Planning for a Two-Week UK Vacation

How do you plan for a trip that you have wanted to go on the past two years and yet, is still a year out?

That was the dilemma Kent, my boyfriend, and I faced when planning our recent vacation to London, Northern Wales, Edinburgh, Liverpool and Dublin.

Kent, who loves Liverpool FC and all things English, had been wanting to visit his motherland ever since his aunt traced the family's ancestry back to the quant village of Conwy, Wales (pronounced Conway, Kent's last name).

After Kent wrestled with the idea of taking a trip alone, I volunteered whole-heartedly to take on this adventure with him, and so the planning began in July of 2014.

The main point of the trip was to visit Conwy, so we developed an itinerary around this location, deciding to stay within the United Kingdom and Ireland. I was interested in visiting London and Edinburgh and Kent, of course, wanted to visited Liverpool. Our itinerary was set.

Dublin was added on later since flying into and out of Dublin was the most affordable during our travel time.

We had to begin planning the trip so far in advance because Conwy is a busy holiday spot for the English. We began looking at hotels and bed and breakfasts around August 2014 and some bed and breakfasts already had no vacancies for July 2015. This lack of accommodation was a wake-up call and so we began our planning.

Since we knew exactly where we wanted to go, we reserved hostels ahead of time and bought train tickets. I began reading  Rick Steve's 2015 London guide book, and before we knew it, we were heading to the Chicago airport.