Scotland Days 10 - 15
Day Ten, August 7. Drove to Edinburgh with a stop in Stirling. Drew wanted to go to a games store in Stirling, and we figured while we were there we might as well go to Stirling Castle. Super glad we did because we had a great time! The weather was amazing, and we spent a couple of hours exploring the castle. Drew & I had been there previously but it was new to West. After Stirling we finished the drive to Edinburgh. It felt so good to park the car in a garage and know that I didn't have to drive for a few days! The Fringe Festival runs all month in August, so right away we landed in the midst of festival... festivities. Grabbed a quick snack among the food trucks and then dropped our stuff off at the little apartment we rented for our time in the city. The apartment (really just a small studio) is tucked into a close on the Royal Mile, very close to the castle. James Boswell lived in the building for a few years in the 1700s. We had a long walk to dinner, as we were booked for dinner at the Sheep Heid Inn, a place that claims to be the oldest surviving public house in Scotland, from the 1300s. It was a very nice dinner experience but a very long walk to get there. Had a bit of hard time getting a taxi back to the city center so we ended up getting an Uber instead, and made it back to the center in time for a two hour long ghost walk. West was a real trooper this day, I think we walked almost ten miles total that day. The ghost walk went down in the vaults (underground tunnels) of the city, and into the most haunted part of Greyfriars Kirkyard. Part of it totally freaked West out, poor kid.
Day Eleven, August 8. Started the day at Edinburgh Castle (another repeat for Drew & I but a first for West). It was really nice to explore it on the first timed entry of the day before it got really crowded. After that we went to Gladstone's Land (which was actually right next door to our little apartment), an old house that's done up in different time period styles. Drew and I went for a fancy lunch at The Witchery, a very fancy restaurant. So fancy that it had no food West would eat, so he happily stayed behind at the apartment for some quality time with his video games. After lunch we retrieved West and walked around the city. He really wanted a kilt, so we found a shop and got him a kilt. That evening we went on the Ghost Bus, which was fun but was not quite as much fun as the London Ghost Bus we'd done a few years ago. Still, a nice way to spend a couple of hours in an evening.
Day Twelve, August 9. Went to the National Museum of Scotland for a few hours, which was a lot of fun. That museum is huge and we didn't even see half of it! Had lunch on the roof patio of Cold Town House, possibly the most beautiful patio I've ever seen. After lunch we went to an improv show, "The Silliad," a show that we impulsively grabbed tickets for as a result of the improv guys desperately passing out flyers in the street. It was very fun and West had a good time. Then we went on a witch history walking tour, which was a little light on actual witch history, but still, we love a walking tour. We passed a poster advertising a run of Patti Harrison shows that we had previously not seen as part of the Fringe program, and we actually managed to grab a couple of tickets for the show that night (she's on I Think You Should Leave and her Fringe show has been getting great reviews, so we were shocked there were tickets left). West stayed behind at the apartment again because the show was defintely not kid-appropriate, and the show was fantastic.
Day Thirteen, August 10. Last day in Edinburgh! This was a day we'd set aside for maximum Fringe festival experience. Walked around town in the morning, stopped in at a used bookstore and a historic old chapel with a very eager docent. Then onto the first show of the day, a Glaswegian guy who told puns for an hour straight. The room was TINY, I think there were a dozen people crammed in and a bunch of people were turned away for lack of space. After that we had some time before our second show, so we found a shady table in the outdoor patio of a pub and got some drinks and snacks. Then onto the next show, a D&D themed improv. Again, super tiny space, but it was fun and West had a great time. After that we went to a food truck park and enjoyed the sun, some drinks, and more snacks. It was a gorgeous day, seriously, the weather was so great for almost all of this trip! In the evening Drew and I had tickets to two more shows that were not kid-friendly, so West had more solo time in the apartment (he had a working cell phone he could use in an emergency and we were not more than a 20 minute walk away at any time!). We saw Daniel Sloss workshopping new material and Alasdair Beckett-King, both totally hilarious. The Fringe festival has been a real bucket list thing for Drew and I for years, and I feel like we really had a great experience.
Day Fourteen, August 11. Last real day of vacation! We drove out of Edinburgh and stopped at Rosslyn Chapel. Then onto Traquair House, the oldest inhabited house in Scotland. A bunch of kings and queens visited the house through its history, and it had ties to Mary Queen of Scots. The actual lord and lady who own it actually live there, and some of the house is a museum people can visit. We toured through the museumy rooms, and as guests staying overnight in the house we theoretically had the ability to wander around it after hours, but that felt a little too weird to do. We did enjoy a nice sit in a very historical looking sitting room that was next to our bedroom. The house had some nice grounds, incluing a large hedge maze and some farm animals. We walked 20 minutes into the nearest town and had dinner at a restaurant there, then walked back to the house. Of course, the oldest inhabited house was totes haunted, but again, we saw no ghosts.
Day Fifteen, August 12. Just a full day of travel. Drove back to the Glasgow Airport, flew to Heathrow. We had a five hour layover, which feels like an eterinity when you're sitting in an airport, but we whiled away a few hours sitting in the airport Wetherspoons people watching. Uneventful flight back to Boston, and we were back at our house around midnight.
Whew! That was an almost perfect vacation! If we had not busted that tire on the way to Oban it really would have been 100% perfect. We had so much fun, it was everything I'd hoped for when we planned it three (!) years ago.