Globaliser

You're sailing from Southampton, which is a different city altogether from the city that the airport "belongs" to. It's about the distance from New York City to Philadelphia. So there's no way of the "port being close to airport". The basic position is simple: Heathrow to Southampton can be direct on the National Express coach. There is no simple rail route. Central London to Southampton is direct, simple and fast by train (South Western Railway). Each route has backups, but those are the reasons why they are respectively the primary recommendation for those specific journeys.

If you look at the London and Southampton hotels that are regularly discussed and recommended here, you could reach the conclusion that the answer to your question is "Not many, because Pret's too posh and expensive."

Realistically, the main downside of paying with a phone is the amount of time that it takes (unless you are savvy and skilled), which can cause frustration in the queue behind you. Paying with a physical contactless card is typically faster and more reliable (in the sense that the machine will much more often read the card the first time). You're right that an Oyster now costs a non-refundable £7 (although I think that unused credit is still refundable). But if you're going to get one for whatever reason, the Visitor Oyster is (as you say) pretty pointless so you are right that you may as well just pick one up at the first Tube station you use. But your wife may well want to get over her aversion to using contactless payment cards, as that's pretty much the way that payment is expected in London. There are very many places that will not take cash, but very few that will not take cards. You're also right to ignore paper Travelcards, which I think could today only be genuinely useful in a handful of edge cases (if any). There is limited acceptance of contactless payment on National Rail outside the Transport for London fares area, so you may want to check for the specific journeys that you're doing to make sure that you can use contactless. It's a bit complicated because there are some routes/journeys on which you can pay by contactless but not by Oyster, including some operated by TfL (eg the western end of the Elizabeth Line). This is another reason why, if you're contemplating journeys that are outside the Oyster area, it could be a good idea for both of you to use the same payment method.

I am surprised by this. I believe the Shake Shack is in Nova, which together with the Cardinal Place complex houses at least a dozen restaurants. How late were you eating? I too am surprised by this, although I don't know when Iamthesea had that experience and it's possible that opening hours were restricted soon after Covid because of persistent staff shortages in the industry in London. Nova and Cardinal Place are full of eating places, as Cotswold Eagle says, but there are also more if you walk south along Wilton Road. Many of these should be open throughout the evening. While we're talking about restaurants: a bit more convenient for the Conrad is Chez Antoinette at 22 Palmer Street, which you're less likely to come across by accident but is a place that we like. Also, there is Quilon on Buckingham Gate, if you fancy a Michelin-starred splurge on Indian. I wouldn't recommend this, based on experience. It did the job of feeding us one evening after I'd done a concert around the corner. But service wasn't great, and even though I'm normally the world's biggest critic of all the disadvantages of the traditional pub "ambience" and this space was clean and tidy, it also had all the charm of a dimly-lit but upmarket airport lounge.

It's worth noting, though, that the Conrad St James isn't in St James's; as the crow flies, it's half a mile to the middle of St James's Square. The hotel itself is basically in the middle of a lot of government offices, and the immediate vicinity is pretty dead in the evenings. The nearest area to the hotel with lots of restaurants is around Victoria station, which is about a third of a mile away.

See if you can find it here: https://www.southamptonvts.co.uk/Live_Information/Shipping_Movements_and_Cruise_Ship_Schedule/Cruise_Ship_Schedule/ I too would do what blloyd78 suggests. Too much can go wrong if you book very early.

Bon voyage to everyone doing one of the cruises in the block that's about to start!

No, you can buy a ticket on the day, immediately before you get in the train. It can be cheaper to buy a ticket in advance; but if the train is no more than a backup plan in case everything else goes wrong, I personally wouldn't waste any money doing so, not least because the restrictions on cheap tickets bought in advance make them less practical for backup use anyway. Really, don't worry and don't overthink all of this. Countless thousands of people do these journeys every day, and it's very rare for things to go badly wrong.

Don't overthink this. The situation already arises when people who need a visa to enter the UK, but who don't have one because they were only expecting to transit the UK, get stuck at the UK connection point for one reason or another. They get sorted out. There are threads about UK ETAs on the British Isles forum. FlyerTalker is right to point out that this thread was started to ask about US ESTAs.

Go back! It's worth doing. Stay in Edinburgh for a week (or maybe two) to see a decent number of shows. Realistically, you can probably only do about three or four a day without getting cultural indigestion or spiritual exhaustion, but it can be a pretty rewarding experience. To whet your appetite, I've found how to view the PDFs of the last couple of official paper programmes (which you can also download, although I haven't had time to try to find a direct URL to the actual PDF): https://issuu.com/edinburgh_festival_fringe/docs/fringe_programme_2023_web_edit https://issuu.com/edinburgh_festival_fringe/docs/fringe_programme_2024 And here are three decades' worth from before 2020: https://issuu.com/edinburgh_festival_fringe/stacks

So are you going to leave us to guess which flavour of Railcard it was?

I don’t think the fringe has ever been a primarily outdoor event. Certainly when I went in the seventies (this gives you an easy stab at my age) there were hundreds of events at lots of indoor venues. It hasn't changed. The Fringe has been basically like this since it started in 1947 - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Festival_Fringe#History_and_origins - although it has got a lot bigger and (necessarily) more organised since then. You will see free outdoor shows by street performers around the city centre at Festival/Fringe time. But frankly, this is rather more tourist tat than arts festival, like buskers taking advantage of a particularly lucrative period. To my mind, the biggest crossover occurs when the street performers are advertising Fringe shows, although in many cases that's actually no more than the cast putting on their costumes and handing out leaflets.

No, sorry, this is not right. The Fringe is an arts festival at about 300 mostly indoor venues across the whole of the city, for which millions of tickets are sold every year (about 2.6 million tickets for about 3,700 shows in 2024 - source). At the moment, you can still browse the 2024 listings at https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on to see what there was, and where. There are some free street events, but this is only a small adjunct to the Fringe.

As I read the posts, the concern was about bags that fly earlier than the passenger, and are delivered to the carousel when there's no way that the passenger can collect them then. That's when they can sit around for hours. Couple that to the practice of allowing non-passengers access to the carousels for domestic flights, and reasons for nervousness are obvious. I agree that the chances of the bag flying early on the OP's itinerary are minimal. I don't know any details about the baggage system at HKG, but it has to have an early bag store, not least because of the in-town check-in that can be used up to 24 hours before departure time.

We should hire ourselves out to improve their webpages!

As exlondoner suggests, 5 pm Saturday Evensong at St Paul's Cathedral, or alternatively 5 pm Saturday Evensong at Westminster Abbey. You and your husband probably already know about the acoustic at St Paul's, which makes it very difficult to actually hear anything, despite the magnificence of the building. Westminster Abbey is better on that score. And then on Sunday, leave London early enough (perhaps about 8.30 am?) that you can get to Winchester Cathedral for their Sung Eucharist at 11 am, which is their big service on Sunday morning. It's then only about half an hour's drive to the docks in Southampton, so that's plenty of time to get there before check-in closes. The only note of caution is that by 19 / 20 July there is a very good chance that the main cathedral choirs at all three establishments will be on their summer holidays, so the services will be sung by depping choirs. Still the same organ in each place, though - that doesn't go on holiday.

Easy and easy. At Paddington, the Elizabeth Line is increasingly trying to enforce the request that passengers with full-size luggage should use the lifts (elevators), not the escalators. But unless you are adept and experienced with wrangling luggage on escalators, this isn't a bad idea anyway, because luggage accidents on escalators aren't pretty.

That is not how I read the detail on that Customs page, although it is not well written. Under the heading "Prescription medicines", it lists three requirements: copy of prescription, original containers, and no more than three months' supply. It then has the sentence I have already quoted: "If you are carrying more than three months’ supply of prescription medicines or medicine that is not prescribed to you or a family member, this must be declared on your arrival declaration." The specific condition of over three months' supply strongly suggests that (despite the headline at the very top of the page), you only need to declare medicines if you are importing over three months' supply. That implies that the preceding list of three requirements is for importation without the need for a declaration (particularly given the third listed requirement). The page then has a link to a Medsafe page. This has a heading "Bringing medicines into New Zealand on your person or in your luggage". Under this, there are (confusingly) four requirements listed. Three of them match the three on the Customs page. The fourth (which is listed first) says "You declare the possession of those medicines on your incoming passenger arrival card which is lawfully required, and inspected, by the New Zealand Customs Service if the quantity of medicines is over 3 months’ supply or the medicine is not prescribed to you". So despite the clunky wording (again) it seems that a declaration is only required if you have over three months' supply. The final piece of official documentation that supports this is the Traveller Declaration Form itself. An image of the outside page can be found here, showing that this is the June 2023 version (and as far as I can recall this looks like the one I most recently filled in), and the inside page can be found here. The relevant question is question 6: "Are you bringing in to New Zealand: Medicine: over 3 months' supply, or medicine not prescribed to you?" There is actually no place on the form for declaring a smaller supply of medicine. So all this put together seems to confirm that a declaration is only required for over three months' supply. Comfortingly, that is exactly what the official told FlyingScotSailors: they did not need to declare their 30 days' supply. Given the sizeable proportion of arriving passengers who will be importing prescription medicine into NZ, I doubt very much that different officials will randomly quote different rules or requirements; they will all know what the rules actually are. In fact, can you imagine what the declaration queue would look like if everyone who was carrying a small amount of prescription medicine into NZ joined it, even though the Traveller Declaration Form did not ask about it? It would make the 20-30 minute wait experienced by FlyingScotSailors look fast. It would also seriously and needlessly hold up the people (sometimes including me) who really do need to declare something on that occasion.

The question of whether you need to declare medications is different from the requirements that the OP was asking about (copy of prescription, medication in original packaging). The same official information that sets out those requirements also says: "If you are carrying more than three months’ supply of prescription medicines or medicine that is not prescribed to you or a family member, this must be declared on your arrival declaration." This suggests that the officials were correct to say that you did not need to declare your 30 days' worth of medication. All you needed to do was to comply with the requirements that the OP was asking about.

You may want to check the operating airlines, because by May the only airline operating between Dallas Fort Worth and London Heathrow will be American Airlines, which does not operate between London Heathrow and Amsterdam. I suspect that you're flying AA from Dallas to London, and then BA from London to Amsterdam. That will involve a terminal change at Heathrow from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5. But as I said, this can be done without clearing immigration: as you're travelling on a through ticket your bags should be checked through to Amsterdam, so at Heathrow you just need to follow the purple signs for Flight Connections Terminal 5.

It depends on what kind of "layover" you have, and at which airport, and what your exact travel arrangements are. If you are making an immediate onward connection at Heathrow (which I presume is the airport concerned seeing as you mention Dallas), with both flights written on the same ticket so that your bags will be automatically transferred without you having to collect them and check them in again, you should be able to remain airside so that you only need to clear security and then go to your onward flight. At Heathrow, there are ways of doing this even if you have to change terminals. But if you have two separate tickets, or the two airlines won't do an automatic transfer of bags, then the answer will be different. If you are prepared post more details, there may be more specific advice.

Truly, this is a myth. It's hard to find anything reliable or authoritative that says this. Sometimes you will see a recommendation (but usually not from any authoritative source) that you arrive that early, but you don't have to; and if you do, you will almost certainly end up hanging around for much longer than you need to. (And therefore it's not hard to see why airports might suggest that you get there too early.) When this question is asked on the British Isles forum, the consensus is that a 1.30 pm flight should be no problem at all. The current pinned thread on this question is here:

The short answer is "no" so far as public roads are concerned: https://www.londontoolkit.com/tours/downton_abbey.html#:~:text=Can I see Highclere Castle,far from Highclere Castle itself. Apparently it is possible to park and then walk about half a mile up Beacon Hill to get a glimpse of some of the main building.

To avoid confusion, the forthcoming EU system is ETIAS, which is different from the UK ETA system. If ETIAS has come into force by the time of your trip, you may well need both. So this is worth keeping an eye on. However, don't stress about it; electronic approvals like these aren't really things you have to do many months in advance of travel.

The main reason is that it's a long way and it'll take you forever by road. Taxis from Gatwick (note spelling) are better for local journeys. For hauling into central London, the train is much better so long as you can move your luggage yourself. But if you must go by road, this is a transfer that it would be better to pre-book with one of the "usual suspects". If you haven't already come across their names in this and other threads, I'm sure that some of the usual CCers will come and recommend the operator that they always recommend. If you're eligible to use the eGates at inbound passport control (eg if you are travelling on a US citizen passport), then IMHO no. It's slow. From where you're starting, the train is again a much better option. It'll be faster and almost certainly more comfortable than going by road. Waterloo station is basically just across the river from the Royal Horseguards; if you can manage your luggage, you could actually even walk there.