4. SCOTLAND
Post retirement, we took a road trip starting from London. Heathrow to Chester where we stayed with Shepley's for two days. I am forgetting the details, but we touched Edinburgh, Isle of Skye, Inverness, Ullapool, for five days or so and then returned to London via The Lakes District. Inall places, my ICI contacts had booked my hotels. I had asked them to leave one destination where we would experiment on our own. As we turned into the Lakes Area, we saw a motel and drove in. The owner asked: "If we were expected?" Trust a Britisher to turn a phrase around. He had no rooms but he helped us get a nice place to stay.

RAIL TRIPS - USA & EUROPE

AMTRAK - US RAIL TRIPS.
Not popular but worth considering at our ages and those who don't want to be dependent upon our children to drive us around. We have done two long journeys covering 4300 miles and 2500 miles on some famous routes. Amtrak trains are always late, slow and on most routes freight trains (long ones) take priority. There are three choices, chair car (also Executive), sleeperette, and Bedroom (very expensive luxury with en-suite bathroom but affordable with our super ICI pension!). The lounge cars enable interaction with other passengers and also mealtime seating with co-passengers when travelling higher classes.
First trip: Austin - Los Angeles; LA- San Francisco; San Francisco - Chicago; Chicago - New Orleans (2 nights); New Orleans - Austin (by air).
Second Trip: Vancouver - Seattle; Seattle - Chicago (2-night stay); Chicago - Buffalo (1-night stay); Buffalo-New York City (3-night stay).
N.B. Customer service: On one train journey from Seattle to Chicago (Empire Builder), we had problem with ensuite toilet and had to use common facility with sleeperettes. Also because of very long delay on Chicago-Buffalo sector due derailment, I lodged a complaint. Can you believe it, they refunded in cash $1800.
This enabled us to take a trip to Thailand on return!

EUROPE BY RAIL
We made several rail trips (besides two Cosmos coach trips) to about 15 countries - almost once a year for several years. The drill was to take a train in the morning and get down at some destination in the evening, stay the night at or near the rail station and start again next morning. This way we saw Europe from the train window. We used to take Eurail, first class pass and travel for 5-7 days every time. We traveled by famous scenic trains such as Glacier Express, Bernina Express, Bergen railroad and high-speed trains such as Thalys, Ice, SNCF TGB, Frecciarossa, and Eurostar.