International Friends tour from Soputhampton to London, Any thoughts?

[lovelyladi]

You have all been so helpful with hotel planning that I am going to "pick your brains" again. I am trying to plan and cram as much in as possible during our 3 nights in London post Baltic Cruise.

 

International Friends runs a combined ship-hotel transport with a Tour that goes to Salisbury, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle before arriving at Hotels in London. Has anyone taken this tour or know much about it? All comments welcome and thanks in advance.

[John Bull]

Friends International is a long-established & reputable coach operator, but has been running cruise buses for only 2 or 3 years.

A number of cruisers on these boards have taken their cruise-bus & comments have been very positive. A good compromise between cost & convenience, and kills several birds with one stone.

 

They also offer cruise-bus tours to Southampton, but they're quite limited due to the time constraint of fitting in with passengers' registration at the port.

 

They offer their various cruise-bus options on both their own website & on the website of http://www.londontoolkit.com/travel/southampton_london_transfers.htm

Booking through the London Toolkit website is £10 cheaper than on their own site !!!

That London Toolkit website gives a stack of other useful info, especially on logistics.

 

JB :)

[jtamchay]

We used International Friends in August. They were prompt in picking us up in Southampton, at the dock...the amount of time in the various stops was really not adequate. We loved Stonehenge and the time there was sufficient. Salisbury Cathedral is really just a quick look around. The time at Windsor Castle is not at all enough time to see the Castle properly nor the town.

We arrived at our hotel after 6PM so the day is long. We were staying at Westminster Bridge Park Plaza and were one of the last people dropped off. We had our lunch on the run at Stonehenge and the bus was only 1/2 filled. Our driver and guide were excellent.

We walked off the ship by 7:00AM, picked up our luggage, went through security and there is a nice waiting area with bathroom facilities while you wait for the bus.

I would not hesitate to recommend International Friends but you need to be OK with the time allowances...we were very disappointed with the time we had in Windsor.

We did book online and had no problems with that.

Edited March 31, 2014 by jtamchay