UK Travel Agents & Reviews

Our 21 day trip to Scotland was one of the most exceptional international journeys that my wife and I have had. We saw as much of Scotland as possible for the time we spent in that beautiful country.

The planning for our 2021 trip began in 2019 with a reach out to Zicasso, who we used on a previous trip a few years back with great results. At first, we only received interest from one tour company, stateside, to help us plan our trip. However, I went back out to Zicasso to try and get an agent in Scotland, and Jeff called me from Edinburgh and the planning began in August of 2019.

My wife was intent on me not driving while in Scotland, so, that meant that we would need a driver for most of the time. I'm glad we did, as it would not have been safe for me to drive on the roads we were on. I found driving in New Zealand to be a challenge, but I'm convinced that driving in Scotland would have been worse, at least 3X with all of the narrow one-way roads with no shoulders, limited turnouts, rock walls and hedges. 

The initial timing for our trip was supposed to go off in April 2020. However, due to Covid lock-downs, we had to postpone our trip twice. First to April 2021 and then to September 2021. So, Jeff essentially had to book, cancel, rebook all of our lodgings, ferries, trains and other excursions three times! We indeed got to know each other, albeit long distance, in the 2 years that he and I had in planning.

It's not as easy for anyone to do foreign travel these days as it once was with all of the different Covid protocols depending on where you start and where you are going. For our September 2021 trip to Scotland, we had to show we had the Covid vaccinations, a Covid test 72 hours prior to our flight, complete a locator form for the UK that covered our complete trip, and then another test in Edinburgh on day 2. While we were in Scotland, we were on a barge in the Caledonian Canal for a week, and we had to do a quick test mid-way through that excursion.  Then, before returning home, we had to do another Covid test within 72 hours of departing which meant that Jeff had to tweak our itinerary that allowed a day to go to a pharmacy in Aberdeen to take the tests. Had just one of our tests come back positive for Covid which does happen, and I'm not sure what we would have done. But, luck was on our side and it all went well, and really there wasn't much stress regarding test results, because we did have Jeff there to help us in the case we were positive.

Jeff and Linda did a great job with all of the logistics, and once we finally arrived in Scotland, our trip was stress free! I didn't have to pour through maps and travel brochures, or make phone calls to B&Bs or anything. Jeff did all of that, plus the driving and tour guiding! It was about as turn-key of a trip as I've had. Jeff also made most of our lunch and dinner reservations for us, picking restaurants that were very exceptional!

Jeff is a very seasoned tour guide who has worked all through Europe, but he is an expert on all things Scotland. Growing up in Edinburgh, he knows the history and significance of places of interest, etc., and he is very proud of his beautiful country which we really enjoyed!

We were extremely pleased with this Ireland travel company and the agent we worked with. This trip was two years in the planning due to multiple delays due to Covid and Julie worked with us every step of the way. The communication between us and her was always prompt and helped make sure we were able to do everything we wanted to do. The trip itself was wonderful. This was our first trip to Ireland and the specific itinerary, along with the suggestions made by Julie, we were able to get a flavor of both "Wild Ireland" and the City of Dublin during the eight days we were there. 

The hotels booked by Julie were impeccable! The accommodations and service in Galway and Limerick were truly 5 stars and possibly beyond. The hotel in Killarney, has amazing service and is less updated, but still very comfortable and in a fabulous location in the town.  

My wife and I strongly recommend Ireland to anyone who has never been and using this travel company for the booking of that trip.

We definitely ran into some hiccups during our vacation. I understand that things happen, especially during this crazy pandemic and labor shortage, but I feel like some of these were definitely due to a lack of care in planning. This was our big 10 year anniversary trip and we hired this UK travel agency, because we didn't want to stress over the details of planning. Needless to say, we still ended up stressing over them.Anne had originally started planning our trip for Nov 2020, but the lock downs forced us to reschedule to Nov 2021. We really appreciated the flexibility that our travel planner provided when it came to rolling over our deposit and adjusting the iternerary since it would now be our 10 year anniversary trip and we wanted to do something extra special. Anne got us mostly set before she went on maternity leave and handed everything over to Kate who seemed to be doing a great job.

Just days before our trip, we recieved our final iternerary and several attractions had been listed as "check times on website". I began checking times to get a rough idea of how our day was going to be and found that several of the attractions were going to be closed on the days that Kate had us scheduled to visit. Thank goodness I had checked or our entire trip could have been closed doors. I contacted her and she rearranged our schedule and we thought everything was going to be fine.

I spoke to my mom prior to flying out and she let me know that Edinburgh Covid testing center kept texting her to confirm our fit to fly tests. I emailed Kate to let her know that they needed to correct the phone # as my mother was only supposed to be contacted in case of emergency. More on this later.

Upon arrival, the airport transfer went smoothly and the hotel in London was truly lovely. Our information packet with all of our tickets was ready at the hotel and we were able to have a wonderful first few days with only a few small hiccups which were completely out of anyone's control. 

We started running into issues on Day 4. Kate had indicated that our guide would be picking us up at 7:30am and we needed to be in the lobby ready to go. Breakfast was prepaid, but the dining room of our hotel doesn't open until 7 for breakfast and we would not have time to eat and checkout by 7:30, so we had to order a cold continental breakfast be delivered to our room beforehand. We ate, checked out, and waited in the lobby a short bit before calling our guide. He had just arrived at 7:45 thinking that he was early as Kate had told him to arrive by 8am. We could have had a real breakfast if pickup time wasn't miscommunicated.

We truly enjoyed our time with our guide and wish we had been given more time with him. He truly knew the area and had put a lot of planning into his tour. We were disappointed however that Kate scheduled our afternoon tea on the same day that our guide was taking us to lunch just 2 hours before. We didn't get to enjoy our tea as we were both stuffed from having just eaten. We felt that there were several other days on our itenerary where lunches were not included and afternoon tea would have been much more appreciated.

The hotel in Bath definitely didn't live up to the standards we were expecting. There was no one to greet us when we arrived, we were given a notice that there was no turn down due to a staffing shortage, and the front desk worker told us it wasn't his problem that we needed to talk to the morning worker when we inquired if late checkout was available or if they could hold our luggage in the morning until our guide picked us up at 1pm. They were also unable to find our reservation for tea, but sat us regardless as they were not busy. I am not sure if this was the hotels fault or if Kate forgot to make the reservation when she was unable to get us into the Pump Room.

The next day, our time with Roderick Vere making rings was wonderful. He was an excellent teacher and made us feel welcome and comfortable. We recieved them via mail after arriving home as they were even sent out to be hallmarked. Our guide again was a wonderful host and dropped us at the Euston Station to catch our sleeper train to Scotland. Per Kate's suggestion, we dropped our luggage at the left luggage station and started to walk towards dinner. I thought we should figure out where our platform was located since we had time before our reservation and wouldn't have much time after. When we were unable to find the information, I asked a ticketing worker who informed me that our train had been canceled and we were booked onto the earlier train set to leave in under an hour. Kate had indicated she would be out of the office, but that Owen would be available to help if issues arose. I phoned, but wasn't able to get ahold of anyone. Panicked, we tried again a few mins later and got ahold of Zoe who was able to cancel our dinner reservation and confirm that everything else should still be okay. We grabbed our bags which frustratingly we still had to pay $15 for the hold of and ran for our train. We did not get dinner this evening due to the confusion.  We were later told that the train station had sent out a message about the change, but that our travel company had given a landline # for the confirmation, so did not receive it.

The next day was absolutely stressful. We picked up the rental car and drove to Castle Campbell. The drive up the hill was terrifying with a single lane, sheer drop on the passenger side, tires slipping on the slick surface and steep incline, and very few passing zones. When we got to the top we hiked the few mins from the parking lot to the castle only to find it closed. We phoned Zoe to let her know and we then had the daunting task of turning around in the small parking lot backed by the cliff and going back down the road. We proceeded towards Glenturret Distillery which was a lovely tour, but then spent the better part of 2 hours with white knuckles driving to our hotel. We were never warned about the conditions of the road to our hotel in Lochearnhead or we would have insisted on being there before dark. The single lane road was narrow with many twists and turns and was foggy which led it to being extremely slow and nerve wrecking drive. When we arrived at the hotel they told us that we were just in time for our dinner reservation which Kate had told us was supposed to be at 7pm, but was apparently 6:45.

The next day we had our land safari with Alan. The weather did not cooperate, so we did not get to see anything. He was very knowledgeable about the area, but the "safari" was underwhelming. We arrived back at the hotel and ended up just walking around the surrounding area as we were not up to the task of driving the road to the hotel in the dark again. The hotel in Lochearnhead itself was nice and the restaurant was wonderful. The location was beautiful during the day, but definitely needs to come with a warning about driving after dark.

Day 8 Started off with the normal bookkeeper for the hotel being out sick and the replacement was unable to figure out our bill. She initially tried to charge us the entire cost of the hotel stay, but when I indicated this wasn't correct she attempted to charge me for the dinner receipts she could find which didn't seem to be correct as they had the wrong signature on them. We paid a small amount towards the food and she indicated they would sort this out later and send a corrected bill. I have not heard anything yet, but maybe she has tried to contact the travel company? The drive out was much more manageable during the daylight. We enjoyed the Wallace Monument and Sterling Castle before heading back to Edinburgh. We were supposed to go to the Palace of Holyroodhouse as I had previously found it was to be closed the rest of our time in Edinburgh. Kate moved our reservations for the previous 2 attractions to earlier in the day so we could make it before the 4pm cutoff. However, we were unable to locate parking with the GPS provided and quickly ran out of time. We missed out on seeing the Palace and were forced to return the rental car and have them call us a taxi so we could get to our hotel.

Our next 2 days went smoothly and we enjoyed using the Edinburgh Royal Ticket. The hotel in Edinburgh was lovely and convenient to the bus line, but lacked a baggage lift. We again ran into issues of reservation timing not matching what we were told, but everyone was kind enough to work with us.

We encountered some stress on the last day as we attempted to leave. Kate had scheduled us for Fit to Fly tests. We arrived, but she had given them the the wrong passport # for my husband. Luckily, the supervisor at the testing center was able to correct the passport # and we went on our way. We recieved the emails with our link to our test results within the hour, but were unable to access them. It required our birthdate and phone #. After numerous attempts to access the information, I got Kate on the phone and she attempted to help us. Remember, how my mom had been getting the texts to confirm our test, they still had the wrong phone # and it was never corrected. Eventually we got the results and boarded our plane.I provided this feedback to the travel company upon arrival home and was offered a refund of the planning costs which is appreciated, but doesn't change the fact that we spent a lot of money (and our precious vacation time) on a trip which ended up being very stressful.

This travel company was excellent in every detail of the trip to Ireland. From Hotels to recommendations their selections were perfect. Even during the trip, communications with Amy were maintained and she assisted us with additional needs, such as changing the rental car return location, so we didn't have to take the time to call and modify the rental. It was certainly the best trip my wife and I had ever taken to celebrate our 42-wedding anniversary and we added my son and his wife as a wedding gift after I started the initial plan with Amy. They had to include them into our travel after they scheduled the single rooms, etc., which was a major increase in work for Amy, but it was a seamless addition to the trip and overall the complete trip far exceeded our expectations.