Trip of a Lifetime to London & Scotland
England
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Jul 30 - Aug 9, 2026
Aleksandra planned a trip of a lifetime to London & Scotland for my husband & I. We spent 6 nights in London & 4 nights in Ediburgh. Aleksandra was excellent at communicating with my husband & I. We exchanged many e-mails over the course of several months, planning each day & constantly tweaking what we wanted to do. In addition to that, we had a ton of questions that Aleksandra answered, always within a day or two of sending the e-mails.
When planning this trip we needed the most amount of help with laying out, organizing & optimizing our time in each location so that we could do everything we wanted without running ourselves ragged. Aleksandra accomplished this objective. She planned activities each day that were close to each other or an underground stop or two away so we could move easily & efficiently between locations. Alexsandra fit the days together seamlessly & used every second to the fullest. Her directions to get us from one place to another were a godsend. In both London & Edinburgh we never got lost nor frustrated trying to find a particular location. While planning our vacation, she always provided fabulous choices & presented multiple options so we could select what most excited us. This was true in particular for restaurants & hotels. Aleksandra made us dinner reservations at our selected restaurants & every one of those restaurants worked out beautifully. She was even available to us during the trip, when a small problem or question arose. It was a nice feeling to know that no matter what we needed, she was there for us, both in the planning & while we were on the trip.
There were a few standout tours that Aleksandra booked for us. The first was a private tour while we were in London to see the Changing of the Guard with Delianne. A bucket list item for me. Delianne knew just where to stand for the best viewing in several locations. We did not have to line up hours in advance. All we did was follow her & each time we were exactly where we needed to be at the right time. She had a lot of interesting tidbits to share & we thoroughly enjoyed our morning with her.
The next tour in London that we loved was a small group historical pub tour. Our tour guide, Freddie, was fabulous. We went to 4 interesting pubs, all different from each other. He had a lot of fun information to share & we spent just the right amount of time in each pub. This was our last night in London & it was a perfect way to end our time there before traveling to Edinburgh.
In Scotland, we did two private tours. Both of them were well worth the money. The first was a 3 1/2 hour walking tour of Edinburgh with Zander. He was our introduction to Edinburgh. He took us to so many places & told us so many engaging stories. It was more interesting to us than to just be told a list of facts. The time went by very quickly & we attributed that to his way of telling us information about Edinburgh.
The second private tour was a highlight of our entire trip. We spent the day with Calais, a true gentleman & a delight to have as a tour guide. We went through the East Neuk, even stopping in Calais' hometown & going to his local cafe. We loved seeing where people live & learning a little about why they lived there. St. Andrews golf course was next & it did not disappoint. We could feel the history there & appreciated it all, even though neither of us are golfers. We loved taking our picture on the famous bridge, Swilken Bridge, which made my golf loving brother very jealous. We also toured St. Andrews University. The school is even more beautiful than we had imagined & again we enjoyed learning about the history there. The sad, but true story of the the St. Andrews Castle was very interesting & one we had not heard before.
We are only home a few days & are still talking about all the highlights of this trip. We have fabulous memories & many of them are from the tours outlined above. Both my husband & I highly recommend Aleksandra. Her work in preparing for this trip enhanced our trip & resulted in making our trip extraordinary. Using Aleksandra & her team was well worth it & gave us an unforgettable vacation experience!
Hotel Reviews
This hotel was perfect for our 4 night stay in Edinburgh. Room was clean, quiet & was located right off the Royal Mile. It was a good fit for us.
We had a wonderful 6 night stay at this hotel. The hotel manager went out of his way to make this an outstanding experience for us. We were lucky enough to stay in a junior suite which provided lots of extra room. The king bed was comfortable which was important to us as we had long days of sightseeing & were exhausted when we arrived back at the hotel. What set this hotel apart from your usual hotel was the staff. They wanted to make our stay the best it could possibly be & they did. We appreciated every bit of that! Highly recommend this hotel!!
Activity Reviews
We thoroughly enjoyed our historical pub tour with Freddie. He was an excellent guide through the 4 pubs we "toured". He gave us just enough interesting information without giving too much. We loved all the pubs he selected. They were very different from each other, but each had a lot of character. We never would have found these pubs on our own. We would highly recommend this tour! A really fun evening!!
This tour was one of our highlights of our entire trip to Scotland! Our tour guide, Calais, was the reason for this. He was absolutely wonderful & made this tour great! He picked us up promptly at our hotel & had the day completely laid out for us. He told us many interesting stories throughout the day; enough to get a good idea of the areas we saw without bombarding us with too much information. He took us to a few villages in the East Neuk, one of them being the village where he lives. We loved this because we got to see daily life in a non touristy area. We ate lunch at the St. Andrews Clubhouse which was delicious. Our view out the window during lunch was the golf course & we watched several people play through the hole we were near. Neither my husband nor I play golf, but we couldn't help but be taken in with the history of such a famous golf course. Of course we took our picture on Swilken Bridge which made my golf loving brother very jealous. Our tour also included St. Andrews University which was incredibly beautiful & also steeped with history. We had wanted to see something other than Edinburgh during our visit. We were very glad that we took this tour. It was a fantastic day!!