re: Help Me and My Friends Plan Our Europe Trip

Yes, I'd highly recommend a GB trip. Airfare to Dublin is often crazy cheap, so you could start there, hit some Irish high points & your friend's ancestral village, then fly to Edinburgh (1-hr flight as cheap as $40, usually around $100 or less). Do the highlands, drink some Scotch, then take the train to London for your grand finale.

--Ireland offers some interesting prehistory (Newgrange passage tomb outside Dublin), plus the whole fight for Irish independence, and amazing scenery. It's a small country & very tourist friendly. You'd need to pick a few highlights rather than try to cover the whole country in 4-5 days, but you could certainly see/experience lots. I was there last February, and despite the cold/damp/early dusk, it was green, lovely, and filled with friendly people.
--Scotland is awesome....hill walking, old Edinburgh & castle & yes, Scotch distillery tours.

London is a fantastic city....museums, theater (go see Book of Mormon w/your squad), lots of great food, and pubs. A long list of sights to see, nice/easy day trips, and a wide range of lodging at many price points.

Is this trip to enjoy yourselves, or to impress others by saying that you covered X cities and countries during your 2 weeks? Talk to your group & find consensus regarding:
--pace (leisurely vs quick; relaxed vs jam packed; or a mix of the two)
--budget (what's the maximum you want to spend on lodgings, average per night? how much for airfare/transportation?)
--must-dos for each person (soccer, ancestral village, pubs, distilleries/breweries, museums, particular kinds of food)

Pick the destination(s) and then the real planning begins. Don't act as though you will never take another trip in your life and try to do/see it all.

Glad to help. The idea of a trip, at times, gets ahead of the reality/experience. It's why so many people love package tours and things like Viking river cruises...they don't have to decide where to go, they don't have to plan, they just show up and enjoy themselves.

To me, that's tourism vs. traveling. I'd rather be more thoughtful in my choices, going exactly when & where I like, to suit my particular tastes/interests. As a bread baking geek, I have schlepped across cities to stand in line for a sourdough croissant in a neighborhood of commuters, or driven 1/2 hour out of my way to buy a loaf from a wood fired oven I heard about in a pub the evening before. If you're over-scheduled, you don't get to benefit from such serendipity.

One thing I will say: I don't drive in GB. The whole wrong side of the road messes w/my brain. I even have trouble sitting in the front passenger seat! So consider whether anyone in your party is a great driver and can handle car rental, or if you will need to plan around trains/public transit. (Aside: I like taking public transit, as it's a great time to people watch. But your group may want to hire a driver/van for certain activities.)

I'll definitely 2nd the cask ales, loved them.

I disagree on the driving, I drove this summer and I enjoyed it. I would absolutely not drive your first day jet lagged, that was my most dangerous day driving in my life. Dumb of me to do. Once I was rested though, it was great. No reason for this group to drive though.

A dublin, Edinborough, London, etc. trip is a fantastic trip. That's a decent bit of travel, but would be a great trip. That's a UK trip though, not nearly a Europe trip. Nothing wrong with that at all.

There's nothing wrong with doing a bunch of cities/ countries. What you don't want to do is multi day major travel. It would be like coming to the US for 2 weeks and going to NYC, Miami, and then San Francisco. That's dumb. But you could do a bunch of close towns like Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and somewhere in Germany to get a vast taste of different countries with no trains over 3 hours and most under 2.

ETA: I would definitely agree with the idea of not trying to do too much. But, its also a lot of fun to experience 2 different countries. Its like going to Texas and Mexico, very close yet vastly different.

I here Aix en Provence in the South of France is pretty amazing. Might be worth checking out