You have spent days fiddling with your itinerary for flights and you are working on booking all your hotel or B&B bookings. You get blasted with many choices, read, look at pictures. All accommodations are trying to sell you their space for rent, lure you away from other prospects. You think you have a sweet deal, but look on the map for the location. You may find that you are either way isolated and don’t want to be, or smack dab in the middle of it and prefer quiet. Have you checked Street View websites with the actual address? If you were buying a house right now, what would you do to check out the neighborhood if you could not get there to physically see it? Yes, check the neighborhood you are staying in and see where it falls on the map.

If you don’t mind walking in a bit through neighborhoods, many B&Bs in the UK are in smaller neighborhoods away from downtown. This is great as you get to spend time in a real neighborhood with real people going about their lives. But this also means it probably has the local, or pub attached or underneath. Check out street view for the address and see what kind of establishment it is. Because as luck will have it, you will get the room above the pub and that means little sleep until 1 am or so. If you like to be out on the town and busy until the wee hours, this is not a problem. But if you need your rest, check out street view and see if it looks like it may be a rabble rouser bar. Also, check the transit maps for the area. If you are staying in a relatively small town, you may be walking everywhere regardless. If you are staying in a larger city, transit is more frequent, but a safe place to board or depart from may be a ways away from where you are. Taxis can get costly.

Along with looking at Yelp or other review sites, you can safeguard your stays. Be prepared however to have at least one of your accommodations not be so grand. You will just have to tough it out as booking for alternative when you get there may get real costly. Check reviews, see if there have been complaints against the establishment.

With that said, have a grand time on your tour after having a great rest.