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Traveling Around Scotland: Family Update
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Traveling Around Scotland: Family Update

Edinburgh castle atop Castle Rock

Hello from Houston friends! This last month has been a whirlwind between World Breastfeeding Week, birthdays, parties, back to school prep and travel. We had the most amazing time traveling around Scotland as a family of four for two weeks, but we’re happy to be back home. I wanted to share a short Scotland travel update now that we’re back home in the States. Our trip definitely some difficult moments, but overall it went above and beyond our expectations.

I’m going to share few highlights from our trip while I continue to go through the hundreds of photos I took along the way! This is just a quick recap of our trip and I plan to share more photos and details from each city in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Flights

The kids did amazing on our flights. Overall Chloe gets an A+ and Brody gets a B. It’s hard being a baby y’all! Brody was a bucking bronco when we was with me, so he slept of JP a majority of the time. Luckily, we were spoiled rotten with Business Class seats on the long haul from Newark to Manchester and back. Chloe can’t stop talking about the plane seat that turns into a bed. She has no clue how good she has it! While we were definitely spoiled, I feel like I was able to reap the benefits of having a husband who traveled overseas a lot over the last several years.

We all watched movies and Chloe is officially obsessed with The Lion King! We watched it together and she thought that was so cool since we were wearing headphones. I also watched 5 Feet Apart and Captain Marvel while in the air!

Manchester

We were only in Manchester for about a day and a half, but saw a lot of the city in our short time there. I have an awesome post to come about all the great things you can do with kids in this city! I was surprised with how much there is to do since I didn’t know that much about Manchester before. We did find out that it’s a place that people go specifically for shopping! I didn’t hate the part at all.

Glasgow

We spent 3.5 days in Glasgow. It was supposed to rain most of the trip, but we ended up with quite a bit of sunshine. We did a walking tour on our first full day there and the sun was beaming! Our tour guide was shocked and said they rarely get sunny days in Glasgow. Speaking of that tour, it was my favorite part about visiting the city. Johnny with The Glasgow Gander was an absolute gem! He knew so much about the city and you could tell how much he loves where he lives with his facts and knowledge. He gave us several great recommendations for the rest of our trip.

One thing we were surprised with was the food in Glasgow. There were tons delicious restaurants around the city. We even found this weekend only food truck market with a playplace for kids! We ended up going back for lunch the next day to try a different food truck. It was an excellent decision.

Inverness

Inverness was personally my favorite city of the trip. The Scottish Highlands has been on my bucket list for several years, and that desire intensified after reading the Outlander Series in 2017-18. The mysticism of the Highlands really is magical. There is so much history, myths and stories in the region and even more to explore. We saw the Culloden battlefield, Castle of Inverness, Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. We walked along the River Ness and found multiple parks and green space for the kids. The weather held out for us again, and we only got poured on one afternoon. Of course it was when we were a 15 minute walk from the bus stop, but we made fun of it along the way.

Edinburgh

This city went above and beyond my expectations. I know I said that Inverness was my favorite, but Edinburgh was up there. I don’t want y’all to think I didn’t love it. It was just a COMPLETELY different experience than Inverness.

We were in Edinburgh during their huge festival called The Fringe. It was really quite exciting and made for an even more entertaining experience, but it was overwhelmingly crowded. I definitely want to go back to this city and experience it without the festival as well! We still saw so much of the city from Edinburgh Castle atop of Castle Rock down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace. We even did a Harry Potter walking tour which had me super giddy and excited to see just how much Edinburgh played into JK Rowling’s inspiration for HP.

To top off the excitement of this city, I also got to see my best seester friend Charlotte and her husband Ole! It’s been a LONG two years since we saw them for their wedding in Norway, and it felt so right to be together again!

There you have it! A brief recap of our family travels around Scotland. I have many more details and countless pictures to share with y’all. This isn’t it. Over the next several weeks, I hope to share more about each city we visited with tips, tricks and ideas for those of you hoping to travel these cities one day!

Don’t forget to check out my posts about why we travel with our kids and 12 essentials for traveling Europe with toddlers if you’re thinking about traveling with your kids!

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(2) Comments

  1. Wow! I cannot believe you did this trip with two kids in tow!! That’s amazing!! We’ve flown twice with our daughter, domestic flights, and she did awesome but it definitely was not easy!! You are such an inspiration!! Maybe we will try Scotland with her….my husband and I have both always dreamed of going there…

    1. You can do it! We may be a little bit crazy, but it was completely worth bringing them. We took each day a little slower and had low expectations for the evenings after long days. We also factored in time to go to parks and fun things specifically for them. I find doing things like that actually helped us to see other places during our travels!

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