I retruned to Toronto last night after two great weeks away in the UK.

Thank you everyone for all of you help with my trip planning.

I am going to be posting my trip report hopefully throughout the week if anyone wants to hear about it.

Thanks again.

Of course we'd love to hear it, sharmom12! Looking forward to it.

Seconding yk--looking forward to reading it.

Well, get on with it!!

C'mon, c'mon, give over!

Alright, here we go.

So I have never been to the UK, and have always wanted to go. I have a good friend who lives in Glasgow, and two friends in the London area. I thought this would be the perfect time to go over and visit with them plus have somewhere to stay.

I started by booking my flight in January. I flew with Air Transat from Toronto to Glasgow, returning from London Gatwick. The flight cost me $630, which included me prebooking the emergency exit on both flights for the extra leg room.

I left Toronto at 6:30pm, getting into Glasgow the following morning at 7:0am. Not the best way to do it, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

That first day in Glasgow my friends and I did a hop on & off tour. I believe it was around £8 for the 2 day ticket. The tour was great although the tour guide wasn't very lively. It was great to have an explanation of the different buildings and just sit back and listen. I thought it was a great way to spend my first day. We also did some shopping on Argyle Street. For dinner the 3 of us stopped off at a newly renovated pub called The Bay Horse Pub. The service was great and the food was good as well. We all had a drink and traditional pub main dish, which cost £21 total. Pretty reasonable I thought.

Day 2 in Scotland was a long one. I wanted to pack as much into my few days as possible and through my research I figured that the best way to do so was to rent a car for the day. I booked through Enterprise online and picked it up on Oswald Street. I paid a total of £30 for the day. This included a car upgrade, automatic transmission, & all of the extra insurance. We headed north to Stirling to see the castle and the William Wallace Monument. Entrance to the castle cost me £15 - BUT that included admission to Edinburgh castle as well as a few others. It was some sort of pass that they suggested. The castle was amazing, and our tour guide Joe was great. From the castle it took us about an hour to find the monument. But we did get a thorough tour of Stirling, which is beautiful. The monument was alright. We were a bit dissapointed to find out that most of the "facts" are only speculated, therefore are more like stories. What made the trek worth while was the view from the top. Truly breathtaking. Well worth the £8.

Now we got back into our car and drove to Loch Lomond - specifically to Balloch where we stopped for lunch at Balloch House. This was such a cute little village. The pub food was delicious, and again reasonable - £25 for all three of us. After lunch we spend the late afternoon walking along the loch. We drove up to Duck bay for more astonishing views. We also took a detour and drove through Cameron House to see where all of the Scotland/Rangers football drama took place (my friend is a big supporter). We all agreed that when we win the lottery we will stay at this resort. At about 7:00 we drove back into the city. I filled up the car in preperation for returning it in the morning which cost me £15. All in all it was well worth it to rent the car. And I had the time of my life driving on the "wrong" side of the road.

Day 3 - We took the train (£18 return) to Edinburgh for another tourist day. From the train station we walked up the Royal Mile to the castle. We bypassed the line up because we bought the pass the day before at Stirling. This saved us about an hour, which was great! We took a guided tour here as well, Paul being quite the character. We spent about 3 hours in the castle, but could have easily spent the whole day. From here we walked the whole length of the Royal Mile, browsing in shops and stopping for lunch. We did not luck out this time for lunch. It was a small restaurant on Rose Street (I forget the name of it) but we all had different complaints about our meals. After lunch we did some more shopping along Princes Street and took the 5:00 train back to Glasgow. We had a really nice dinner out that night at a chinese restaurant on Sauchiehall Street followed by a wild night of dancing across the street at a place called Campus. It was not a typical club as we would expect in Toronto, but we had a lot of fun dancing to "oldies" like the YMCA and the Macarena.

We all had a great time catching up and playing tourist for 3 days. It was sad to leave as I headed south to Manchester the following morning.

I pre booked a train from Glasgow to Manchester for £14. I stayed in Manchester for 3 nights, so pre-booked a hotel on expedia before I left. The hotel was wonderful - Arora International. It was a 10 minute walk from Oxford Street station, and a 15 minute walk to the Picadilly station. I paid $300 for the 3 nights, which I thought was a good deal. I got a room upgrade upon check in as well. My room had a safe, and a fridge which was helpful. What tipped me off about it being a good hotel was that several airline employees were checking in while I was as well. I really lucked out.

I had looked everywhere online, and asked on the forum for ways to get reasonable priced Manchester United tickets. I found a site called viagogo. The only downside to this site is that you have to be a member. So for £25 you but the membership and are able to purchase 1 ticket per game (based on availability). So got a grand total of £70 I got a fantastic seat for the game - 20 rows from the pitch and one section away from the middle.

I have been to a lot of sports events - hockey, basketball, baseball - BUT this was the best thing I have experienced. The game was amazing. All 7 goals were scored on our side of the field.

After the game we had dinner at a restaurant called Gio's. The wait list was a bit disorganized which made the wait long BUT once we got seated everything was great. The food was amazing, the service was good as well. Total was £45 for the two of us.

The next morning I pre booked an Old Trafford stadium tour. With my viagogo membership, I paid half price to enter, £5. The tour and museum were good. I am glad we pre-booked it because it was packed.

Following the tour I took the tram to the Trafford Centre shopping mall. It was absolutly huge and a bit overwhelming. I spend a few hours, and a few £££ there. I headed back to the hotel early because I had an early train to catch the next day to Liverpool. I decided to stay at the Manchester hotel instead of moving to Liverpool as the commute is only an hour. Now onto my day in Liverpool......

Very nice report so far! Looking forward to more.