The Long Adventures

When reflecting on our trip to Edinburgh in May 2018, my first thought always is that we didn’t have enough time. This is followed closely by ‘maybe we should go again!’ sentiments. We traveled to Edinburgh for my best friend Lauren’s wedding. You can read more about that here. I made the decision to fly in a few days ahead of everyone based purely on flight costs; however, this decision definitely made our trip more enjoyable because those first days of acclimating to the time change were rough!

One should keep in mind that this Edinburgh trip was the first time in Europe for all of us so I had no clue how to pack or what to expect. I’d also just had Theo three months ago at this point. None of my children are champion sleepers so I was beyond sleep deprived. I was furthermore disoriented from being in a new country and battling a five hour time change while still having to be a mom. Lastly, I was also feeling stressed due to the upcoming wedding because as maid of honor, I wanted to make sure I did everything in my power to help give Lauren the beautiful wedding she deserved.

It was so hard.

Dishoom’s bottomless chai’s. A must try at least once!

I was amused at the smaller sizes of soda. I actually enjoyed this amount.. seemed less obscene than a 2L bottle.

A view of Edinburgh Castle from our taxi.

The first few days that we were in Scotland, I was just in survival mode.. hence all of my feelings about not being able to enjoy it fully and wanting to go again. Also because even though I was beyond exhausted and running on fumes mentally, I was still able to register how magical Scotland was. I wanna to go back!

I wasn’t particularly interested in doing Edinburgh castle with a five year old while baby wearing a chunky three month old and carrying a diaper bag so we only enjoyed the castle from a distance. There’s a significant decrease in meltdowns if Ava’s just given the opportunity to explore the outdoors so Dean Village and Calton Hill were high on my to see list.

Exploring Dean Village was a very peaceful experience. It was our first outing after finally defeating jet lag and the perfect remedy to all the chaos from overseas traveling with young children. If memory serves me correct, there weren’t any restaurants or shops within Dean Village. It’s just a quaint little residential area to walk around. I’m low-key jealous of those who are lucky enough to live in such a place. I would suggest ditching the strollers if you’d like to explore Dean Village. Baby wear those that are little enough and let the older children walk. There’s so much to see that they’ll most likely be content to walk on their own anyway.

Edinburgh New Town is relatively flat. I wouldn’t have any issues pushing our stroller through that area although we opted to baby wear Theo as much as possible for the sake of going at a faster pace. Edinburgh Old Town is situated on hilly areas with a lot of steps when you walk through any close. I would avoid bringing a stroller around this area for less headaches. We found ourselves on Princes Street quite a bit just because it was a pretty central location to a lot of things we wanted to check out and there are also a lot of shops and restaurants in the area.

Old Town felt very touristy. This is where you can find shops to buy souvenirs, Scottish totchkes, etc. As for dining there, I’d suggest researching in advance and possibly even making reservations. We had a party of 6 and were turned away from several places for lunch because of the size or because we had children and the restaurants didn’t have the appropriate licenses to have children because of liquor laws. We also happened to be in Edinburgh at a time where the sun was out for a good amount of time and the temperature lingered in the pleasant 70s so maybe we were just fighting a losing battle due to an influx of people outside? Who knows for sure.

Alex, I’ll take ‘Shop Names That Make You Go Hmm for 500'..

When we’re in NYC, my rule of thumb is anything 1 mile and under we’ll walk. Anything over 1 mile, we take public transportation. I followed that rule while we were in Edinburgh and found that it worked well for us. Unlike NYC, I found Edinburgh’s Lothian buses to be very dependable and clean. You can read more about Lothian bus pricing here. We opted for purchasing the family tickets during our trip.

Mitchell has never been able to navigate NYC’s subways without me; however, in Edinburgh, he was able to get from EDI to Cringletie House Hotel (24 miles away) without getting lost once. He took an Edinburgh tram from EDI to Edinburgh city center and then took a Borders bus to Cringletie. To me, that speaks volumes of how straightforward and dependable Edinburgh’s public transportation is. I’d suggest downloading the apps for public transportation beforehand and purchasing tickets through your phone.

The walk up to Calton Hill is a calf burning ascent. I would definitely ditch the stroller for this outing if you can. We did see a family pushing a double stroller up although you could plainly see the parents weren’t thrilled in doing so. I wasn’t expecting such beautiful, sweeping views of the city and sea at the top.

If I could summarize what I’ve learned from our Edinburgh trip it’s:

Pack light. I packed a Samsonite 24 inch hardside spinner luggage for each of us (that’s four total baby). Then there was Theo’s travel crib, 2 car seats, a stroller, 2 carry on spinners, Mitchell’s backpack and a diaper bag. I can sense everyone who has traveled to Europe at least once cringing while reading this list. Oh yeah, it was rough and it was bad. Not only is it a ton of stuff to move every time we went to a different place to stay, getting a taxi that was big enough to accommodate all of our gear was tough and expensive. In retrospect, I would’ve done maybe one spinner at most plus a duffel bag with a trolley sleeve so that we could plop it on top of the spinner, 1 carry on spinner at most, plus the baby items. Pack light!
Prepare for most places to close early. Is this common knowledge? It wasn’t common knowledge to me! I guess nearly everything closes by 6 p.m. in Edinburgh. My girlfriend said that one of her Scottish friends explained its because Scots believe in a balance between work life and personal life. Given our experience with Mitchell’s grueling surgical residency hours, we laughed and laughed and cried a little. Can we move to Scotland?
Don’t pack enough diapers and wipes for your entire trip. Pack light!! Diapers and wipers were easy to locate wherever we went. I read a comment elsewhere that babies live practically everywhere - you should be able to find diapers and wipes easily - and I think it’s quite true. Theo was solely breastfed at this point so I can’t comment on formula or baby food although I can’t see it being very different. Babies need to eat too!
Prepare to baby wear. I like to think we’re pretty used to navigating NYC’s subway system (notoriously not very ADA compliant) and uneven sidewalks with a stroller but Edinburgh’s streets were a new beast to contend with. Plus Edinburgh shops and restaurants are on the small size like NYC ones are. If you can, I’d look into ditching the strollers unless you really need one. We had a Babyzen yoyo stroller that was configured to hold our Nuna Pipa carseat, just to give you an idea of what we were working with. I’d highly suggest considering our ‘ less than 1 mile, walk; greater than 1 mile, public transportation’ rule if you have young kids. 1 mile for us is generally a 20 minute walk with the kids. Anything more than 20 minutes and Ava generally starts getting cranky without a break at a playground or something similar.
Definitely pack a waterproof layer. We visited Iceland after Scotland so all of our outerwear was solid waterproof items. For our time in Scotland, I felt like the rain was more of a drizzle than an outright downpour. My mom was with us for the first few days of our time in Edinburgh. She preferred to carry and use an umbrella even though if it was a soft drizzle like a true Southern Californian. I felt like a waterproof jacket was more than adequate for myself and Ava. I carried a slim umbrella just in case but never felt compelled to use it. The weather can change relatively quickly.
Scotland is great with food allergies. Everything was labeled clearly on packaged foods. Many products even labeled gelatin (Ava is anaphylactic to beef) as an allergen, which I thought was great. Supermarkets had a good assortment of gluten-free items. Restaurants were very sensitive and gracious about handling Ava’s allergies. Again, can we move to Scotland?
Know the lingo. Even though it’s English.. it ain’t American English. I remember struggling to find the tether anchors in the taxi at the airport for the kids’ car seats and looking at the taxi driver with a blank face while he kept repeating, “Aye the ISOFIX? The ISOFIX.. it’s right there!” I learned quickly that LATCH is known as ISOFIX in Europe. I think that knowing easy, key words can help you out quickly. Loo instead of restroom, pram instead of stroller, etc. Mitchell and I would often catch each other’s eye in panic when we came across a Scot with a particularly thick accent. Don’t get me wrong, I love how it sounds! I was just three steps behind in trying to understand what was said and felt bad asking people to repeat themselves. Here’s a fun little video with a quick background on the Scots language. If reading is more your thing, I gave Lauren the Scots Edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone as a bridal shower present. I got myself a copy to read as well and it’s definitely worth trying to read through.