland has always been for me. That is what I want to see when I go. That is what I'm spending all this money on. I just hope I'm not disappointed. I'm so worried that I'm going to miss my opportunity to see what I want to see in the quest to try and see everything. I'll only have this one chance - I better not screw it up.

Photograph taken by Valsworld98 of Flickr

Kumquats!

Now that we've decided we're going with myguideBritain for the travel reservations and we decided to fly Aer Lingus - I called Aer Lingus today to get a final quote on the flights so I knew how much we need to save before we could make the flight reservations and therefore make the travel reservations. Well apparently Aer Lingus has not "loaded" their LAX times yet and so I'm to call back in two weeks.

ARGH! I just want to make the plans so I know what's going on and I know we're getting the best deal we can by booking as soon as possible. Now we've got to wait another two weeks - and hopefully then Aer Lingus will have their LAX times in order. I suppose I should just stop my bitching. Beggers can't be choosers - now can we? I did go onto Aer Lingus' site and put in some dates for March - and have estimated our final price for the flights to be around $1,600. Wow that's a lot. It also sucks monkey butt that we'll be paying over $400 for the fuel surcharge & taxes. I thought that's what the tickets were paying for - fuel. Why are we now paying a surcharge?!

I've also decided, without speaking to Paul, not to get that British Heritage Pass (the pass that allowed us free access into individual sites). I've realized there is a lot of stuff we can't see that's on their list and a lot of stuff we WANT to see that's NOT on their list. Not worth the $15 a day when we wont be doing stuff every day. I promised Paul that if we went for two weeks we'd relax and do some non-site-seeing days too. I figure we'll be resting in Glasgow, Portree, Inverness, Aberdeen & Edinburgh because we'll be there for more than one day. Our other two stops will be purely for site-seeing enjoyment!

I've chosen some stuff I want to see, I'll post it soon!

Two Weeks?!

As I posted earlier this weekend - I was considering getting some pricing information on a two week trip since I was feeling very rushed with our one week trip. Also, I wanted to move it later in the year. So I talked to the woman I was working with at myguideBritain and she created us a new itinerary with prices based on end of April beginning of May. So the cities we're thinking about visiting now are:

Arriving in Edinburgh
1st two nights in Glasgow
1 night in Fort William
2 nights on the Isle of Skye in the town on Portee
3 nights in Inverness
2 nights in Aberdeen
1 night in Stirling
3 nights Edinburgh
Leaving from Edinburgh

The trip costs has doubled - but considering we've moved slightly into the "high season" I don't think that's too bad. I'm thinking that Paul and I are still going to do it and just be very, very budget conscious for the next six months. We're only going to do this once! We need to make it count.

To save some money we are going to fly with Aer Lingus and we're going to take advantage of this Great British Heritage Pass where you buy a pass for a number of days and it'll get you in free to a lot of attractions. It's going to be $15 a day for Paul and I (combined!) so that's pretty good considering that a few places are 11GBP per person. I'd like to do all that stuff off of the beaten path - but I also want to be able to say I've seen those places everyone talks about when they talk about Scotland. Plus we pay ONE time and know where our budget is after that instead of getting to the 8th day and realizing we can't see anything else.

One question for anyone who lives in the UK: I've priced out everything but petrol and food. Can someone tell me the average cost of a meal when eating out and also the average cost of petrol? I know that the petrol prices will likely change by next year - but I'd still like to get a rough estimate now...

Aer Lingus & other questions answered

After much investigation (their website kept "redirecting" me) I've found that Aer Lingus will be a perfect way to save some money - though I'm going to have to change our plans a bit. First off, during the season we're going - they only fly three days out of the week. Second, we will have a stop off in Dublin - but I've made sure it's only a stop off - we'll be flying into Scotland the same day in a matter of a couple of hours (kind of excited about flying into Dublin!). Third, I still haven't priced out the difference between flying in and out of the same location (such as Glasgow) but I was a bit excited about seeing two airports so I had planned it that way for a reason.

I've never flown - have I mentioned that yet? I suppose a part of me is simply excited and anxious to see as many airports as I possibly can in one trip :)

As for the driver's license - I haven't confirmed it yet - though from the sounds of everyone comments it seems as though because I'll only be there for a week I wont need to get a license. That'll make it all the easier and cheaper though I'll certainly have my head buried in the Highway Code that Lithian was kind enough to link for me. I'm actually a big "driver" here - and I love to know the rules of the road and shout at people who don't follow them :) Though no worries! I won't be brave enough to shout at the Scots - even if they shout at me.

Sadly, as both Lithian and Princesskasren have pointed out, out 8 days wont be nearly enough time to see everything. We're making a circle but at the same time we're planning on going inside and outside of the circle as well. I wish we could stay longer but on top of my work allowing me only so much time for vacation (We haven't even fathomed Paul's work as they haven't offered him any kind of "paid vacation" and he's been there for six months) there is also the cost! We're bursting our budget as it is - I can tell you that much. Though, if we save as much as it looks like we'll be saving on the airfare, we may be able to stay a day or two more.

On another note, I'm slightly considering bumping our trip forward a month. Most of the books we're looking at say the weather turns at April and we're planning March. My only concern is the price. The reason I chose March was because they said that the prices begin to turn at April. I'm so conflicted! This may be my one and only chance to A) see any place that's not in the US and B) see Scotland - a place I've dreamt about going for quite some time. I've already promised Paul that this trip wouldn't bankrupt us - but all I want to do if stay for as long as I can in some weather that allows me to see all that beauty I've dreamt about.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

While We're Young, Scotland 2008

I think this is it! I found this site called myguideBritain where you tell them where you want to go and they plan it for you - and as far as I can tell - for free! So, I emailed them and told them Paul & I were going to Scotland and that we wanted to go see the castles & stuff (meaning, no golfing and more than just whiskey tours) and then someone sent me a plan and told me how much it would cost! I went onto Yahoo! Maps and mapped our suggested hotels/B&B locations and the above is what you get. We'll basically be circling the island. I know that some of you out there might think it's silly that I needed someone to say, "make a circle" - but it was very daunting and now I feel like I have a starting point. The plan/cost they gave us was just for hotels/B&B and a car for the trip - but that kind of makes me happy because now Paul & I can just see what is around each area and plan that way.

If anyone is interested or maybe want to make some suggestions or anything - I've opened a "Trip Planner" from Yahoo! - here's the link to our trip so far: While We're Young, Scotland 2008. It shows where and what days we'll be there and also what places we're planning on staying. Most of the hotels/B&B we are thinking about weren't registered with Yahoo! so I have yet to put in addresses for them.

Some questions I'm going to throw out there though, anyone who can answer please do so!

1. Has anyone heard of a airline called Aer Lingus? Airfare was not included in the quote that the travel planners gave us, so I was price hunting for one way tickets (because we're starting in Glasgow & ending in Edinburgh - I thought to just use two separate airports) and they quoted me less than half of every other airline! I don't know what to think because apparently they ONLY fly to and from Ireland/UK so I think that's maybe why they're so cheap but then I'm still concerned.
2. Is it hard to drive on the left side of the road? Do they park on the left side too or do they cross the street to park? 'Cause I'm a bit scared and we'll be driving for the whole trip. The plus side is that they've quoted us for a VW Golf which I'm actually pretty familiar with. They've also included insurance in the price of the rental - thank the good Lord.
3. I know I can find out this kind of stuff from a tourist book (which Paul & I will likely be picking up tonight!) but - do they have different electrical plugs in Scotland? Will I know how to pump gas? Do I need a special license to drive? Is everything I want to see going to be closed because its close to the off season? Will they get angry at me for being so happy with their accents?