Great second trip with kimkim; local guides a strength
Scotland
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Apr 27 - May 6, 2024
Our second trip with kimkim was terrific. We had great local guides and our coordinator, Kateryna, booked us into wonderful hotels. We saw an overview of Scotland, with a night in London to start and a night in Dublin right before we returned home.
Our activities included tours of Edinburgh Old Town (Robert, our guide, was great), Edinburgh Castle (a second great guide), castles and countryside under the umbrella of an “Outlander” tour (lovely and fun, great guide: Stephen of Edinburgh Black Car Tours), a seal watching boat tour (bad weather, unfortunately), a whisky distillery tour (fun), a tour of Rosslyn Castle (beautiful—both with Edinburgh Black Cars again), and the highlight, Isle of Skye on a 75-degree, sunny day (spectacular, and a great guide: Sandy Dear Tours).
We enjoyed several fine dinners. Notably, The Witchery in Edinburgh was reserved for us by our coordinator.
We feel we got a good first introduction to Scotland. Kimkim set us up with tour guides we never would have found on our own.
After booking two trips with them (Spain and Scotland), I feel that is their strength: finding guides that really know their areas and are personable and enthusiastic. We enjoyed our trip and, should we go back, have parts of the country we would like to visit in depth.
We will use kimkim for our next trip.
Hotel Reviews
Clean, comfortable room for three travelers. Foldout bed was set up for us before we arrived, which was nice.
Good location. The apartment had one bedroom with queen bed and a shower, plus an anteroom with queen bed off the living room, plus a full bath and full kitchen. Great for three of us, quite large, relatively quiet even though it’s on a busy corner. Easy to walk to a couple breakfast convenience stores and a couple pubs.
A self-check-in property. We did not receive the code before we arrived and had to contact our kimkim coordinator so waited a bit in the rain. The property is outside Fort William about a 20-minute taxi ride. Clean, a bit dated decor, not as convenient as we hoped given we did not have a car. Restaurant was closed, which we were not informed about prior to arriving, so we had to venture back and forth to the town to eat and to meet our boat tour. Overall, fine, but expensive and inconvenient.
Activity Reviews
Our guide, Robert, was terrific. Engaging, personable, he started by asking us what we were interested in: architecture, history, ??? He shared great stories, and shared insights into kilts, showed us a couple of Harry Potter sites, and recommended pubs. Great tour and guided introduction to Edinburgh. Do this first!
Great guide for our smallish (15) group from several countries. On a windy, rainy, day, he added insights, humor, and moved things along but in a comfortable way for our group of diverse ages (from toddler to seniors). We loved his stories and highly recommend him.
Our guide, Stephen, made this tour great. Engaging, funny, responsive, we couldn’t have asked for a better experience. He spent a lot of time with us, showing us castles, ruins, towns (Culross was my favorite), graveyards, and the best pub for fish and chips for lunch. Highly recommend Edinburgh Black Car Tours.
The most beautiful castle we saw in Scotland. The brief lecture was interesting, too. Glenkinchie Distillery is a beautiful facility. The group we were with had a lot of fun and our guide was absolutely great. Highly recommended.
This tour was the highlight of our entire trip! Our guide, Sandy of Sandy Dear Tours, was great. We were out for about 10 hours, and we ran into very few people the entire day. I don’t know how he managed to put us in the right spots all day without running into tour busses. We were blessed with great weather, too. Very informative and truly breathtaking scenery made this our #1 event of our trip.
The boat trip was interesting, with new information for us on salmon farming, Ben Nevis, and seal island. Unfortunately it was quite rainy and cold which limited how many seals happened to be out at the time. The tour commentator and crew were great.
