We've been planning on visiting Scotland but we are slightly overwhelmed at the cost. The Euro in the rest of Europe is looking more and more appealing as we reconsider. We might have to consider Germany and Austria again as someone else did in another thread.

However, we have not been to England and Wales either. We were wondering if they were slightly less expensive than Scotland? We would be staying in villages and towns, not in London or large cities.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Canajoharie

Nope. The UK is expensive.

However, plan well and use all your time productively and it is well worth the trip. I did a week in Scotland from London and it cost about £1000 all up including trains, rental car, accommodation and food. We kept on the move and stayed in B&Bs. If you take care and book in advance you can stay at nice places for £50 a night.

My sister did a similar trip but spent far more as they did not book ahead and ended up at expensive hotels etc.

Do you somehow think that because the € costs about $1.21 and the £ about $1.76 that everything costs 45% more. That isn't how it works.

Actually the £/$ exchange rate is a bit better than it has been for a couple of years.

You cannot generalize - but I will anyway generally B&Bs will be a bit cheaper in rural parts of Wales and Scotland than they are in some parts of England. But there are MANY inexpensive places all over.

But in all three you can easily get B&Bs w/ private baths for £22 to £30 per person. Or about $35 to $55. When you factor in that usually includes a huge cooked breakfast it really is a bargain.

There are a few especially expensive locations -- London of course, central Edinburgh, Bath, and so on.

I agree with janisj. I've travelled in rural areas of both Wales and Scotland and have found many relatively inexpensive but nevertheless lovely places to stay, often for under 30 pounds per person per night. And because I tend to eat simply - I often picnic or eat in pubs - I've found food costs relatively low as well. My major cost has been the rental car, but I've shopped around and sometimes found some good deals.

As Janis so rightly points out, bed & breakfast in the UK is a great bargain. You do not need to book in advance or spend hours searching the web to find good-value B&Bs: these places are plentiful and easy to find. In Scotland, the tourist offices are very good at finding accommodation - if you arrive in a strange town, go to the tourist office, and they'll find somewhere.

Yes,I agree that the tourist office is agreat resource.Even in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival/Fringe Festival where it looks like there isn't a single room in the whole city,they,(Ed.Tourist Office), have found me somewhere.E.g.,one year they told me that student residences had been made available in a part of Edinburgh to cope with the hordes of tourists and performers looking for a bed..

As an exciled Scot, living in Canada, I find everything in Scotland is around twice what we would pay (except houses-they are 4 times as expensive in Scotland). My neighbour runs a B. and B. and charges C$75 for a beautiful room with an en-suite and that is about 30GBP, so even the so-called B.and B. bargains that have been talked about could be considered expensive. Austria is very expensive too for the average North American, but it is really worth it.

Let's just say my friends in *Switzerland* complain about prices in London!

Hi C

>We might have to consider Germany and Austria again ...<

Tired of Italy and France?

>in all three you can easily get B&Bs w/ private baths for £22 to £30 per person. Or about $35 to $55.<

In the Dordogne it will be about $70 for TWO, with bkfst.

In Florence, we found a small B&B w/ensuite facilities and AC for $70 for two. Bkfst at the corner cafe was 2E pp.

We made a 36 days trip all around UK and Northern Ireland in summer 2003. We looked for accommodation costs below £50 per night for both of us and found them sometimes even at £40. We booked most of the trip well in advance, but for 5 days in Scotland we just found accommodation as we went by. In London we stayed at Queensway (or something like this) Hotel for £45 per double room per night. It was 5 minutes walking from Paddington Station, very good location, in a nice area.
All in all, including entries to museums, castles, palaces, British Heritage Pass, local transportation, car rental for 5 days in Scotland, Easy Jet from Liverpool to Belfast, ferry crossing from Belfast to Stranraer in Scotland, trains (we had a British Rail Pass with us, but we still bought tickets for shorter trips), local tours, beers, etc., we spent just below $15,000. That is for two persons for 36 days. For us it was a small fortune, it blew away our savings, but it was the best vacation we've had so far. And I still think that we made it cheaper than most. I mean... it can be done with some careful planning.

Gabriel

We were in Scotland Sept. 1-10 of last year in the midst of the Katrina disaster here at home. At that time the disaster was felt in the currency exchange and at the pumps in Scotland so our costs were a bit more than we'd hoped. We tried to keep our costs well budgeted and did fairly well and even were able to fit in a few splurges. The breakdown of our costs for 2 adults were $980 for lodging - mostly B&Bs and 1 night in a castle, 9 days automatic car rental $375.00, gas & ferries (Skye and Mull) $420.00, meals $700, British Heritage Pass $150, Misc. $300. We weren't living in the lap of luxury, be we had one of the most wonderful trip of our lives!

Depending on how long you'll be staying and where you are going you can do quite nicely for a reasonable amount. We stayed out in the countryside for the most part and did lots of driving.

Good luck with your decision making, and I hope you can make it to Scotland!

ira: I guess I don't understand your point.

<font color="blue"> &gt;in all three you can easily get B&amp;Bs w/ private baths for &pound;22 to &pound;30 per person. Or about $35 to $55.&lt;

In the Dordogne it will be about $70 for TWO, with bkfst.</font>

The &quot;TWO&quot; emphasis seems to be some sort of &quot;gotcha&quot; because in the Dordogne one can get a room for 2 for $70

Last time I checked the $35 I quoted per person would ALSO total $70 for two.

Ira mentions a &quot;B&amp;B&quot; in Italy where breakfast at a caf&eacute; costs 2 euros.
In the UK, &quot;B&amp;B&quot; means bed and breakfast. The breakfast is always included in the price and is a meal that would cost a lot more than 2 euros in a caf&eacute;. A full Scottish breakfast will include fruit juice, porridge or cereals, a fried dish of bacon, egg, sausage, etc, toast with jam or marmalade, and tea or coffee. You should need only a light lunch after starting the day this way.