What I didn’t write about in 2018: a day trip to Siena and more! 

We’re already more than two weeks into January, and I’m realizing there are still adventures from 2018 I haven’t written about. Among these were a day trip to Siena during our trip to Florence with my in-laws last spring, two days in Rome during the same trip and visits to Loch Ness and Pitlochry in Scotland! No doubt there are more — such as a day trip to Enna — but as it is, that seems like a fair bit of catching up already.

Anyway, it was a beautiful year! And for my own sake, if no one else’s, I want to make sure I’ve taken the chance to remember some of that. 

A day trip to Siena from Florence

Back in April/May, we visited Florence, Greve in Chianti (for our wine-tasting misadventure) and Rome for a week with my in-laws, Gail and David. We spent five total nights in Florence, but one of them we dedicated to a day trip to Siena. It was one of my favorite days of the trip, and even having only seen it on a short day trip I still think I like Siena better than either Florence or Rome. 

We took the train (a very pleasant hour and a half) from Florence to Siena, then ended up catching a bus from the Siena train station to the center of town. From there, we mostly strolled through the town, acquired gelato and saw a few sights, including the following: 

1. Piazza del Campo and Mangia Tower

 The Piazza del Campo is the center of Siena, its town square. It’s also where the famous Palio horse races are held every year — we saw some videos of them at nearby restaurants, and the races look intense! I’d love to go to that sometime, though I expect it must be a madhouse every year. I don’t recommend eating here though; we “accidentally” ended up doing that and got an enormous bill for a crappy meal. Ah well, live and learn! 

My in-laws (if memory serves) went into the Palazzo Pubblico, a museum on the square, but Chris and I opted to remain in the square and watch the kids chase pigeons instead. 

2. Duomo di Siena 

The Siena Cathedral was magnificent on the outside and, unlike its counterpart in Florence, did not disappoint us on the inside either! It was absolutely gorgeous and should absolutely be a must-see stop if you are heading to Siena. I’d rank it, after Saint Chappelle in Paris and Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, as among the most beautiful churches in Europe. 

Like the Florence Cathedral, Siena’s has a lot of gorgeous black and white marble columns within it. But step into the adjacent Piccolomini Library and you’ll find an explosion of color; it was legitimately the most stunning ceiling I’ve ever seen. It was absolutely worth the wait in line to get in (this was sort of the theme for a lot of things we did in Florence and Tuscany!)

A quick stop in Rome  

Since both my in-laws and our family found it was considerably cheaper to fly into Rome than Florence, our trip ended with a couple days there soaking up that city. Of course, we’ve been there before so Chris and I took the kids to do a few different things while Gail and David got a look at the Vatican, the Colosseum and other can’t-miss sights in Rome. 

We stayed in the Trastavere neighborhood, a little further from the center of things than we were in the past. However, I highly recommend this area! We had some good meals and found it to be a little less hectic than the more central places. 

Our favorite activity was a self-guided food tour of Trastavere through BiteMojo. Basically, the BiteMojo premise is that you download the app, then pay (in our case, 25 euro) for a food tour of an area at your own pace, between specified hours. Along the way, it also tells you about some sites you are passing. If you don’t use all your “bite credits” you can save them for another day or even another city. 

We’ve now done this in Berlin and Rome and the verdict is: we like it, but do think they may still be sorting out a few kinks. In Rome, we had a few problems with two of the places not being open as advertised. (Luckily, we did not have this problem in Berlin).  The places we did get to stop, however, were excellent and the portions were ample. By far the best was this incredible burrata creation from Da Enzo, which was so good that when Fiona dropped her portion onto the cobblestones we seriously considered eating it anyway. (Don’t worry, we did resist this particular impulse.) 

We also took the chance to visit a place we’d missed on our previous trip to Rome, including the Pantheon. The Pantheon is a Roman temple-turned-church that dates back to the 100s BC. It is one of the best preserved Ancient Roman temples in the world. 

It is also the final resting place of two kings of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I.

And this photo is just Chris and Fiona being cute in Trastavere. 

A monster hunt on our Loch Ness tour 

I wrote a fair bit about our trip to Scotland (Edinburgh with kids, visit to Stirling Castle and Oban and the Isle of Skye), but with so much going on this summer I never got a chance to write about our trip to Loch Ness.

I spent a lot of time trying to decide on the best monster hunt on Loch Ness with kids, and ultimately settled on the two-hour Loch Ness by Jacobite tour on the Freedom boat. It was cute! 

We drove to Loch Ness from Balamarca, stopping briefly to take a look at the Eilean Donan castle near our AirBnb. All told, I believe it was a little more than a two-hour drive to get to the Clansman Hotel, where our boat was to depart. 

The lake itself was much bigger than I was expecting, and people weren’t joking when they said the water was black. It is easy to see how people could believe a mythical creature could plausibly be hiding in there! 

It was pretty chilly the day we went, but we still rode on the open-air top of our boat so that we could get a good view. Along the way, the tour guide told us a little about the lake (for instance, that the water is black because of the high peat content of the ground) and the history of the quest for Nessy. 

The trip included a one-hour stop to see the ruins of Urquhart Castle, and learn a little about its fascinating history as well. On the whole, our castle interests usually extend more to the intact versions vs. ruins, but it was still interesting to see. As a side note, we stopped in a coffee shop and I got to listen to a fellow tourist being absolutely incredulous that the cashier could accept neither Euro nor U.S. dollars for his order. Face palm. 

On the way back, we opted to sit inside the boat so the kids could play with the activity sets that came with our admission price for our monster hunt on Loch Ness! They were more impressed with that than the “radar” you could use to monitor for signs of Nessy, which I had expected they’d think was cool. Go figure. 

A stop in peaceful Pitlochry, Scotland 

Our final stop in Scotland was in Pitlochry, a place I originally chose mostly as a good stopping point between Loch Ness and Edinburgh for a couple nights before we had to return to Edinburgh for a morning flight. To my surprised, we ended up being quite charmed by the little town — other than Edinburgh, it was probably my favorite. However, this is stop was one place where our lack of planning kind of bit us in the ass. 

I’d intentionally left our last day in Scotland blank as a “wing it” day, thinking we’d be exhausted from the previous 11 days on the road and eager for downtime. However, if I’d looked into things ahead of time we’d have saved a lot of time and aggravation on our “downtime” day. Pitlochry and the surrounding area have a lot of nice walking/biking paths, and since we were lucky enough to get beautiful weather we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to bike. However, the bikes we needed (a pull-behind one for Owen and a trailer or seat for Fiona) were all booked up at the local bike shop, and another one on site of a nearby castle was open by appointment only. Darn! If I could go back in time, my Pitlochry one-day itinerary would look something like this: 

What to do in Pitlochry

 1. Breakfast at Escape Route, a cute cafe near a bike shop

2. Morning: rent bicycles on the nearby Blair Atholl Castle estate grounds and ride around the many pretty trails in that area. 

3. Tour Blair Atholl castle and enjoy the kids’ activities there, which includes a scavenger hunt, dress-up and outdoor playgrounds. Lunch: a picnic, or a visit to the castle restaurant

4. Return to Pitlochry for a tour of the Blair Atholl distillery. Part of this is adults only, but the kids were able to join after about 15/20 minutes. Tastings are included!

5. Dinner at the Old Mill Inn

6. A walk in downtown Pitlochry or, better yet, along the nice walking trails nearby. We took a path that led us to Loch Falskaddy and the “Fish Ladder.” The fish ladder — a series of water “steps” that the fish can jump between — was built specifically to give migrating salmon a way over the dam. Unfortunately, the Fish Ladder Viewing Chamber was closed when we were there. Next time!  

What we actually did on our one day in Pitlochry … 

Well, we wasted the morning trying to track down bikes, for the most part. But we did visit the Blair Atholl Distillery (Chris went on the whole tour, while the kids and I joined where we could) and did the walk to the Fish Ladder, which was just beautiful. I just wish we’d planned ahead and could have really made the most out of our day there! 

One fun thing about Scotland: we were there in early June, and it stayed light out until so late. This picture was taken at about 10:30 p.m. Consequently, the kids stayed up very late every night because we just didn’t realize how late it was getting.  

Well, I’d say that about wraps up this recap for now. My conscience is eased, ha. 

Now on to 2019 adventures! Our first trip of the year is quite soon, then we’ll be on a bit of a hiatus until Baby Boy arrives in March! (Hopefully March and not April, anyway!)

The post A day trip to Siena, and other 2018 adventures first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post A day trip to Siena, and other 2018 adventures appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Visiting the Isle of Skye with kids

Headed to Scotland for a family holiday and thinking about visiting the Isle of Skye with kids? We spent a day there with our kiddos and enjoy it very much, but going to the Isle of Skye with kids does present certain … limitations. This largest island of the Inner Hebrides is justly famous for the scenery and the hiking, and we are so happy we took the chance to scope it out. That said, it might have been a bit easier if we’d waited until the kids were older. Or a lot easier. Still, if you have the chance to go — don’t miss it. 

Pssst: read about our other travels in Scotland with kids here and here!

We were 15 minutes into our first hike on the Isle of Skye, and already three-quarters of the family were — openly or otherwise — questioning the wisdom of our planned day. My planned day, to be more accurate. And I was starting to worry.

Our first hike of the day* was to the famous Old Man of Storr, a large rock formation that is supposed to resemble the thumb of a giant. The scenery was already breath-taking, but the hike that had been described as “just slightly strenuous” on various blogs was starting out … not.

*Chris now snorts at the use of the ambitious words “first hike of the day.”

Backing up: while Chris was in charge of planning to Berlin portion of our trip, I was in charge of Scotland. I’d spent ages agonizing about whether the Isle of Skye should be on our itinerary for the eight total days we had for our Scotland road trip itinerary. On the one hand, it was sufficiently far out of the way that I feared how much time getting there would consume. On the other, I’d heard the scenery was so breathtaking that it couldn’t be missed. We ended up compromising by staying in a village on the mainland (Balmacara), then driving to Skye just for a single day. While certainly we could have spent more time on the Isle of Skye– and if hiking is your thing you certainly should — I thought this plan worked out well to give us a taste of the place without requiring an excessive amount of driving.

Breaking in here for a quick note about driving on the Isle of Skye, by the way: it went pretty smoothly! There was a serious lack of cell service that made navigation a little dicey, but since there was one main road we stayed on most of the time we were fine. And given how narrow some of the roads were, we were glad we didn’t end up getting our car rental stuck in a ditch on the Isle of Skye like a fellow blogger! Luckily this story had a happy ending.

So back to planning our trip. there were quite a lot of places that I wanted to visit on at Skye, chief among them being the Fairy Pools. Mostly based on stunning pictures I’d seen on Pinterest, ha.

But as I started to research various places to make an actual itinerary (obviously, this was like two days before we left), I started realizing how much walking most of these places were going to be. And that we were going to have to drag two kids with us to get to anywhere, so any of them were described as being a little slippery or having “a couple tricky spots” also needed to be out. Also, we don’t like spending too much time in the car so, you guessed it, other places were out.

That said, once I pared it down I was reasonably confident that I had an extremely do-able list, focused almost entirely on spots along the Trotternish Loop. Here’s what we came up with.

Our “itinerary” for the Isle of Skye with kids

1. Walk to the Old Man of Storr
2. Stop to see the Kilt Rock (just pull over and look)
3. Have lunch at the Skye Moon Cafe
4. Hike to Brother’s Point (good, lesser known trail that starts by the cafe)
5. Fairy Glen
6. Portree (the biggest city on Skye … I put this as  “maybe” on the list)

If you wondering how well we did on our list, our story begins with us on Stop 1.

So yeah, our “only slightly strenuous” hike was basically exhausting for us, especially as we were hauling a backpack full of snacks and water and extra clothing (Chris) and Fiona (me). Also, it seemed to be further than it sounded when I did the research.

The hardest part came at the very end, where you have to start walking up kind of a hill covered with rocks, some of which make sort of “steps” and others of which make obstacles. I’d read a blog where someone had done this with kids IN THE RAIN and said it was a bit tricky, and now after having done it I have no idea how those people managed to get up there on wet ground with kids in tow. Even very dry, we found it very slippery and hard to manage with the kids. If it were raining, we’d have turned back.

Despite the challenges (which in my case included slipping and having to crawl up a rock a bit with Fi stuck on me), the scenery was unbelievably beautiful. I was absolutely sure that once we reached the top, everyone would be overwhelmed by the beauty of our surroundings and full of a sense of accomplishment.

So while this was mid-hike for Owen …

There was not a drastic change once we arrived.

So, my plan didn’t so much work out on that front. Nor has the passage of time, apparently, softened his opinion of the whole thing. I just asked him what his favorite part of the hike was and he said, “There is no favorite part. The whole thing was horrible.”

Ouch.

I do want to give him enormous credit though, Owen walked almost the ENTIRE WAY on a walk that was tiring for us as adults. Lots of people stopped him on the trail to tell him he was doing a good job, which I think must have been gratifying at least. Note: if it was, he refuses to admit it. 

Anyway, if you are going to Isle of Skye with kids, I’d say the Old Man of Storr walk can be a good one. But if we were to do it again, I’d wait until the kids were a bit older and we didn’t have to carry them or worry about them falling as much.

So, once we made it back to our car the common consensus was that we were starving. We’d also spent a considerably amount of time cajoling Owen and Fi along by promising we could go to this brewery/restaurant we saw that had a playground outside, so that was our immediate priority. However, since it was 20 minutes of backtracking to get there and the Kilt Rock was just up the road, we decided to pop over there first.

From here, we headed to the Cuillin Brewery (more accurately, the restaurant that seemed to be attached to it — the brewery itself was closed when we visited, presumably because Sunday) for some very late lunch, beers, playground and general recovery.

We briefly kicked around trying to do one more thing, but then Fi smashed her face at the playground falling onto a post and we concluded that we were pretty much just done.

(At least, until we came across another lake that we just had to stop and stick our feet in on the way back!)

A note about Skye in general: Like with the rest of the Highlands, the scenery seemed very foreign to us, and beautiful. Despite there being plenty of other tourists there as well, when we were driving we mostly felt like we were alone in a strange wilderness. We got incredibly lucky with the weather too, but it was kind of an up-and-down thing. On the way in we celebrated how perfect it seemed, watched in disappointment as heavy clouds rolled in, then cheered again as they abruptly disappeared. Then repeated the process about three more times. Actually, the only times were we rained on the whole time we were in Scotland were when we were already in the car driving somewhere. Presumably this is because we dropped a bunch of money on raincoats that we carted around the whole trip. If you are headed to Isle of Skye with kids (or anywhere in Scotland), I’d highly suggest you do the same to ensure good weather. Or if you don’t believe in jinxes, you are welcome to think of it as just “being prepared” or “packing responsibly.”

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The post Visiting the Isle of Skye with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

After Edinburgh: Stirling Castle and Oban with kids

Remember those posts I’ve done in the past where I’ve bored you with details about various historical queens who are relevant to castles we were visiting? After our 3 days in Edinburgh, we visited Stirling Castle with the kids. So yeah, this is going to be one of those posts.

Before you bail, I’ll tell you that I’m at least including a lot of pictures? If that helps? Oh, and if you are here to hear about Oban with kids, just skip on down to the end. Oban is lovely, by the way.

Anyway, you’ve been warned.

Visiting Stirling Castle with kids

So anyway! Pressing on. Stirling Castle is only about 45 minutes from Edinburgh, which makes it an excellent Edinburgh day trip if you happen to be in the market for one. We headed there by car first thing in the morning on day 4 of our trip, after unexpectedly getting out of a parking garage for free (probably would have been at least 80 USD) because their system crashed so badly they could neither accept payment nor let anyone out without physically lifting the gate. Edinburgh, did we need another reason to love you?

Anyway. Stirling Castle with kids. It was a short drive there, one we considered breaking up with a quick stop in Falkirk to see The Kelpies, giant horse statues in a park near the city’s canals. We ended up bailing on this idea because we were running a bit late that morning, but ended up seeing them from the highway anyway. #winning. 

So, Stirling Castle was of deep interest to me from the moment we started planning this trip because of one of my main nerdoms, British monarchy. (If you seriously need a reminder about my other nerdom, here you go). Stirling Castle one of the most significant castles in Scottish history, and was useful in that it was highly defensible: it is surrounded by cliffs on three sides, and until the late 1800s it guarded an important crossing of the River Forth, which essentially split the country in two.

We purchased our tickets for Stirling Castle here ahead of time to avoid the lines. While we intentionally arrived in time to catch one of the free guided tours of the castle, we ended up skipping out on it very early on because the kids weren’t having it. Annoying, but you’ve got to roll with the punches.

Instead, we spent the entire time roaming Stirling Castle and looking around on our own. Even without the guide, it was pretty awesome. My favorite was definitely walking along the castle walls, while the kids preferred a visit to some specific kid-friendly rooms where they could play games. Overall, it was remarkably kid-friendly, so if you are headed to Scotland with kids I wouldn’t hesitate to stop there.

So, on to some history.

Stirling Castle is tied closely to two historical figures that I find very interesting: Margaret Tudor, and Mary, Queen of Scots. So, let’s do a bit of quick background.

Margaret Tudor was the oldest daughter of Henry VII, the man who claimed the throne of England essentially by virtue of his battlefield victory over Richard III more than any real birthright. She was the older sister of the infamous Henry VIII. Margaret was sent to Scotland before her 14th birthday to marry the 30-year-old Scots king, James IV, a man who had already fathered at least half a dozen children by various mistresses — all of whom were raised in a nursery he created at, you guessed it, Stirling Castle. Stirling also happened to be one of Margaret’s dower properties, and apparently she wasn’t overly thrilled to find the king’s illegitimate children being raised in it.

The marriage was intended to cement a lasting peace between England and Scotland, which was a traditional ally of the French. This worked for a while, but after the death of Margaret’s father, her brother, Henry VIII, declared war on the French. Despite the “Treaty of Perpetual Peace,” James IV (himself a very interesting person, fyi) promptly sought to invade England. He was killed alongside a large portion of the Scottish nobility at the Battle of Flodden, leaving Margaret — who’d already endured the deaths of four children — pregnant and the mother of the 18-month-old King James V.

Margaret briefly reigned as regent on behalf of her son, but when she made a hasty and disastrous marriage to the Earl of Angus (“that young witless fool”), she lost the regency and custody of James V and his short-lived brother, Alexander. The marriage turned out to be a mess and Margaret spent most of the next two decades fighting for support to regain custody of her son and a divorce from the avaricious and unfaithful Angus, who was essentially holding James V hostage by his teen years. Eventually her son came of age and threw off his stepfather/guardian, and eventually Margaret did get her divorce, but only after tremendous hardship and struggle. It is interesting to note that her brother, Henry VIII, probably the most famous divorcee in history, heartily disapproved of her efforts to be rid of Angus.

So, Stirling was also the home to Mary, Queen of Scots. In some ways, her life mirrors that of her grandmother, Margaret Tudor — with the notable exception that Margaret didn’t end her life on a foreign scaffold.

Mary was the daughter of Margaret Tudor’s son, James V, who died six days after her birth, leaving her the infant queen of Scotland. She was crowed at Stirling Castle. She was ultimately sent to France for safe-keeping as a child and betrothed to the future king of France, and in her absence her country became increasingly Protestant and increasingly less interested in the rule of the French regent, Mary’s mother. Mary became the Queen of France after the death of her father-in-law in 1559, but her reign was short-lived; her teenage husband, King Francis, died in 1560. Mary ultimately chose to go back to Scotland to take up her throne, but its leaders weren’t thrilled with the arrival of the young, Catholic and essentially French queen. Like her grandmother, Mary made a reckless decision in remarrying: four years after she was widowed, she married Henry, Lord Darnley, her first cousin through her grandmother Margaret Tudor’s only surviving daughter. The couple had one child, the future James VI, and at Edinburgh Castle you can see the impossibly tiny, spare room in which she gave birth to him.

Mary’s relationship with Darnley proved highly volatile due to his excessive drinking, philandering and general ill-treatment of the Queen (including the murder of her secretary). Within a year of their son’s birth, Darnley was found dead in the garden of his residence, which had been blown up with explosives. Mary was accused of orchestrating the death of her husband, as was. James, Earl Bothwell, was . Both were ultimately acquitted, but Bothwell chose to celebrate this victory by abducting the queen from Stirling Castle; they were married shortly after, 12 days after his divorce had been secured.From there, things pretty much continued to go downhill for Mary. Within a few months, she miscarried twins and a day later she was forced to abdicate her throne, separated from her husband and imprisoned.

Mary is invariably described as a famously beautiful woman of exceptional height, nearly 6 feet tall, who had an irresistible charm that ensured she found allies virtually anywhere she went. This helped her orchestrate various escapes from the prisons in which she was held, including climbing down a castle wall. Ultimately she managed to escape into England, where she had this thought that Queen Elizabeth would help her get her son and her crown back. Um. Yeah. Considering that Mary was considered the rightful queen of England by like, most of Europe, this strikes me as a fairly shitty plan. But you know, hindsight is 20/20. Anyway, Queen Elizabeth kept Queen Mary captive for 18 years, then executed her. Bummer.

Anyway, both women made some poor decisions — chiefly marrying what sounds like guys who are hot but complete assholes — but both Margaret and Mary were women of obvious courage. Interestingly, Queen Elizabeth of England executed Queen Mary of Scotland, but ultimately named Mary’s son, James, as her heir. He ruled both kingdoms as James VI/I.

James VI/I’s son, Charles I, was executed during the English Civil War. Seems like kind of a bad run for the family.

Anyway, so back to Stirling Castle. We ultimately ended up spending nearly three hours here, and we still didn’t explore every bit of the castle. There were plenty of places where we could relax on the grass and run around, which was a welcome break ahead of the driving we had to do later I’d say it would make an excellent day trip from Edinburgh, but for us we opted to make it a stop en route to our trip to the highlands.

Next stop: Oban with kids

While recommended highly by Rick Steves, Oban was not on our original itinerary for Scotland. We’d intended to just make our way north toward Fort William, but when we couldn’t find accommodations we liked there we gave Oban a second look. I’m glad we did — it was a cute little fishing village! It would have been a relaxing place to spend a couple days, but we ended up staying just one night there.

We arrived in Oban in the late afternoon, after a roughly two hour drive from Stirling Castle. Our short schedule didn’t leave a lot of time, but we had an excellent dinner at the Waterfront Fishhouse Restaurant right on the water. As was the case for our entire trip to Scotland, we stayed in an AirBnb.

Reminder: If you are considering booking at AirBnB for the first time, please consider using my referral link. You’ll get $40 in travel credit when you sign up, and I get $20 for our future travels. Win-win, no? Here’s the code: www.airbnb.com/c/kaseyh50

We had a relaxing night in Oban just having dinner and wandering the waterfront town a bit, then headed out the next day we headed out for the Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary.

Ok, so I feel a little guilty about this because no doubt they are doing nice conversation work and all that, but … I thought the Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary was pretty underwhelming given its high price tag (about 45 pounds). That said, our price was inflated because we were there on a Saturday, there are good deals for family discounts on the weekdays.

We did take a nice walk around the sanctuary’s “nature paths,” which was pretty even if we didn’t happen to spot any animals other than a squirrel.

Like this view! If Scotland does one thing right, it is scenery. Man.

Still, if we had to do it over I think I would have preferred to jump on one of the hour-long boat cruises to see a seal colony; we saw a bunch of these advertised while walking around. Alternatively, Oban is a great place to catch a ferry to the islands of Mull and Iona, so if we had more time we could have opted to check those out.

Road to Skye: the rest of the way

From Oban, our goal was to head up to the town of Balmacara, home of our AirBnB for the following two nights and our jumping off point for the Isle of Skye. We stopped for lunch in Fort William — I recommend stopping at The Explorer if you are there, by the way — and intended to stop to see the the Glenfinnan Railway Viaduct along the way. If you don’t recognize that name, chances are you’d recommend the bridge; it appears in the Harry Potter movies as the Hogwarts Express passes over it and has since become the most photographed bridge in Scotland.

However, we were all getting a bit cranky about being in the car, it was getting ready to rain and since the train wasn’t going to run on Saturday afternoon at that time of year, we opted to skip it. While I was interested in seeing, I feared that adding almost an hour to our journey to see a bridge wasn’t going to thrill the crowd. Next time, perhaps!

I’ll talk about this more in my next post, but this feels like a good time to mention how astonishingly beautiful the terrain was as we drove throughout Scotland. As we got into the Highlands especially, it was like nothing we’d ever seen before. Chris isn’t usually the “let’s pull over and look at things” sort, but we ended up doing this several times just because it was too gorgeous not to.

And, uh, astute readers may have noticed that Chris did end up driving this time around, despite my own excellent left-side driving in Ireland and intention to do so again in Scotland. This time, I managed to forget to bring my driver’s license on the trip; we took all carry-on bags for the 12-day trip, so I didn’t have the space for a purse and thus just handed my credit cards to Chris to put in his wallet. Forgetting, I guess, that a driver’s license has a purpose beyond identification and, before I had these kids who have aged the hell out of me, procuring alcohol. Or cold medicine, if we were still in Indiana. ANYWAY.

So Chris drove most of the way. Except for a roughly two mile stretch where I gave it a whirl on some narrow streets, and we learned quite quickly that Chris’ nerves weren’t up to enduring my driving after all. Wimp!

Adventure is the spice of life, no?

The post Scotland with kids: Stirling Castle and Oban first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Scotland with kids: Stirling Castle and Oban appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Edinburgh with kids: kicking off our Scottish adventure

Scotland, and especially Edinburgh, has been on my must-see list for a while now. The scenery! The history! The accents!

So naturally, as soon as we arrived in Edinburgh with the kids we set straight out to go see a mu-

Ah hell, who are we kidding? The first thing we did was head for Diagon Alley in Edinburgh, where we promptly dropped a small fortune on wands from one of the Harry Potter-themed shops in Diagon Alley (regrettably we didn’t meet Olivander himself, however). If you are wondering, Owen ended up with Harry Potter’s wand and Fiona ended up with Ginny’s. Since we all know the wand chooses the wizard, I assume the fact that these two wands chose them has nothing at all to do with the fact that Harry and Ginny happen to be Owen’s and Fiona’s favorite characters. (As you may already know, if you remember that Fiona spent most of our Belgium trip refusing to answer to any name but “Ginny.”)

I did not get myself a wand because I’M A REAL GROWN UP, GUYS.

Also, my husband would have made fun of me.

Anyway, back to our visit to Diagon Alley. Fellow HP nerds would no doubt like to scream that DIAGON ALLEY IS IN FREAKING LONDON. Yes, yes. I KNOW.

(Don’t think it didn’t occur to us me to include London in this itinerary).

Anyway, if we are going with accuracy I suppose the best way to describe this area is by its proper name: Victoria Street. However, JK Rowling was living in Edinburgh when she was busy crafting the masterpiece that is Harry Potter and it is believed that this curving, split-level street was the inspiration for the famous Diagon Alley. (A belief reinforced by the fact that she suggested filmmakers working on the movies visit the area for inspiration).

3 days in Edinburgh with kids: Our itinerary

Ok, so now that I’m finished nerding out over here (just kidding, am I ever done?), let’s backtrack a little bit. As I mentioned in this post, we took a 12-day trip that included Berlin, Scotland and (briefly) Potsdam. We flew from Berlin to Edinburgh around midday on a Tuesday and left for Stirling Castle on Friday morning, giving us really about 2.5 days in the city.

What we liked: Honestly, we loved Edinburgh overall. We enjoyed our visit to Edinburgh Castle, two fantastic museums, the Royal Mile and, obviously, our Harry Potter activities. It was a very family-friendly city with a lot to do, and I could easily see returning there some day to hit up the many places we missed in our 3 days in Edinburgh.

Where we stayed: We booked an AirBnB on Drumdryan Street. While the apartment itself was serviceable but unremarkable, the location was excellent. We were only a short walk from the Grassmarket area and the Royal Mile. The area was cool with a lot of different dining options — Thai, Greek, Spanish, Chinese, Indian, etc.

Reminder: If you are considering booking at AirBnB for the first time, please consider using my referral link. You’ll get $40 in travel credit when you sign up, and I get $20 for our future travels. Win-win, no? Here’s the code: www.airbnb.com/c/kaseyh50

What we ate: Eh. I wouldn’t so much described food as one of Scotland’s strong suits, if we’re being honest. (Even Oink, a place famous for takeaway pulled pork sandwiches, pretty much got a ‘meh’ from us). However, if you are going I’d suggest hitting Wings,  a small restaurant on Fishmarket Close (near the Royal Mile) for — you guessed it — chicken wings. We also got Thai takeaway two nights in a row from a Thai place right next to our AirBnB called Thailander. The fact that we went there twice should probably tell you what you need to know about how tasty it was. (And affordable too, which made a nice change …)

If you are wondering, only Chris would try Scotland’s famous haggis (which he deemed “not bad at all”), but we all tried its national drink, Irn-Bru. I didn’t much care for its over-the-top sweetness, but Chris and the kids liked it a lot.

How we got around: Edinburgh was an incredibly walkable city, so even though we had a rental car with us (for various boring reasons), it stayed in a parking garage the whole time. We never even bothered to find out about public transit because nowhere was more than a 30 minute walk at the absolute most and walking is our preferred way to see any city.

And finally …

What we did in Edinburgh with kids:

Day 1: Harry Potter and hot wings 

As I mentioned, we geeked out pretty hard on Victoria Street. Beyond that, we mostly walked around checking out parts of the Royal Mile and stopping at places like Advocate’s Close to see some great views.

If you are unfamiliar with the term, close is a Scottish word for small, narrow alleys that lead off the main street, mostly ending in gardens or dead ends. You’ll see tons of these labeled as you walk around Edinburgh.

We also spotted JK Rowling’s hands along the way! They are just off the Royal Mile near the Edinburgh City Chambers.

Afterward, we had dinner at Wings, which, as I mentioned, was one of the few restaurants that we heartily recommend in Edinburgh. It also had a lot of fun decor to keep all four of us amused.

Day 2: Edinburgh Castle, Royal Mile, Dynamic Earth

“It seemed as if the rock and castle assumed a new aspect every time I looked at them; and Arthur’s Seat was perfect witchcraft. I don’t wonder that anyone residing in Edinburgh should write poetically.” -Washington Irving, author of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1817.

It was hard not to stop at stare at Edinburgh Castle every time the buildings around us opened up for us to catch a glimpse (though sadly I don’t think this trip has made me any better at poetry). Naturally then, we kicked off our first full day of our 3 days in Edinburgh with a visit to Edinburgh Castle.

As you can see, Edinburgh Castle is perched atop a cliff (appropriately called Castle Rock), in what is obviously a pretty good defensive position. There’s evidence that it has been occupied since at least the 2nd century AD, and there’s been a castle there since at least the reign of David I in the 12th century. It’s one of the oldest continuously-occupied defensive structures in Europe.

We went to Edinburgh Castle in the morning, which I’d recommend as it is the most popular tourist attraction in Edinburgh. I’d also suggest buying tickets ahead of time, which we did not do because I’d been worried about the weather report and consequently we had to wait in line for a while. We opted to take the free guided tour, which is advertised as leaving “on the hour” but seems to actually happen about every 10 minutes. It was excellent, and I’d highly recommend it! It is pretty short, perhaps 30 to 40 minutes, but during that time the guide gives you a lot of history of the castle and Scotland in general. The guide does not actually take you into any of the buildings, but lets you know what everything is so you can explore on your own afterward. It’s a solid system, giving you the overview of what everything is and some fun historical tidbits, but then letting you actually look at your own pace.

For me, visiting this castle (and, later in the week, Stirling Castle) aligned perfectly with my other major “thing:” British history. Seeing places that have shown up in so many books I’ve read, both histories and historical fiction, always makes me happy.

So, there’s a lot to see at Edinburgh Castle. We spent more than two hours there, and still didn’t catch it all. Highlights, though, included seeing the Royal Apartments — once home to the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots — as well as seeing the crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny. This stone, otherwise known as the Stone of Scone, is a chunk of sandstone that was used in Scottish coronations before being captured by the English and made part of their coronation throne. It wasn’t returned to Scotland until 1996, but now it will remain in Edinburgh Castle except for when London needs to borrow it for a future coronation.

Edinburgh Castle is also home to the Scottish National War Memorial, built to commemorate the Scots who died in the First World War. It later expanded to include those killed in World War II, and then the soldiers killed in subsequent conflicts. The names of these soldiers are listed in books placed all over the the memorial, and you can leaf through them and read some of the 200,000 or so listed. Names continue to be added to the lists.

We were also there to hear the 1 p.m. “time cannon” shot every day at that time, except for Sundays, Christmas and Good Friday. The purpose of the blast was to alert mariners in the Firth of Forth of the time, as is common in other port cities. In other places, such gun usually signal at noon. Our guide maintained that the reason 1 p.m. was the selected time for the shot from Edinburgh Castle was because it was cheaper to shoot one ball signaling 1 p.m., rather than 12 shots to signal noon.

Edinburgh Castle marks the end of the Royal Mile, the “main drag” in Old Town Edinburgh that links the castle and Holyrood Palace, the current residence of Queen Elizabeth II when she is in the city. We were interested in walking down the historic streets, but our ultimate destination was a museum called Dynamic Earth.

To my surprise, Dynamic Earth ended up being the kids’ favorite thing — not bad, considering it almost didn’t make it onto our 3 days in Edinburgh itinerary! The museum was very interactive and engaging for the kids as it basically told the story of the history of the earth. Right off the bat it started with inviting you into a “time machine” elevator, then guides gently guided you from place to place. We learned about the formation of the earth, ancient creatures and more through a series of interactive museum displays (include a giant chunk of glacier ice you could touch) and iMax-style movies during the experience. It wasn’t quite like anything we’ve done before, and we loved it!

This museum is one my kids have consistently been talking about since we got back, so if you are a planning a trip to Edinburgh with kids, I’d suggest you look into it!

From that end of the Royal Mile we had a pretty good view of Arthur’s Seat, the highest of the hills surrounding Edinburgh. We’d had ambitions to walk up there for ages but ultimately didn’t end up doing it this trip, in large part because I either fractured or badly strained my ribs during a bout of bronchitis a few weeks before the trip and was still struggling with it at the time. Next time!

Day 3: National Museum of Scotland and MORE HARRY POTTER. 

I’ve mentioned before that Owen is our little museum enthusiast; long after the rest of us have exhausted our interest in a place, Owen will be begging for just one more exhibit. The National Museum of Scotland was no exception.

This museum was great and, even better, free. (Donations welcome). It reminded me a lot of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, though in addition to those topics the museum also had galleries dedicated to the natural world, space, world cultures and fashion. There was a ton of hands-on stuff for the kids to do, including a children’s playroom, so it was a good spot for the whole family. Unless of course you are the type to be disconcerted by seeing a toy you played with as a kid in a museum. coughcoughCHRIScoughcough.

I would say it is an excellent stop if you are heading to Edinburgh with kids, and especially if you are caught in the rain and looking for an indoor activity.

Another benefit: it is a 3-minute walk from the museum to BrewDog, a nice spot to grab a beer after you’ve spent the morning being dragged through a massive museum by an excited 5-year-old.

As our 3 days in Edinburgh started with Harry Potter stuff, obviously it had to end the same way. Because symmetry. Our final big activity was hitting the Potter Trail, a donations-based walking tour that brought us through all the most important Harry Potter-related sites in Edinburgh.

I loved it. Chris did not. Owen liked the first part, but got tired. Fiona fell asleep.

Mixed reviews, I guess, but if you are a HP fan I can confidently predict you’ll enjoy yourself. Same deal if you happen to be a person who just likes waving around wands and magically changing the crossing lights with a spell, as we learned to do. Or competing for house points, as our group also did (Gryffindor won, obviously).

The tour meets by the Greyfriars Bobby, a statue of a terrier who gained fame by sitting by his master’s grave for 14 years. To join the tour, you simply have to show up at the statute at the appointed time (which depends on the time of year — check the website for details).

The tour took us into the Greyfriars Kirkyard, an old cemetary where our girl Jo used to walk through while she was living in Edinburgh and writing the first of the books.

…which included seeing the grave of TOM RIDDLE! GASP!

Ok, so it is spelled differently. And there’s no real indication that this guy was a Dark wizard. But still, it is now one of the most photographed graves in the world, at least according to our wonderful guide, who was extremely enthusiastic and amusing. He also had a lot of stories for us about Jo Rowling, including a surprising amount of trivia that I didn’t already know.

This is the cafe that advertises itself as the “birthplace of Harry Potter,” but actually she didn’t start writing here until around the second or third books. The real birth place of Harry Potter was the Spoon cafe below, formerly known as Nicolson’s Cafe, which was owned by Rowling’s brother-in-law at the time. Contrary to some media reports, Rowling didn’t write in cafes because she “couldn’t afford to heat her apartment.” She just liked writing there while her infant daughter napped. 

I found the whole thing extremely fun and interesting, well worth an hour and a half of our time. If you’ve got Harry Potter fans in your family, then I’d suggest putting it on your Edinburgh with kids itinerary.

So, that about does it for our trip to Edinburgh. Overall, I really loved this city! There was a lot we didn’t have time to see, but that just means we’ll need to make a plan to go back some day.

By the way, if you think this was a lot of Harry Potter in one post and that maybe I’m a little nuts, well — I’ll leave you with this. On the flight from Berlin, I ended up stranded with Fiona at the front of the plane while everyone else got off because Fi had a bathroom emergency. Consequently I got to spend a solid 10 minutes talking to a flight attendant who turned out to be a big Harry Potter fan as well, and he basically told me where to find JK Rowling’s home and preferred grocery store.

We had the information, we had a car and we totally could have gently stalked my hero. But we didn’t!

So how nuts could I actually be?

The post 3 days in Edinburgh with kids: Harry Potter and history first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 3 days in Edinburgh with kids: Harry Potter and history appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Hey there! Sorry for the silence, but it’s been for a good reason (and, once we returned early Thursday morning, a not-so-good reason). We’ve been on our most ambitious trip yet: 12 days in Berlin, Scotland and (briefly) Potsdam during a long layover on the way home. It was everything I hoped it would be!

By the way, if you are wondering why we went with Berlin and Scotland on the same trip? Flight availability, basically. There were no decent options for getting to Scotland from Catania, so I’d been trying to come up with Frankenstein-esque itineraries that involved us flying into various London airports and then flying/driving/taking the train to get up north. This idea appealed to me somewhat if we were going to stay in London for a couple days; Chris and I have been there before but the kids haven’t, and obviously there are tons of things to do in London. Still, doing that would have meant wasting a lot of time in transit and having fewer days for Scotland, so Chris suggested we check to see what the choices were from Berlin. Since Berlin was on our list for this year, he figured that it could be a two-birds-one-stone situation. As it turned out, they had direct flights to Edinburgh for about 40 euro. SOLD.

So, I’ll get into individual posts on our stops as time allows. But in the meantime, here’s a look at our 3-day itinerary for Berlin and our 8-day itinerary for Scotland:

3 days in Berlin

What we did/saw in Berlin: 

-Brandenburg Gate

-Tiergarten, playgrounds and beer gardens

-East Side Gallery

-Berlin Zoo

-Berlin Aquarium

-Food tour with the Bitemojo app

-Stone Brewery (fabulous!)

Where we stayed: The Berlin Marriott Hotel, located very near Potsdamer Platz. We used 120,000 Marriott points to book three nights at this hotel and were very pleased with it, especially since they let us check in four hours early and had a pool that the kids really enjoyed. It was a good reminder of all the reasons hotels are wonderful (clean towels every day? WHAT LUXURY). However, sharing a room with the kids also reminded me why we don’t usually share a room with the kids if we can help it.

What we loved: In a word, everything. We had a relaxing three days in this city that centered around eating, drinking and doing stuff that was fun for the kids, like visiting the playgrounds in the Tiergarten and the zoo. We enjoyed the German efficiency, the variety of food choices (read: not just Italian) and the fact that literally everyone spoke English. Basically, we want to move there. We’re already considering going back.

8 days in Scotland

Our itinerary: 

Days 1-3: Edinburgh, where we went on a Harry Potter tour, bought wands in the “real” Diagon Alley, visited Edinburgh Castle, walked down the Royal Mile and saw two great museums, National Museum of Scotland and Dynamic Earth.

Day 4: Visited Stirling Castle, one of the most important castles in Scottish history. Drove to the charming seaside village of Oban for a one-night stay.

Day 5: Visited the Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary in Oban. Spent a little time in the town of Fort William en route to the town of Balmacara, near the Isle of Skye.

Day 6: Took in the incredible scenery at the Isle of Skye, the largest island of the Inner Hebrides. We surprised ourselves by making a much harder than expected hike to the famous Old Man of Storr. “Only slightly strenuous,” my ass. We spent the night at the same AirBnB in Balmacara, located only a couple miles from Eilean Donan castle.

Day 7: Visited Loch Ness and hey! We found Nessy! We took a cruise on the loch and visited Urquhart Castle. We ended the day with a drive to Pitlochry.

Day 8: Relaxed day in Pitlochry, with sleeping in, nice walks around the city and a visit to the Blair Athol Distillery.

Where we stayed: All AirBnBs! While they certainly weren’t as luxurious as the Marriott, it was nice for the kids to have their own room.

What we loved: The incredible scenery! The Highlands were almost other-worldly — we’d be cruising along on what is clearly a road and we’d see other cars, but it would feel like we were absolutely in the middle of nowhere. It was like nothing we’ve ever seen before. We kept going, “WHERE ARE WE.” (And not just because the GPS didn’t always work in the Highlands, ha).

The post 12 days in Berlin and Scotland first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 12 days in Berlin and Scotland appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.