Traveling to Edinburgh on the Cheap

Edinburgh is a popular tourist destination, particularly during the summer months when the Edinburgh Festival gets into full swing. Not surprisingly, flights and transportation to here can get pretty pricey. But there are ways for you to keep costs down. Here’s how to find the best deals:

Flights

First start by doing a flight search on SkyScanner.com to compare prices. You’ll find the cheapest flights from the USA this way (in this economy, you should expect to pay anywhere from $700 to $800 round trip if you book a few months in advance). Do a search for flights into Glasgow as well, which can at times work out cheaper. From there you could take a train into Edinburgh Waverley Station, where an inexpensive taxi ride will get you to your hotel destination.

If you really want to search around for the best prices and perhaps spend some time in England as well, fly into one of the many London airports (London Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted or Luton). Again any of the regular travel sites mentioned above should find you the cheapest flight.

Cheap Flights from London (or elsewhere): You can then just book a flight on a cheapo British airline from London. For this, I recommend searching for flights via Easy Jet, Ryan Air, or BMI. (Take a look at British Airways just in case, but the other ones are generally cheaper).

Ryan Air is actually notoriously cheap (sometimes the airline offers £1 flights to various destinations in Europe) , so this could prove a really great option. But for Ryan Air, you would have to fly from London Stansted to Glasgow. You could also take Ryan Air from Dublin to Edinburgh.  For Easy Jet you could fly from London Stansted, Luton or Gatwick to Edinburgh. BMI, on the other hand, flies from Heathrow to Edinburgh.

Also keep in mind that you could always fly from the USA into Heathrow, and then transfer to the one of the other London airports (again, perhaps another motivation to spend a day or two in London).  Flights from London to Edinburgh are only an hour. Most of the cheapo British airlines mentioned above leave from other European cities as well, so you could take these from Paris, Dublin and elsewhere.

Trains From London

From London, you could also take a train to Edinburgh. If you go for this option, I would recommend spending a day or two in London, since the train station isn’t at the airport, and you would have to travel into the city anyway. So you might as well see some of it!  The train stations in London that will take you to Edinburgh are London Kings Cross and London Euston. Visit British Rail for information on how to book.

[Image Credits: Plane by Public Domain Photos]