British Isles Cruise

[grammawmoses]

How much money do I need in pounds for Belfast, Glasgow, Orkney Islands, Inverness, Edinburgh, and Normandy?

[Spudd]

None, really. If you plan to take public transit you can pay with an app in most places. Any stores/restaurants will accept credit cards.

 

The only place we needed cash was when we hired a taxi at the pier for a tour. He was cash-only. He took us to an ATM so we could get money to pay him.

[Host Kat]

2 hours ago, grammawmoses said:

How much money do I need in pounds for Belfast, Glasgow, Orkney Islands, Inverness, Edinburgh, and Normandy?

 

Hello @grammawmoses

 

Thank you for your new thread on the Need Help Using the Forums? Check Here! forum. However, your thread was off topic there. That forum is for technical assistance in using the message board software.

 

To help you out your new thread has been moved to the Ports of Call - British Isles/Western Europe forum where it will be on topic. The majority of your fellow Cruise Critic members that have sailed from or live there frequent this forum and provide feedback here. Browse through the thread titles on this forum looking for threads of interest. You will probably find your fellow Cruise Critic members have already posted questions and received answers that may be of interest to you.

 

The Cruise Critic website and message boards are great resources for new as well as experienced cruisers and we are glad you found us! Please feel free to browse the Cruise Critic Community categories list for the various forums. Read a few threads in the different forums to get a feel for what each forum is about. Make sure you read any pinned threads (aka Stickies) on the top of the first page of threads in most forums. You will find very important instructions or information there.

 

Hope this will be helpful and glad to have you aboard Cruise Critic!

 

Happy sails,

 

Host Kat

[gumshoe958]

As above, very few places in the UK don’t accept Visa & MasterCard and you can easily survive without ever using cash. But you may want to take a small amount for tips.

 

Note that Normandy is in France, not the UK, and as such their currency is the Euro.

[rhiannon84]

As you mention the Orkney Islands, I would take some cash (maybe £100? In £20 notes max). The other places are cities/mainland, where consistent mobile signal and higher footfall makes it much much more likely for card to be accepted at all stores.
 

Also, bear in mind that Northern Ireland and Scotland banks issue their own pound sterling notes (which you might receive in change) and businesses in England can, and do, refuse to accept them.

[Harters]

I always take a smallish amount of cash when I'm overseas. A couple of hundred euros or dollars. Just in case. But, at home, it's rare that I spend cash. That said, we went to our local market on Sunday and one of the stalls couldnt get a mobile signal to activate his payment machine

[Globaliser]

1 hour ago, rhiannon84 said:

Also, bear in mind that Northern Ireland and Scotland banks issue their own pound sterling notes (which you might receive in change) and businesses in England can, and do, refuse to accept them.

 

In Scotland (and possibly in Northern Ireland too), businesses generally won't be offended if a visitor who's been given a Scottish note as part of their change asks to swap it for an English note. They're usually alive to the potential difficulty of spending Scottish notes in England - although that is easy to overstate because it's relatively uncommon to find a business in England (especially a large one) refusing a Scottish note.

 

All these potential problems are of course avoided if you just pay with a card, like we locals do. 😉 Even for the smallest amounts (like 10p).

[Cotswold Eagle]

43 minutes ago, Globaliser said:

t's relatively uncommon to find a business in England (especially a large one) refusing a Scottish note.

Funnily enough, I saw a sign just the other day, "We are unable to take Scottish or Northern Ireland notes at the moment" and it struck me you don't see that as much these days.

The 'at the moment' made me wonder if there'd been a spate of forgeries in the (tourist hotspot) area.

[Harters]

With the many closures of local bank branches, small businesses can struggle to find somewhere convenient to pay in cash takings. That might affect their willingness to take non-English notes, as they probably wouldnt be able to give them as change. 

 

By the end of this year, we will not have a single bank in the area of our parliamentary constituency. That's in an urban area so goodness knows how folk are coping in more rural areas. 

[grammawmoses]

Thank you all for your help! I really do appreciate it!

[grammawmoses]

9 hours ago, Host Kat said:

 

Hello @grammawmoses

 

Thank you for your new thread on the Need Help Using the Forums? Check Here! forum. However, your thread was off topic there. That forum is for technical assistance in using the message board software.

 

To help you out your new thread has been moved to the Ports of Call - British Isles/Western Europe forum where it will be on topic. The majority of your fellow Cruise Critic members that have sailed from or live there frequent this forum and provide feedback here. Browse through the thread titles on this forum looking for threads of interest. You will probably find your fellow Cruise Critic members have already posted questions and received answers that may be of interest to you.

 

The Cruise Critic website and message boards are great resources for new as well as experienced cruisers and we are glad you found us! Please feel free to browse the Cruise Critic Community categories list for the various forums. Read a few threads in the different forums to get a feel for what each forum is about. Make sure you read any pinned threads (aka Stickies) on the top of the first page of threads in most forums. You will find very important instructions or information there.

 

Hope this will be helpful and glad to have you aboard Cruise Critic!

 

Happy sails,

 

Host Kat

I need info on another topic but don't know how to start it. It's about using Hop On Hop Off in London

[rhiannon84]

9 minutes ago, grammawmoses said:

I need info on another topic but don't know how to start it. It's about using Hop On Hop Off in London

 

You can go to the British Isles/Western Europe board under Ports of Call (here: https://boards.cruisecritic.co.uk/forum/148-british-isleswestern-europe/) and post a new question there.

 

However, I suggest you search to see if the answer has already been provided - the search bar is top-right hand side. Just make sure that the dropdown is searching "This Forum" so it gets the most relevant answers. Also, for any non-cruise related questions, Tripadvisor Forums are really good too

[Host Kat]

12 hours ago, grammawmoses said:

I need info on another topic but don't know how to start it. It's about using Hop On Hop Off in London

 

@grammawmoses

 

Hello again!

 

Your other new thread also started on the Need Help Using the Forums? Check Here! forum was also moved by another Host to the Ports of Call - British Isles/Western Europe forum. Here is a clip of the redirect now showing on the Help forum:

Any time one of your threads has been moved to another forum, just click your thread title that appears over Topic was moved to forum (Title of New Forum Here) showing on the old forum. It is a redirect that will take you directly to the thread's new and more correct location. Once in the new location, look toward the top of the page where it will show you the new forum name or new thread name if your thread was merged into an existing thread such as another thread started by someone else but is the same topic as yours.

 

Here is a clip of what is showing at the top of this forum:

 

As for starting a new thread on any forum, make sure you are on the correct forum. As I stated before:

22 hours ago, Host Kat said:

... Please feel free to browse the Cruise Critic Community categories list for the various forums. Read a few threads in the different forums to get a feel for what each forum is about. Make sure you read any pinned threads (aka Stickies) on the top of the first page of threads in most forums. You will find very important instructions or information there...

 

Hope this additional information will be helpful!

 

Host Kat

 

 

[grammawmoses]

Does anyone know how best to get from cruise terminal to Hop On Hop Off bus in Edinburgh?

[fruitmachine]

1 hour ago, grammawmoses said:

Does anyone know how best to get from cruise terminal to Hop On Hop Off bus in Edinburgh?

It will depend where you tender to or dock.  Do you know which of Leith/Newhaven/South Queensferry or Rosyth it is?

If not which ship are you on?  Past experience may give an indication of where you're heading.

[grammawmoses]

South Queensferry. Cruise excursions say a 45 minute ride to Edinburgh.

[grammawmoses]

I found a website that shows we can get a bus at South Queensferry terminal to get into Edinburgh but the times are all morning and there is nothing to show whether the bus would take us back to South Queensferry later in the day.

[grammawmoses]

Looks like the bus from South Queensferry terminal to Edinburgh only runs one way in the morning. Princess Cruise wants $105 each to transport us to Edinburgh, leave us there, and come back to pick us up later in the day!

[Cotswold Eagle]

1 hour ago, grammawmoses said:

I found a website

It's a little frustrating when folk post something like this, because it is impossible to know what website you are looking at. But, of course there is a return service to the cruise port. Timetables for next year are not yet published, but this page is the one with all the information you need, including a joint ticket with a HOHO services. 

https://www.lothianbuses.com/cruiselink-x99/

[grammawmoses]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

[KKB]

On 10/30/2023 at 8:18 PM, grammawmoses said:

How much money do I need in pounds for Belfast, Glasgow, Orkney Islands, Inverness, Edinburgh, and Normandy?

I needed cash for tips & occasionally a cab in May.

I pulled 50E (or pounds) out at our 1st port that used that currency. (possibly more if we had tours booked & I KNEW I wanted tips for them..that would be "extra" I pulled). I could always leave extra for steward or other crew if we didn't plan on returning to the area soon. (had planned to do that w/ about 300 Norweigan Krone...then realized they were heading to the Med after our cruise last month...shoot. Maybe next year!)

Edited November 12, 2023 by KKB