...as the show "Little Britain" and the movie "Trainspotting" may have you believe.
We embarked on our two-night trip to Edinburgh, Scotland early on the Monday morning of the half-term in October - I know, I know - another late blog post. Our first of three trains was to leave New Mills station at 10am. We took our pram (stroller), a large ruck sack (back pack) and one small luggage for all four of us. From our house, it is about a 20 minute walk to the station so we were thrilled when it was super sunny and the air was crisp. We even stopped off at the bakery for a take-away coffee for the ride.
Being 'foreign', we didn't anticipate just how reee-diculously busy these trains would be during half-term. Our first train was to Manchester and we weren't able to get any seats, but it's really only a 30 minute ride, so no big deal. At Piccadilly station, we were to catch a train headed to Blackpool, but only take it to Preston. Well, we navigated our pram through the station and downstairs to the platform only to find that a million other people were to catch the same connection. It wasn't looking good - there were just too many people and I really wasn't sure we were going to get on with our pram. We had told Liam before we left our house that it was going to be really important to stick together at the train stations, but Mum and Dad should have walked the talk. Mark suggested that he and Gemma (in the pram) go to the next set of doors to get on and Liam and I get on through the doors we were standing in front of. Liam and I got on and started to try to navigate our way to the doors where Mark and Gemma were going to be getting on when the porter outside said that the doors would be closing momentarily. I panickly (I may have just made that word up) looked outside someones window to see if Mark was standing outside the train and sure enough I saw him panickly knocking on the trains windows to find us inside. I think Liam and I pushed aside an older lady so we could get out - like good Canucks, we said sorry just in case. Luckily we made it out in time but I had vivid flashbacks of when I got on the subway at St. Andrew station in Toronto and Mark didn't. This would have been WAY worse. So after that incident, we firmly reminded ourselves that we always need to stick together. We managed to get the next train to Preston leaving just 10 minutes later with a slew of others who also didn't get on the earlier train and even got seats for the 45 minute ride.
We were certain we wouldn't make our connection to Edinburgh because of the new later train and that it was running late, but it seems all the trains were running late and we actually made it. We would have had to wait an hour for the next one, which in hindsight, we should have probably done because we couldn't get seats on this train either. We ended up standing in the corridor where the toilet is with 5-10 others (depending on the stops), plus luggage (theirs and ours), plus our pram for the entire 2.5 hrs! At least Gemma had a seat. It actually went by fairly quickly and the other people with us were quite pleasant. I took Gemma over to a temporarily empty first-class seat to breastfeed her for 20 minutes, but other than that it was the toilet carriage.
Finally in Edinburgh, at about 2:30, we got off the train and walked a mere 5 minutes to our hotel, The Jury's Inn. It was a large enough room for us - we got a double, Liam got a twin and Gemma got an infant cot (supplied by the hotel). We got ourselves sorted and ventured into the city.
Scottish weather is the butt of many jokes in the UK - it actually didn't rain as much as it was supposed to. We also had a few sunny moments however it was mostly grey, making it difficult to take photos with our point and shoot - between the sky and the buildings, it was really grey.
The architecture and layout of Edinburgh are both brilliant (everyone says this here, 'brill' for short). The buildings all show their character and ornate details well with age, and there are lots of tiny alleys in between them linking the streets to each other. Some of the alleys lead to patios for restaurants and pubs. On our first afternoon, we walked to Edinburgh Castle to check it out for the next day and to see what there was to see on the way. Lots of wool, tartans, Gaelic and medieval heritage, scotch, pubs (some of which don't allow families because they are not licensed - like Toronto was at one point with the smoking law).
On our full day in Edinburgh, we went to the Castle first - good call - it got wicked busy shortly after we got in with major queues (line ups). There are great views of the city from the castle (when you can see them through all the grey:)) The castle was used as a fortress throughout history and sits on an extinct volcano. Liam enjoyed the canons. We also went through one of the museums inside the castle and saw the armour used in the past and present. We thought the soldiers may interest Liam - there was a statue of a horse that he liked.
We spent the rest of the day walking around the city - the old and the new. It's kinda like Montreal but Edinburgh's new city is like Montreal's old city. We tried to get Liam to have a nap at the hotel in the afternoon, but it was not going to happen. He ended up falling asleep whilst on his stroller seat and fell off right onto the pavement! (Don't worry, pavement here means sidewalk) Others were startled, but we started to laugh knowing that he had probably just fallen asleep:) Awesome parenting moment, we know.
This city is great for walkers - everything is really close together - train, hotels, city and sights. There were tons of tourists in Edinburgh - and not just Brits off on half-term - everyone. It was strange for us as we have gotten really used to being the only internationals both in our small town of New Mills and even in Manchester.
On our last night we went to a large restaurant and we were the model family - we could tell that young couples near us were watching, noticing how cute and well behaved our kids were and even wished for kids like ours... until Gemma banged her mouth against the table and screamed bloody murder forcing Mum to leave with her, without Dad or Liam or the pram! She screamed pretty much the entire walk back to the hotel. I think we ended up being really effective birth control for some of those young couples that evening! Gemma was fine (thank you dye-free grape infant Tylenol) and we actually went for a late evening walk around the hotel area with both kids and the pram before bedtime.
Only Disappointments: No one just walking down the street wearing a kilt like it's a pair of jeans and Mark forgot to order haggis.
Our trains back were not as busy as on our way there. We only had 2 trains and seats booked for the long train to Manchester. Unfortunately, Gemma fought her nap for most of the ride and accidentally pulled the emergency alarm (whilst with Mark), but what's a trip without some train drama?
Will post soon on Halloween and Guy Fawkes night!
The Nicholson Family.
Photos: Facebook
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