EuroTrip : Easter in Edinburgh

As you can probably tell from the lack of interesting blog posts the past few months, we've been bundled up in our flat, hiding from the wet winter weather and living the daily routine life of any other family in any part of the world. Lane successfully got through his "busy season" at work and is enjoying the break from the late hours he put in January through March. I've been shuffling Avery to school, Stella to playgroups and trying to come up with entertaining ideas to keep all of us girls sane during these cold winter months (coldest winter in London in 25+ years!).  We've all survived, saw the light at the end of the dark winter tunnel and kicked off the spring season with our first euro trip outside of London on Easter weekend to Edinburgh Scotland.

Thanks to the UK's bank holiday schedule, Lane got two days off of work, which allowed us to take a nice long weekend away.  Edinburgh, though really cold, was pleasantly sunny while we were there and had many things to keep our family entertained. We struggled on some "adventures" out of the hotel, and were surprised at how much we enjoyed others.

Lane and Avery on the terrace outside of Edinburgh Castle. These smiles didn't last long ( this was a part of the trip that was not so successful!)

The views of the castle, high up on the hill over looking Edinburgh, and the views from the castle looking over the city were fantastic.

Avery appropriately pretending she was a prisoner in the castle... If I had my choice that day, I would have left her in the dungeon we toured.... ah, touring Europe with small children. We've learned you can only convince them to be interested in looking at old buildings for so long before they breakdown.

Even though she acted like a royal pain, she still suckered us into buying the way too expensive, piece of junk cardboard castle at the end of the tour. ( I gave in as I was seriously not thinking I was ever going to leave our hotel room again on the trip and she would need something to play with... it was that bad).

Thankfully, the castle was day one of our trip and after that fiasco, we enjoyed the rest of the trip with relative ease. 

Visit to the former yacht of the British monarchy - HRM Brittania 

Souvenir shopping along the Royal Mile... actually 1.4 mile of countless cashmere and wool scarf shops, restaurants, pubs and tourist activities that stretches from Edinburgh Castle to Holyrood Palace.

Paying our respects to Greyfriar's Bobby. It has been told that this dog, after countless attempts to keep him away, fought his way to his master's graveside nightly to be close to him. 

National Museum of Scotland. There are a lot of fabulous museums here in London, but this museum was the best, family friendly museum I have ever been to - which we were so thankful for. The girls had a blast! Though this picture doesn't show the museum at all... I wanted to show that Stella actually got out of her buggy here and therefore warranted her very own action shot..

She usually looks like this:

We stayed on the Holyrood Palace side of the royal mile, and got some pretty great views of the city and the palace when we climbed up the extinct volcano next to the palace, Arthur's Seat.... though our child limitations only allowed us to hike about 1/4 of the way to the top.

And to end our weekend in Edinburgh, on Easter Sunday we set up an egg hunt in the graveyard next to our hotel.... a little morbid yes, but it also felt oddly appropriate due to the celebration of Christ's rising.

Guess who was the victim of a plastic egg robbery from a certain older sister?

We had a wonderful family holiday in Edinburgh and would love to go back some day ( in warm weather!). We learned a great deal about how our family is more than capable of surviving traveling around Europe and look forward to our next big adventure at the end of April when we go to Paris!

Thanks Scotland for the hospitality,
~L, L, A & S