Family Trip to UK, October 2016: I An overview

My family arrived in the UK through Manchester on the evening of the 30th of September 2016. Having flown on Turkish Airlines, they looked tired. I went to pick them up in a car I had hired from Enterprise - a US based company that works out of many locations in the UK. 

I took my family straight home to my residential quarters in the hospital, where they settled in for the night. From the next morning, we were on the move. We first went to Bath, where we stayed for 2 nights, then Oxford and onward to London, where we spent three nights. Our next destination was York where we would stay for 2 nights, but before that, we stayed one night at Cambridge. After York, we stopped for a night at Durham, then proceeded to Edinburgh, where we stayed for 3 nights. From Edinburgh, we moved to the Lake District, where we stayed near Hawkshead for one night, and then, onward to Blackpool itself, where we stayed for 5 nights. On the 20th, my family took a return flight from Manchester to Mumbai, thus ending a memorable 21 day holiday that had everything in it.

This, then, was the itinerary (as planned and how it panned out):

30/09/2016: Arrive in the UK via Manchester. Stay overnight in Blackpool at my place.
01/10/2016: Travel to Bath, and arrival to Aquae Sulis Hotel. Evening walk to local places. 02/10/2016: Visit to The Roman Baths. Onward to Stonehenge. Return to hotel.
03/10/2016: Drive to Oxford. No stay. Explore the sights and buildings on foot. Punting on the local river. Drive to Castle Comb village for an unique rural experience. Evening train to London. Stay at the Notting Hill Gate Hotel.
04/10/2016: London sight-seeing. Hop-on, hop-off bus tour. London Eye. Thames river cruise. London bus tour by night.
05/10/2016: Museum of Natural History. St. Paul's Cathedral. More local sight-seeing.
06/10/2016: Leave London and drive to Cambridge. Overnight at Cambridge.
07/10/2016: Cambridge colleges sight-seeing. Drive onward to York. Overnight at Clearly Apartments in Bootham.
08/10/2016: Explore York. Visits to the Minster, to the Shambles and other local sights. Overnight.
09/10/2016: Leave York and travel to Durham. Visit to Durham Cathedral. Could not see the castle as it was closed that day. Stay overnight, 
10/10/2016: Planned hot-air ballooning with Virgin. This flight was aborted because of inclement weather. Proceed to Edinburgh. En route, unscheduled halt at the Vindalonda Village (old Roman archaeological site) and Hadrian's Wall. Reaching Edinburgh at night, overnight at Heather's Place (booked on AirBnB).
11/10/2016: Full day bus trip to Scottish Highlands and visit to Loch Ness. Return to accommodation overnight.
12/10/2016: Full day Edinburgh sight-seeing. Visited the Edinburgh Castle and a few more places. Stay at the accommodation overnight.
13/10/2016: Leave Edinburgh and arrive at Hawkshead at the High Grassings Hotel at Outgate in the Lake District. Stay overnight.
14/10/2016: Check out, and drive to Blackpool Stop at Tarn Hows on the way for a few hours of brilliant sights of the Lake District. Drive by ferry to Bowness-on-Windermere. Take a boat trip from Bowness-on-Windermere to Brockhole, then Brockhole to Ambleside, and then return to Bowness on Windermere. Drive back to Blackpool in the evening. Arrive at Blackpool and stay overnight.
15/10/2016: Drive to Manchester. Visit to Manchester United FC. Return to Blackpool.
16/10/2016: Drive to the Birds of Prey Centre at Trubary Woods, Duxbury, Preston. Amazing experience with hawks, owls, kestrels and falcons. Then, drive onward to Liverpool where we spent the evening at the Waterfront. Overnight at Blackpool.
17/10/2016: Local sightseeing at Blackpool, Visits to the Blackpool Tower, Dungeons, Sealife and Madame Tussaud's. Overnight at Blackpool
18/10/2016: I resumed work at the hospital while the family went to the Pleasure Beach.
19/10/2016: Shopping and enjoying the last night with family.
20/10/2016: Drive family to Manchester airport, from where they returned to Mumbai with Turkish Airlines.

End. 

Trip to Egypt - 1: Preparations

Today, on this rather wet Sunday, I have resolved to write about my trip to Egypt. Actually, I did begin to write the events as they occurred in a diary that I purchased expressly for the purpose, but never found the time to write every day as the trip was quite exhausting and left us with few opportunities to sit at a desk and write. Even so, I will, over the next several posts, begin to describe whatever happened over the 11 days that we were in that lovely country. By we, I mean my family, of course, and by the "11 days", I mean from 6th of June to the 16th of June, 2010.

To start at the very beginning, I started planning for the trip about 3 months before we actually undertook the trip. I wanted to do thorough background research so that we would not only do this trip with the least possible costs, but also individualise the trip with the travel agent so that nothing important was missed. This was important as I am quite sure I won't be able to visit this country again during this lifetime. I began with a search for a good Egypt travel guide,  and discovered, rather unhappily, that the Egypt -specific guide was not available in Mumbai. The one that was available had the entire Middle East region in it, and its cost was over Rs. 1300. I would have loved to get my hands on the book that is featured alongside.

In the circumstances, I began a search for a soft copy on various file sites, and came upon the ME book available for FREE DOWNLOAD at one of the locations. Dutifully, and with glee, I downloaded the entire book, and then printed out the Egypt pages off my clinic printer. The second image alongside, I presume, is the book that I downloaded, as there was no cover page.

When I had all the  required pages with me, I took them to a shop that does spiral binding of books, and voila! I had my handy guide.

The next thing I did was to go to www.egyptair.com and also www.makemytrip.com and look for the best flight deals. Eventually, and with some problems to boot, I managed to book 4 return tickets, Mumbai to Cairo and back on Egypt Air at a little over Rs. 21000/= per ticket. There was a way to book the exact seats too, and it gave me great comfort to book a pair each of window and center seats one behind the other somewhere in the mid-section of the aircraft, reasonably near to the mid-section emergency exits.

I also began to ask people about which travel agent to go with, and visited the biggies, namely, SOTC, Cox and Kings, and so on. Subair, my cousin and neighbour, recommended that I go with Creative Holidays (office just behind Metro Adlabs above Mayrose Restaurant) or Akbar Travels. He also provided me with the names of the persons to contact. I began the process of contacting both the travel agents. A Poorti Mulye was the person I saw at Akbar Travels, while Ms. Medha Deshmukh was the lady in charge of the ME section of Creative Holidays. Up until a month before the actual holiday, I was unable to decide which company would finally plan my trip, but, in the end, I chose to go with Creative as their offers were not only dramatically less expensive, but also, their itinerary was better planned. 

There was one more item on the agenda: convincing the rest of my family to agree on Egypt on this, our first overseas holiday. For me, it was Egypt all the way since the history of Egypt attracted me greatly; besides, trips to other, more exotic locations were also costly. I also considered that travelling through Egypt would involve stretches of walking and climbing (for example, on the Pyramids), and I, sure as the sun rises in the East, wasn't going to get younger as time passed. Inas was the first to agree, then Hannah, and finally, Nishrin, as she realised that she had no option. 

Did I have enough money to go abroad? Well, I managed it quite well, actually, and the entire trip cost us about 350,000 INR in all.

That's it, for now.