Scotland

What can I say about Scotland, except that I absolutely loved it.  The picture above is from Dunkeld which is between Edinburgh and St. Andrews.  What a wonderful little town, it was beautiful and the people were wonderful (well the people everywhere we went were wonderful, but I just fell in love with Dunkeld).

So where to start...I think what I'll do is take it by city.

Edinburgh

We stayed just off the Royal Mile which is where all the touristy things are, all leading up to Edinburgh Castle.  We had a great time wandering around and acquainting ourselves with that area of the city and were so incredibly lucky to have had beautiful (if not a bit cold) weather.  There were a few sprinkles but no heavy rain while we were there so we were always able to wander about.  And wonder of wonders there was a Starbucks (YAY), I was so incredibly happy.  We found a wonderful pub on the Royal Mile that allowed children in for meals called Deacon Brodie's Tavern, the food was fantastic and it was loud enough that no one noticed if the kids got a bit restless.  Don't you just love places like that? ;-)  We wandered over to the St. James Shopping Centre and found more CBeeBies dvd's for the kids as well as a dvd player that plays UK dvd's.  The one Rob brought back from the states was supposed to play both North American and UK dvd's but surprise, surprise, it doesn't.  We also meandered down to the GrassMarket area and found another great pub called the Last Drop In and a great pizza place called simply Mamma's.  We stayed in Edinburgh for a few days, then headed off to Glasgow.

Glasgow

Glasgow is not a touristy city, but it has great places to walk around and a really great Irish pub that allows children in for meals.  I can't for the life of me remember the name of it now (will ask Rob later) but the food was so delicious.  We only had one day there and we did get rained on (walking back from the pub) but it was still nice to check it out a bit.  After Glasgow we headed up to Dunkeld.

Dunkeld

Dunkeld is a beautiful village North of Edinburgh and South of St. Andrews surrounded by mountains.  We stayed at the Royal Dunkeld Hotel which hosted the conference Rob was attending.  It was a small hotel but so charming and the food was absolutely fantastic.  The day we got in we wandered around a bit (not much as it is a very small village) until Rob had to go to the conference, then had dinner later with the other attendees, it was nice to see that we weren't the only ones there with kids.  The next day when Rob went down for the conference I took the kids to a little playground we discovered where they proceeded to swing to their hearts' content and  count the ducks that wandered up to sleep in the grass.  After lunch, we wandered back down and went to a little shop called Going Pottie which is a ceramic/painting shop.  The kids got to paint some gifts for Grandma and Pop-pop and had a great time.  On Sunday Rob played hookie from the conference and we went for a little walk down a small road, then up a little trail.  It was positively breathtaking.  We then finished our packing and headed back to Edinburgh for another two days where we stayed down in the GrassMarket area.

A week from today is Easter and two weeks from today is Angus' fourth birthday, if you can believe it.  We are going to be leaving for Paris on the 8th then taking the bullet train to EuroDisney on the afternoon of the 10th and visiting for Angus' birthday on the 11th.  Both he and Molly are so excited about going and the possibility of seeing the characters again.  It's hard to believe that Angus will be 4 and Molly will be 3 this year.  It just seems like the time is going by so fast.

Well more later.

Love to all!!!