The family (4 seniors, 2 adults, 2 teenagers) are considering a 12 day excursion in June. Leaving from Chicago trying to get to all three locations above. Does anyone have ideas of how to get from one location to another? Recommended hotels...any web site that might aid us in planning this trip?

All comments are welcome!

Assuming you're not planning to rent a car and drive between London & Edinburgh, your other choices would be to fly or take the train. There are advantages to both. Personally I like the train - the scenery between L & E is gorgeous even if it is through a sometimes dirty train window. But flying can be cheaper and faster (unless there's a major security bottleneck). So you'd be best to research both options and see which one works best for you. As for Dublin, probably best to fly there from either of the other two cities, obviously there's no train or driving option.

For hotel reseach I recommend a site called Smoothhound - www.smoothhound.co.uk - weird sounding name I know but they have tons of listings of all types and you can search by price, location, features - whatever your priority is.
Have a great trip!

www.flybmi.com, www.ba.com & www.easyjet.co.uk for flights between London & Edinburgh.

www.aerlingus.com & www.ryanair.com for flights between Edinburgh & Dublin.

www.thetrainline.co.uk for trains between London & Edinburgh.

Dublin to London is probably best by aer Lingus as it flies you to Heathrow where transport into Central London is both more frequent & cheaper than say Ryanair to Stansted

These links are great.

I am planning long weekend trips from UK to Dublin and Edinburgh this summer too. I just found flights to both for around US$120/person, out of Heathrow. Both were on British Air, round trip.