Year: 2020

Today we went to a palace. Yes, a real live palace, I don’t think Azelie could have been more excited! 

The Palace of Holyrood House is still in use by the queen of England and is full of history of Scotland, well, the English side of things that is. I was so impressed with their audio tour options for kids, C and A could navigate them easily and were enthralled. Caidoc was especially pleased with being able to lead himself around and was astounded at the size of the dining room. Azelie saw a portrait of the queen and was surprised that, “she was so old. But that’s okay, she still does a good job running this place!” Hahah! 

We only have pictures of the outside since photography is not allowed on the inside. But I have to tell you, seeing Mary Queen of Scots room that she lived in for awhile was a TRIP! First of all, I almost died of claustrophobia going up her stairway, these people must have been Caidoc’s size. And her bed was bitty!! How did people this small build castles?! When you tour the palace you only see part of it naturally, the historical portraits, tapestries, carvings, and various special items such as a locket given to Mary by her second husband Darnley and a lock of Mary’s hair (they think). The rest of the palace is still in use by the queen and her family. It was pretty cool to walk up the grand staircase where many popes, presidents, and other officials have walked to have meetings with the queen, not to mention Mary queen of Scots herself!

The kids absolutely loved the tour and it really made it easy for Chris and I take it all in. Cosima slept in the Ergo the whole time.

Attached to the palace is the ruins of Holyrood Abbey. I find it sad it wasn’t kept up like the palace BUT I won’t go into that now. 

It. Was. Beautiful. On the audio tour your little screen does a live reconstruction of it, so you can see how much bigger it really was. It was totally gorgeous, still is actually. 

The palace has a family room, which is a interactive space for kids to play so we went there as well. 

After we finished that tour we went back for rest and lunch before starting off on another hike. 

Below Arther’s Seat is another hike called Salisbury Craig so we did that in the afternoon. It’s a much milder hike than Arther’s Seat but still had amazing views. At the foot of the path was a replica of an original well called St. Margaret’s Well.

We are getting all our mandatory hikes in before the rain starts in a day or two. I’m grateful it’s been this nice for so long! 

After our hike we went back to our Airbnb where I held down the fort while chris exchanged our rental car, the rental company gave us the wrong one. Check in tomorrow for one of our most exciting days yet- CASTLE DAY ! 

Ps. Please excuse all the spelling and grammar errors, as I am attempting to get each day down while it is still fresh in my mind and don’t have much time to edit. Time enough for that later!

We made it! Our epic trip, several years in the making, finally became a reality and we are loving Scotland. We are so proud of Caidoc, Azelie, and Cosima, who all handled the long flights so well. Much to my surprise, Cosima had the least amount of difficulty on the flights, however that might be to due to being in the Ergo, or being nursed the whole time. She also was completely unfazed by pressure of the ears. Azelie was very tired, but remained so positive and cheerful. Caidoc, who refused to sleep, has retained his title of the Lidless Eye. He was a trooper despite the multiple time changes and wake time of about 20 hours.
There were several other kids and babies on our flights which was very reassuring! We even came across a Seattle mom, with a eight month old, on her way to join her husband and two year old in west Africa, where they are in the process of adopting her niece. You can meet the coolest people on airplanes!

Our first five hours on the ground were fairly eventful. Our Airbnb host decided that we couldn’t check in early after all. After a sleepless transatlantic flight with three kids, you can imagine we were not thrilled. I had also started to feel odd on our last flight. After we packed up our car I started to feel worse and I the kids were rapidly falling apart. Chris was a champ navigating the roads as we tried to figure out what to do till we could get into our Airbnb. I had started to throw up and have other terrible sickness symptoms so we checked into a hostel for a few hours. All the kids went to sleep which, while this was a bummer for adjusting to the time zone, it worked out well for me so that I could take care of myself in the bathroom which was about two feet from the bed where the kids slept. I was pretty useless to to poor Chris (who was heroic, running around finding parking and a place to crash) because I was shaking uncontrollably. I had guessed what was going on pretty quickly; my kidney tubes can’t handle any extra pressure on them for long periods, something I discovered with my pregnancy with Azelie. And I guess the Ergo was too tight for too long. Well, after a couple hours I felt right as rain, and we woke up the kids and got to our Airbnb. We left the bags and went to the grocery store, just about a five minute walk away, and loaded up on all the essentials. We cooked dinner and crashed for the night.

The next day was fantastic! The weather has been incredible since we’ve been here, we haven’t seen a drop of rain. It’s been crystal clear and chilly. We walked the Royal Mile, and visited St Giles cathedral, which were just so beautiful! It was a great way to start our trip. We have planned this trip extensively, and have pre planned different locations grouped together by distance so this day was very efficient, using on our of pre planned “ Edinburgh days” that would be best with good weather.

Since it is so close, we also went to the Elephant House, were J.K Rowling wrote part of the second Harry Potter book! Talk about fun! The kids got treats, and the parents got coffee. The bathroom walls are covered in Harry Potter fans graffiti, and you can bet I signed the wall too. 

Of course we also had to walk down to Victoria Street that inspired Rowling to invent Diagon Alley!

After our walk, we headed back to our Airbnb, had lunch and quiet time. We’ve divided most of our days into mornings and afternoons, since we are doing most of our meals here, and we all need some down time in between events. 

Our afternoon brought us our hike to Arthur’s Seat! We loved this hike! It was challenging but gorgeous! We walked from our Airbnb to the hike and inadvertently took the most difficult but shortest way up. Did I mention Cosima has been taking all her naps on our outings? It’s working great so far. 

On our way down from the hike we took a different path in order to see this ruin of St. Anthonys chapel. The kids were SO excited and Chris and I were on cloud nine visiting the first ruins of our Scotland trip!

The we walked back to Airbnb which is about four minutes walk from this hike. We made dinner, and the kids wrote about the day in these awesome journals I found for them to have on this trip!

I have more pictures I hope to attached to these posts eventually, but for neither this is it for day one and two. Check back tomorrow for day three!