Help me plan a 2 week trip to London and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!
 

My wife and I are considering a 2 week trip this summer which would include a few days in London ( not our first time there), time spent at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and several days elsewhere in Scotland.

Questions:
1. We are leaving from JFK in NYC. Would it be best to fly in and out of London and take a train/plane to Edinburgh? Or should I plan on flying into London and out of Edinburgh?

2. How many days exploring the festival?

3. Do you have suggestions for accommodations? We are two very active seniors!

4. Which other areas/towns/cities would you suggest outside of Edinburgh for first timers in Scotland?

5. Suggestions for shows to see or buy tickets in advance at the festival?

We do know our way around London so I won't be needing any information regarding our time there. Thanks!

fly multi city - into London and out of Edinburgh (or vice versa)

travel between the two cities by train https://www.virgintrainseastcoast.com/

other cities - Glasgow, Stirling, St Andrews

do some day trips to the countryside

https://www.rabbies.com/en/scotland-...urgh/day-tours

book accommodation during the festival ASAP

<i>5. Suggestions for shows to see or buy tickets in advance at the festival?</i>

The programme isn't announced until June.

You may want to consider the other festivals - International, Book and Art - that are also on at the same time. Check the appropriate website for details of when the programmes are released. For the International & Book festivals it's normally better to book in advance as the individual events only occur a few times

<i>3. Do you have suggestions for accommodations? We are two very active seniors!</i>

At this late stage whatever you can get, it's "rather busy" in August in Edinburgh and people start booking the previous September

Thank you to both dotheboyshall and sofarsogood!

Reconsidering the plan: Spend the 2 weeks only in Scotland. Leave on August 8 and return on the 24 which means fly RT to Edinburgh. The question is whether to start off exploring festival and rent a car upon leaving Edinburgh or rent a car upon arrival and drive out to other sights and end up at the festival. I don't want a car while I am in Edinburgh.

We love the idea of all the festivals, however, since it will be our first time in Scotland we would like to see other towns and sights as well. Just don't know "which towns/sights " we should consider and how much time to allocate to the visits.

Rather than selecting a different town each night we would like to select 3 or 4 places ( including) Edinburgh which can serve as bases for us. For example when "sofarsogood" states to "do some day trips to the countryside" : can you do this by train or would you need a car?

Is it best to stay in Old Town or New Town? B & B rather than a hotel? Will it be impossible visiting any of the sights in Edinburgh?

Don't limit yourselves to flying into EDI. You might get better fares into GLA (even MAN would be a viable option)

No matter which you fly into you don't want to drive the first day or two so you would do one of the cities (car-less) first.

Edinburgh is a VERY special case re not only crowds, but also accommodations. Some flats for instance charge 3 X their normal rental rates in August. And almost every decent hotel, B&B, and apartment books up FAR ahead. What is your budget?

While in Edinburgh you definitely want to asap so attend the Tattoo, but you would want to book your tickets very soon.

You can take trains to other towns and cities but a car would give more options of visiting villages and more rural areas.

If you don't have a car then you can take a group tour, such as the link I gave earlier, into the Scottish countryside.

Based on my dates it looks like I could book the Sheraton Grand Hotel on Festival Square with points. Is this Hotel in a good location? We don't have to use points as our "budget" is completely opened up to finding a good fit for us. We love to stay in the " Old Towns" of cities. Any suggestions for smaller hotels or B & B's?

My TR from the festival a year or so back...

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...rgh-fringe.cfm

The Sheraton Grand isn't a bad location but you're at the very west end of Edinburgh. Okay but not absolutely central, however if there is availability, maybe you should take it. It gets good reviews and really the location is fine.

IMO, instead of hoping that we might be able to make some suggestions which may or may not work for you, I suggest you go your www.booking.com. Plug in your dates. You can also narrow choices down according to budget and location. Their maps will show locations and about any place between the castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, and several blocks either side of Princes Street would be good.

The Sheraton would not be my preference, but free (and availability) is good :)

I guess you have bought a travel guide, but if you enjoy reading novels and want to get a flavour of modern Edinburgh, try Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie novels. "The Sunday Philosophy Club" etc. This series shows Edinburgh's genteel side. [Smith is a prolific writer so mind you don't pick up one of his that is set in Botswana!}

For the darker side, Ian Rankin's "Rebus" novels deal with an unconventional, down-to-earth cop and some seedy characters.

I've never been to the "Fringe", but last July we went to the Jazz Festival and had a great time. Be sure to walk to the top of Arthur's Seat for a terrific view of the city, but pick your day - Scotland does get the odd rain shower!

Enjoy your trip.

I took a similar trip in August, 2013. We spent a week or so driving around Scotland and then a week in Edinburgh. This is my trip report:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...o-scotland.cfm

There are several strategies for visiting the Fringe. The one we used was to buy tickets ahead for several things we really wanted to see and then to wait until we were in Edinburgh to read reviews of acts in the daily papers that are available all over.

If you like theater, a wonderful venue is the Traverse Theatre, which presents new plays by living authors. I spent a couple of days just hanging out there and going to several plays in their two theaters. We bought tickets ahead for some of them and arranged others on the fly.

There are also several large venues with a cluster of small performance spaces where one could spend part of a day going to several acts.

Other days we just selected acts that we criss-crossed the city to see. If you do this, leave plenty of time.

There are many street performers on the Royal Mile, so some time just walking among them is fun. And all sorts of people are handing out fliers for acts all over the city.

Edinburgh in festival time is one of my favorite trips ever. I have done this twice and would do it again in a heartbeat.

Here's what I'd do.

Fly into EDI - United nonstops from EWR, Delta and American from JFK. Do four days of festivalling max; the festival burnout factor and general crowd weariness makes for diminishing returns.

Then you have a couple of options for the road trip part of your visit. You can pick up the car at Edinburgh airport and start your tour from there, or you can take a train from Edinburgh to some other city, such as Aberdeen or Inverness, and start there.

A lot depends on what sorts of things you want to see and do. If you start at the airport, it's easy to visit the small fishing villages on the south coast of Fife followed by St. Andrews, then north. Or, if you start in, say, Aberdeen, you'd be on the doorstep of whisky country and the terrific castles in the Royal Deeside area. Or, from Inverness, you're well placed for the northern Highlands and the northwest coast including Skye. Or if you started in Glasgow, you could visit historic and beautiful Argyll, or Mull and Iona, before heading north up the west coast.

In any case I'd imagine a loop of some sort - full or partial - ending back at EDI for the flight home.

With nine or ten days after the festivals, you'll have enough time to see a couple of different parts of the country, but you'll still need to pick and choose to a large degree. Scotland is amazingly diverse, and getting around the countryside takes longer than you might think from looking at maps. August is a VERY busy time all over Scotland, not just in Edinburgh, so while "flexible" planning is always good, it's not so easy when accommodations are few and demand is high, like you'll encounter in much of Scotland in August.

So hit the books. Use Fodor's own resources, visit a couple of websites (my fave is Undiscovered Scotland - http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk ) and look at the various options, but then settle on an outline and start looking for accommodations. And start looking for lodging in Edinburgh <i>today</i> and be prepared for sticker shock.

Thank you to everyone who has inspired me! Just booked our flights in and out of Edinburgh arriving on Aug. 9-24. So excited!

Also booked two tickets to the Tattoo, Section 14, Row L. We will be celebrating my wife's Birthday that performance!!

Last posting ( for today). Booked the Sheraton Grand Hotel ( all taken care of points. Thank you Starwoods!!! What's so nice is that when you stay 4 nights using points you get the 5th night free!.

So now " the bigger plan". Where to go after leaving Edinburgh. Will definitely look at gardyloo's suggestion as well as anyone else who has sent me suggestions. By the way-- my wife is a vegetarian. Any restaurant suggestions for her in Edinburgh?

<i> Help me plan a 2 week trip to London and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!
Posted by: allyboy on Feb 10, 17 at 11:06am</i>

I would go out to Rosslyn Chapel again. It was being refurbished ten years ago when I was there. There is a city bus from downtown.

I now have our time in Edinburgh pretty much worked out including meeting friends who live there who will take us out on their boat to visit North Berwick.

I now want to work out our itinerary once we leave Edinburgh on the morning of the 14th. We have a return flight in Edinburgh at 11 am on the 24th so we have 10 days to explore other towns/villages and sights.

These are some of the places I have been reading about that sound interesting: Glasgow, St. Andrew, Stirling Castle, Oban/Mull/Iona, Glencoe, Loch Lomond, Loch Ness, Isle of Skye.

My thought is either to rent a car at Edinburgh airport , drive to Glasgow, stay for 2 days and head west, then east and find a hotel near the Edinburgh airport the night before we leave. Or take a train to Glasgow first and rent a car when we leave Glasgow and repeat the same as above and drop off in Edinburgh. The drop off fee is only about $50 (USA).

We are interested in seeing beautiful scenery, historic sights, taking nice walks, experiencing culture, art, museums, locating vegetarian option restaurants, taking tons of photographs ( my wife), pub night life with live music and meeting with locals.

I would appreciate any itinerary ideas that you have keeping in mind that I don't want to be picking up and leaving each night for a different place to stay but rather stay in a few places and travel from there. Thanks so much!

Am literally out the door -- but just a very quick note: >>drive to Glasgow, stay for 2 days and head west<<

You do not want a car in Glasgow. Take the train to Glasgow and stay one or two nights, then collect a car at GLA and head out on your driving tour finally dropping the car at EDI. St Andrews/Fife is on the opposite side of the country though - so I would either get your friends to take you there (instead of or in addition to North Berwick) or do it as a day trip from Edinburgh. Train to Leuchars and short-ish cab or bus ride to St Andrews.