Edinburgh, Scotland

A three day weekend calls for a new destination.  We jumped on the train and headed north on Friday to Edinburgh, Scotland.  It’s about a 5 hour journey by train so not too bad of a trip.  The journey started off just fine.  We had dinner and Brady was contently watching movies on the iPad.  I decided it would be nice to have a glass of wine to kick of our holiday weekend.    All was going well until I decided to reach across the table and knocked the entire full glass on my new shirt.  I was completely drenched and my luck it was red wine.  On the plus side, if I was on a plane I would have had to sit in my drenched clothes until the plane landed.  However, since we were on a train, my bag was conveniently just a few rows away from me and I had an extra set of clothes to change into.  Bonus, when we got to Scotland we bought some stain remover and was able to get the stain out.  

Edinburgh is a beautiful city with scenic views.  One thing that I thought was neat is the different elevations.  As you walk down the streets there are various alleys and staircases that will take you to an entirely different area that’s either below or above where you are walking at.  Like all good UK cities, there of course were castles, numerous churches and museums.  Saturday wasn’t great weather, but it was tolerable.  It was in the low 50s so fairly cool for late May, but the more annoying part was that the sun would be out and it was start raining, then the sun would go behind the clouds and it would get really cool.  It did this on and off all day. 

On Saturday, we walked the Royal Mile, took pictures of the Scotland Castle and of Holyrood, which is one of the Queen’s official residences .  We keep things pretty low-key and decided not to do all of the touristy activities and just took some pictures from outside.  At this point, we’ve decided we have seen the interiors of enough castles to last a few years at least.  I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that  the castle has some very nice tapestries, over sized furniture and art work.

Brady has done a lot of traveling since we’ve moved to the UK and while he is always a good sport it hasn’t always been full of kid activities.  This weekend we kept asking him what HE wanted to do.  His typical response is “kid things”.  When we asked him what kind of ‘kid things’ he had in mind he said he wanted to go to a park.   Before lunch on Saturday we stopped and visited our first park of the weekend.  (many more parks to come)  It started raining so I voted that we go for some indoor shopping. 

On Sunday we wanted to go down by the coast.  We could see it from our hotel, but it was a good 3 mile walk away.  I wish I could say that we had a lovely walk down to the water, however we were walking in 50+ mile an hour wind gusts with sand and dirt hitting us in the face.  It wasn’t all a waste, but the walk in itself was a little miserable.   At one point we were both stopped in our tracks by an extremely strong wind gust.  Scotland is known for being windy and Sunday just happened to be an EXTREMELY windy day.  We did make it down to the water and saw her Majesty's boat Britannia, which was a royal yacht that was used for 696 foreign visits.  On a positive note, I spotted a nice mall which we were able to spend some quality time enjoying.  Inside the mall they had a huge kid play zone place that you could pay to go to.  Brady was quick to spot it and reminded us that we needed to do ‘kid things’ so we checked it out and he had a great time.  Despite the horrible winds we went ahead and walked back.  On our walk back we found a couple more parks to continue on with the ‘kid things’ theme.

Monday morning we had a nice big breakfast, enjoyed some Starbucks and set back for our London home.  We were a bit nervous about 1 hour into the train journey as our train was having 'break issues', but the train recovered and we were only about 10 mins delayed.

Last but not least, Brady enjoying some quality iPad time in the hotel.  I'm pretty sure I need another one as he thinks he owns this one.

Ann & Katie Visit

Thanks for visiting!  We had fun spending the week with you both.

Cambridge

This past week we enjoyed the company of Katie & Ann.  They both were interested in seeing one of the University towns and we had not yet been to Cambridge so it was our chosen destination.  It wasn't a very pretty day, 50s & overcast, but we we still enjoyed the town.

I had always thought that Oxford was more prestigous than Cambridge, but I quickly learned this was not the case from our visit to Cambridge.  Cambridge has been ranked #1 in the world for the last two years in the World University Rankings.  Graduates from Cambridge have also won 61 Nobel prizes.  There are too many famous graduates to list them all but a few include: Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.

There is so much history within the town and within each of the colleges.  The University system is very different from those in the US.  The University is divided into various "colleges", but they are not aligned by courses of study like they are in the US.  The colleges are self governed and have oversight of housing, undergradute teaching, social funtions, etc.  I am not by far an expert, but my impression was that the colleges are also very closely tied to tradition and social status.  Some of the more famous colleges that you may have heard of are Kings College, Trinity College and St. Johns College.

One of the traditional activities to do in Cambridge is to go punting.  Despite it being a little on the cool side Katie, Cory, Brady and I went on a punting tour.  Our punter was very entertaining and seeing the colleges from the boat was definately the highlight of the trip. Brady was really good on the boat until we had about 10 minutes left and he thought it would be fun to feed the ducks by throwing various snack foods overboard.  Fortunately all went well and everyone stayed dry.

Five Little Monkeys

This song is quite fitting for Brady since he is our little monkey.  These days he prefers to be climbing or jumping over any other activities.  It's a bit hard on my nerves as our 2.5 year old thinks he's 5 and has no issues playing on the 'big' kid playgrounds, climbing up ladders, jumping off walls, you name it.

Ireland

My grandparents visited this past week and to fulfill a lifelong dream of my grandma's we headed to Ireland.  My grandma was hoping to trace down her ancestral routes while Cory & grandpa were hoping to taste pints with the locals and maybe spot a leprechaun.  We started our trip in Dublin. We had a nice walking tour stopping by Dublin Castle, Trinity College, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Christ Church, Brazen Head Pub (the oldest put in Ireland and the Guinness Storehouse. We spend the most time in the Guinness Storehouse.  I personally am not a Guinness fan.  I made every attempt to drink and enjoy the beers that were given on the tour, but am sad to report I was not able to finish it.  I do have a new found appreciation for the art of beer making and can say that I learned how to do the perfect pour.

Day two we headed back to the Dublin Airport to pick up our rental car.  Cory had agreed to chauffeur us around the country and was a bit nervous about his debut driving on the left hand side of the road.  He did a great job, but we did have one funny incident worth sharing.  On our first leg of the drive we had a toll booth to stop at.  Cory pulls up to the toll booth on the left hand side and the attendant was sitting on the right hand side waving at us.  There were about 4 cars behind us waiting for us to back up and pull up to the correct side.  The lady said Cory was definitely not the first to make this mistake and it happens all the time.  She was getting a pretty good laugh from the situation.

On our drive we stopped at Cashel and visited the Rock of Cashel.  The Rock of Cashel is actually a church/castle that was home to the various leaders of the time, but got it's name because it sits up high on a rocky hill.   There is a lot of history here and it was interesting to learn more about it.

After our stop at Cashel, we got back on the road to head to Cobh, our destination for the evening.  Cobh was a very picturesque town that was on the Celtic Sea.  It is actually the second largest harbor in the world next to Sydney, Australia.  We found a nice place to have dinner overlooking the Sea.  After dinner we stopped by our hotel bar and they happened to have a traditional Irish band playing.  They weren't exactly great singers, but they had so much fun playing and singing that it was fun to watch.

Blarney was our next stop on the tour.  It was a necessity to make a stop at the Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney stone.  I was imagining a big rock on the ground, but it is actually a wall on the top of the castle where you have to lay down and have someone assist you to make sure you don't plummet to the ground.  I will say that I think I may have sprouted my first grey hair at the Blarney Castle. (just waiting for it to show up any day now)  We decided to take Brady up with us and there were about eight flights of winding stone stairs.  Each flight and floor had various spots where a two year old could easily climb and fall out.  I have never been scared of heights, but climbing castles that are over 500 years old with a two year old adds a new element to the experience.  Fortunately Cory was much calmer than I was and was able to ensure we safely made it up and down.

Our B&B for the next two nights was in Killarney.  Outside of touring the area, a highlight of the B&B was they had AMAZING breakfasts.  We haven't stayed at too many B&Bs in the past, but I will say that the food at all of them was much better than what you would get at a Hampton Inn or Embassy Suites buffet.   After our amazing breakfasts of lemmon pancakes, porridge with cream & baileys, scrambled eggs and bacon, we set out for the Ring of Kerry.  The Ring of Kerry is a picturesque peninsula that takes about three - four hours to drive.  We made many stops to soak in the scenery.

For our last night we headed north to Bunratty which is near the Shannon airport.  We went to the Bunratty castle for the afternoon.  It was a little different than some of the other castles as it also had a 1800s village to walk through.  The village contained all sorts of replicas of houses, farms, shops, etc.  Brady enjoyed the animals and thought it would be fun to feed the chickens M&Ms.  Probably not their normal diet, but I'm sure there's worse things they could eat.

All in all we had a great vacation and enjoyed sharing the experience with my grandparents.