Hello again! Thank you to all that helped me find some excellent locations to go on my trip to England. I am leaving on Monday, and I still have no clue as to where I am going to stay. I know it is a bit late to find places, but does anyone have any recommendations on where to stay?
I will be in London for a week, I am going to go to the Isle of Sky, Iverness, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bath, Cardiff, Dover, and I can’t think of where else I am going to be. I went to hostels.com, and I was curious if that was a good place to start. It seems like they still have availabilities, but with a limited budget it seems like it could get interesting!
Also, I found information on the BritRail pass, is this something I should have? I know I am incredibly late to start making all these plans, and any help would be great!
Thank you :)
I used hostelz.com to plan my trip – really helpful, and it’s built around reviews and comments from other travellers, so you can maybe trust the info a little more. Heck, if nobody’s reviewed a place that sounds good yet, do it yourself and make a few bucks on it (caveat: I haven’t gotten any money yet for a review I submitted in May).
In London, I’ve stayed in Ashlee House and the Orient Espresso. Ashlee House, near King’s Cross station, was really awesome, but I was only there for a night, so I didn’t have a chance to make sure it was as good as it appeared. Orient Espresso was good but it doesn’t have any facilities of its own – it’s just bedrooms and bathrooms, and you have to go down the street to the Village or the Inn to check in, get breakfast, or hang out with people. Still a nice place though, and the lack of on-location amenities made it cheap.
I stayed at Glenbrittle Youth Hostel on Skye – nice place, a bit more remote than some of the others, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on what you want – it’s very close to the Inaccessible Pinnacle and the other peaks in the Cuillin Ridge, if mountaineering is your thing.
I don’t remember the name of the place I stayed at in Edinburgh but it’s a SYHA hostel on Eglinton Crescent (it might have been Edinburgh Eglinton Youth Hostel, now that I think about it); nice place, decent location, but you have to join HI to stay – it’ll cost you 6 pounds there, though, which is cheaper than anywhere outside of Scotland, I think.
If you’re looking to party, stay at the Generator Hostel in London.
Edinburgh, the Isle of Skye, Inverness & Glasgow are in Scotland, not England. Sorry but I hate it when people do that. >.< You'll struggle to find anywhere to stay in Edinburgh at the moment because of the festival & fringe, most places got booked up ages ago. You should try the Highlander Hostel in Annandale Street, Edinburgh. It's roughly about 10 minutes away from Princes Street. Sorry I can't be more help. Also, theres a whole range of B&B's on Pilrig Street, which is about 15 minutes away from Princes Street and the centre of town. I think they're quite cheap too.
And neither is Cardiff as well :-)
I think most people realize it, and unfortunately just interchange England with Britain or U.K. in their heads.
oh yeh.. lmao. i just ignored cardiff cos i was riled about the scottish thing. (being scottish i just can;t stand when people make mistakes about where i live its one of my pet hates).
When I went to London last summer I stayed at the King’s College dorm (a.k.a. The Great Dover Street Apartments). I really liked it. You had a private room with a private bath and your own fridge. You had access to a full kitchen (so you could cook your own meals) as well as laundry facilities and a common room/lounge area and there was security there at night. The area seemed a little dodgy at night – but I’m a wuss (though I would stay there again if I went back). It was about a 5 min walk from Borough Tube Station (10 mins from London Bridge Station), just a quick subway ride to most places. I think I paid about 20 pounds/night to stay there.
When I went to Italy this summer I booked all my accommodations through hostels.com and hostelworld.com. It was great not having to worry about where I was going to stay once I got to the next town. You do pay a bit more though. If you just show up you can find dirt cheap places to stay – but there is always the risk that you won’t find a good place and if you’re only there a short time, it sucks to spend your first day checking out hostels.
Enjoy your trip!
I am so sorry about saying England!!! I wrote this post very early in the morning, lack of sleep and compassion, I guess. I didn’t mean to offend anyone…
Thank you for the tips, I am going to stay in the dorms of the Engineering College in London (I think that is what it is) I was also told to stay at Bazpackers in Iverness, but I haven’t been able to find too much info on it. I will check out that hostelz.com.
Sorry again for the huge typo, it won’t happen again!
Um, well Isle of Skye, Inverness, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cardiff aren’t in England, just fyi. You’ll make enemies fast there if you refer to the people as being English. ;)
Anyway, in Edinburgh, the castle rock hostel is really, really good position wise – it’s right opposite Edinburgh castle, just off the royal mile – and has lots of facilities. I stayed there during last August…um, the only issue with Edinburgh is that the festival + fringe festival is on for all of August, and it might be difficult to get anything at this late stage, because it does get incredibly booked up, everyone is there pretty much. I’m pretty sure that castle rock actually don’t take bookings in August at all, so I’m not sure how it would be getting in there now. There is another hostel just outside of Edinburgh that one of my friends stayed in during Hogmanay, and it seemed to get less booked up than the central ones, it was called Wanderers Inn or something… apparently the facilities there are fantastic, but it’s a fair walk into town.
In London, I stayed at a few places. I stayed at the Generator, whcih is in Russell Square. I’m kind of undecided as to whether I liked it, I was travelling alone and my first week was a bit crazy what with the jetlag and homesickness and it was generator I was at, so I feel that coloured my view of it a bit! on the upside, it is really central, you can walk to the british museum, oxford street etc, and it is quite cheap… 15 pounds a night from memory for a 4 bed room… and also it has a laundry, internet, free breakfast, a diner with cheap dinners, a travel agent, a couple of bars.. really good facilities. I realised later that most hostels don’t have such good facilities. the down sides I found were that it is *huge* and I found it hard to meet people at. also, contiki apparently use it as their london base, so a lot of the people staying there had been on contiki tours and so already knew each other, whcih I found a bit offputting. that was probably more an issue for me cos I was on my own, though. On balance, I think it was a pretty good place, it was clean and secure and it was great being able to get meals there. It was damned hard to find, though, so if you went there, take a map. I spent an hour wandering around with all my luggage because I couldn’t find the place! the other places I stayed at were Barmy badgers, in earls court, the YHA in earls court, and St Christophers in Southwark. Of those, I quite liked the barmy badgers, it was on earls court road, right near the tube, had a kitchen and stuff, seemed quite a friendly place. I thought the YHA was overpriced for what it was. I didn’t like SC much at all, the dorms were huge and noisy and the area was a bit.. hmmm.
In Bath, I thought the YHA hostel was pretty good. I was only there for one night though!
ack, and I stayed in a really, really good place in Inverness, and can’t for the life of me remember what it was called. If I remember I will let you know, it was lovely. Are you going to the lake district at all? because I stayed in a fantastic hostel there, it was like a big country house. again, can’t remember what it was called, but I can look the details up for you if you are going to be there.
I always find hostelworld.com the best website for hostels. and hmmm, I always thought the britrail passes were pretty dear. I didn’t bother to get one when I was there.
By pretty dear, do you mean expensive? The eight day flexi is selling for $206 right now which I think is really good – but I obviously don’t have any basis for this. But I checked out trains on Rail Europe from …Manchester to Edinburgh and it was close to or over 100 pounds (can’t type the sign for it on my laptop). THat was only that one trip, so I figured with the all the rest of travels the $206 was pretty good.
hmm, I thought it was a lot more than that. I was there for ages though, so I was probably looking at more than an 8 day pass and the price just stuck in my memory!
if it’s only 206 then yes, it’s probably reasonable, because the trains *are* quite expensive. The only train I ended up catching was from London-Edinburgh, I flew/bussed it the rest of the time, but that cost about 50 or 60 pounds. 100 pounds for manchester-edinburgh sounds *extremely* expensive though, I know I looked a bit at prices for london-edinburgh and it was never anywhere near as expensive as that, and that was at new year when everything in edinburgh is ridiculously overbooked. you’d think manchester-ed should be less, because it’s so much closer. even so, I doubt you could ever get the london-edinburgh trip for less than about 40 and even from edinburgh to glasgow was about 12 pounds, from memory, so $206 probably *is* a good deal.
the only thing is, I would check whether you need to book seats on the trains, or if that is included with the pass. I’m just thinking the edinburgh trains will be packed at the moment, and you wouldn’t want to be stuck with a pass and not be able to get on the train/have to stand all the way.
Well, I’m not going right now, so it’ll probably be fine for me :-)
But I did speak to someone from RailEurope to ask about reservations (because when I backpacked Western/Eastern Europe I didn’t realize I had to make them and I ended up not being prepared for that expense) and they told me that I would never NEED to make reservations – I obviously could if I wanted to. Since there are no high speed trains in the U.K. I guess it’s much simpler.
Hey, thanks for all your advice!
no problem. :) I think I was confusing you with someone else on this community when I said about it being too late to book!
the only reason I asked about booking seats is that I was on a train back to london from edinburgh on, hmm, january 2nd, when everybody was coming back from New Year, and a lot of people had booked tickets but not seats, and had to stand the whole way, it was quite nightmareish. if you’re there in september/october, though, I doubt it’ll be an issue, I was thinking you were there in August. :)