Globaliser

The contactless cap is the same as the Oyster cap. There is a daily cap, and there is also a weekly (Monday-Sunday) cap. In almost all circumstances where you can use Oyster, it costs the same to use contactless as it does to use Oyster.

I think you mean "Flight 3: A to D on ticket #2"? 😉

No, I think that the idea is to book something like: Ticket 1: San Diego - Budapest // Vienna - San Diego Ticket 2: Budapest - San Diego // San Diego - Vienna The cities are arbitrary, but chosen for clarity. The idea is to fly the bolded parts of tickets 1 and 2 first, to make a San Diego - Budapest - San Diego trip, then to fly the remainder of ticket 2 and finally the remainder of ticket 1 to make a San Diego - Vienna - San Diego trip. This takes advantage of the cheaper price that the OP has found for trips originating in Europe.

I don't know where you get this idea from. I've just checked one-way tickets on British Airways and KLM from Amsterdam to London City for a random date in April 2024. On BA, a checked baggage fare includes one 23 kg bag (plus other included extras), and costs only €18 more than a hand-baggage-only fare. Even a business class fare (with two 23 kg bags included) is only €49 more than the economy checked baggage fare. On KLM, the correspondence difference between economy options is €30. Flying to London City has some standout advantages for ease and convenience. Eurostar is a much stronger competitor against flights to Heathrow or other London airports.

AIUI, BA doesn't care.

Fly. Specifically: fly from Amsterdam to London City Airport.

I think that the most benevolent costing of travel from a Gatwick base, to include "fares to travel around London", would be that an Oyster or contactless user would hit an off-peak cap at £23.70 for the day. Taking out the travel from/to Gatwick, the likely cap would be the Z12 cap of £8.10. The excess for the Gatwick component is therefore £15.60 per person per day, or (assuming two people) £62.40 over the two days of staying at Gatwick. I said that the additional travel time would be "up to three hours of each day", based on 75-90 minutes each way between a Gatwick hotel and a central London sightseeing location. Even if you were to stay at the Sofitel or the Premier Inn at the North Terminal, the transfer to the railway station will take 10-15 minutes (walk to transit station, wait for transit, take transit, walk to railway station). The Hilton at the South Terminal is not much better because it's a long and unscenic walk. A transfer from an off-airport hotel to the station would take longer than this. To London Victoria, there are 5 trains per hour during the day (excluding Gatwick Express, on which you would be paying a higher fare that doesn't count towards the caps mentioned), so an average wait for a train of 6 minutes, plus a 32-34 minute journey to Victoria. (Alternatively, I think it's about 4 tph and 30 minutes to London Bridge, ignoring the slow trains that aren't worth taking.) Then add 20 minutes for taking the Tube to the sightseeing location. ISTR that teachers say to show your working. So here it is. If you think that you can stay at a Gatwick hotel and spend only 30 minutes to get into central London, that is (shall we say) an over-optimistic view of what travel in and around London is actually like.

Have you taken into account the cost of travelling between Gatwick and London? Assuming there are two of you, that's going to cost you about £80 over two days anyway. And that's before you factor in the value of six hours of sightseeing time that you will simply waste on the travel. Also, unless you're willing to travel at odd hours, your plan is likely to exclude yourself from some classic London things, like going to a show in the evening - exacerbated by having no hotel to stop off at during the middle of the day.

Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it is untrue. I have taken plenty of direct flights when I have been required to get off the aircraft, throw away any outsized liquids, clear security, and only then be allowed to board the aircraft again for the next sector. I have even taken direct flights when I have been required to get off the aircraft, clear immigration, clear customs, throw away outsized liquids, clear security, and only then be allowed to board the aircraft again for the next sector.

I really doubt that you need to check in for your flight three hours in advance. Where are you flying to, and with which airline? If you stay next to a central London station that has direct trains to Gatwick, you should be able to get to the check-in desk in about an hour from the hotel, or maybe a few minutes more as you're heading for the North Terminal. So timing is really not that tight for a 10 am flight.

Same company, though! GTR has a stranglehold on this area: GEX, Southern and Thameslink.

It does depend on where you're going, but it seems unlikely that there aren't any viable afternoon flights.

How early is "early"? Frankly, unless it's before about 9 am, my firm advice would be to stay in central London both nights. You will lose so much quality time if you're commuting between Gatwick and London, plus you'd lose the ability to stop off at your hotel during the day. Cotswold Eagle uses the polite word "inconvenience". The reality is that getting from any Gatwick hotel to any sightseeing location in central London is likely to take about 75-90 minutes - so that's up to three hours of each day sacrificed to the delights provided by Southern Railway. (Hampton Court Palace would be an additional journey.)

Well, that was then. Why does it have to be around noon? Even last time, if you hadn't been trying to make an early flight you wouldn't have had nearly so much trouble at Schiphol; the main bottlenecks tended to be in the morning. As Zach1213 suggested, simply taking a later flight would solve many of the issues. You wouldn't have had to delay your travel by a whole day.

Is it? If you're thinking of the time needed to clear security, that's an out-of-date description.

With a few minutes to have a dig into this, I was able to find about 290 departures from Gatwick today (20 November). Of these, perhaps 11 could be described as charters - although TUI, which accounted for 9 of those, might not entirely agree.

I think that would be rather shocking news to many Gatwick airlines - and indeed, to the airport itself.

The main tourist attractions are spread across central London in an area that's about 5 miles wide. Obviously, that covers many different neighbourhoods. If you're thinking about a particular area, it's worth asking yourself why.

It would really help to know how big the bank is. For some people, £250 per room per night would break the bank. For others, the figure may be closer to £1,000 per room per night. Yet others may not even flinch when paying that much. So what is your budget?

From the usual sources, it looks like the last call on Oban this year (2023) may have been on 18 September; and possibly the last call on Dundee this year was on 29 July. The OP posted on 16 November about "taking a cruise kind of last minute". But the next call on Oban looks like it's not until 7 June 2024, and the next call on Dundee on 24 June 2024. So - although there's never any guarantee that the usual sources are 100% accurate - I hope that whatever may or may not be going on in the OP's life that may or may not be creating "a bit of a time crunch", I hope that they will be reassured that there should be plenty of time to research these ports using CC's search function, and to see some of the accumulated wisdom that is already on the boards. Sifting through the accumulated wisdom is usually better than just taking some random answers from whoever happens to see and respond to a new thread now.

As already posted above:

Today's email made me look at the Celebrity website. Summit is now off sale for the four weeks that ECP is taking the ship, and the subsequent cruises (from 25 February 2025 onwards) are now ex-Fort Lauderdale. And FWIW, this appears to be what Celebrity has done for those who have been bumped.

I would have thought that central Amsterdam would be the obvious choice, if you've never been to the Netherlands before. If you stay somewhere near Amsterdam Centraal station, it'll be handy for jumping on a train to Rotterdam Centraal on the morning of your cruise departure. There's a direct train about every 10 or 15 minutes, taking about 40 minutes to get to Rotterdam.

This is the current thread for going to Southampton (as opposed to London): https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2968902-southampton-transfers-airport-new-thread

If it helps, here is a past thread that focused on this: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2930142-dartmouth-steam-railway-and-river-boat