Unicorns and my Other Favorite Scottish Things

Did you know that the national animal of Scotland is the unicorn? There are unicorns on nearly every royal crest; in every town square there is a mercat cross, almost always topped with a unicorn. I took to collecting unicorns throughout our trip, so here is my collection of unicorns and some things I learned about Scotland along side them.

Is there a language barrier? Many Americans have a hard time following Scottish accents. I generally had no trouble. Occasionally someone would use a word I'm not used to that threw me for a loop, but communication was never an issue. However, Glaswegians have some really thick accents and  use slang heavily. If someone was talking to me, they were crystal clear. But if I overheard buddies shooting the breeze, it was legitimately hard to follow. There are actually more native languages, Old Scots has a lot of overlap with English, but isn't really spoken outside poetry and few words have stuck around in Scottish vernacular. Scottish Gaelic (gah-lec) which is related to the Irish Gaelic (gay-lec) is the indigenous language of the highlands, but doesn't have many native speakers today. There are many places where signage will be in both English and Gaelic.

How's the weather? This spring was one of the UK's dried springs ever, and it was still more rain than we'd get at home at our wettest. When people say it's never sunny in Scotland, what they mean is it doesn't stay sunny. On any given day, the weather will probably change a few times. It will be a calm, slightly overcast day, then the wind will just arrive and blow in a little rain storm. The storm will only last 20-30 minutes and as it peters out and blows onward, the sun will come out. We found that if we were near some cover, we were almost always able to just wait out the rain. There is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. I've never been somewhere where that is more true than in Scotland. The temperatures aren't extreme, but being appropriately prepared (or not) absolutely makes a big difference.

Are Americans still welcome as visitors in the current political climate? The short answer is yes. They'll be perfectly cordial. 

How was it visiting Scotland with kids? I found it was more kids friendly than the US in most ways. Toddlers are free admission pretty much everywhere including on all public transit. Older kids are half price or free admission most anywhere. The museums we visited that I didn't expect to be really kid friendly actually ended up having kid areas with arts and crafts, books, and activities for little uns. Pubs usually allow kids to dine in until around 8PM when they transition into adults only spaces. Many castles and historic sites had fun little quizzes and worksheets for kids and give out stickers or prizes to the kids who complete them. One place we even got a chocolate egg as a prize. People were quite nice about the kids, even when Arthur was at his naughtiest (and he was really, really awful a few times). In the UK in general, we found more than one place where families with little toddlers didn't have to wait in regular lines (customs, airport security, and the overcrowded British Museum come to mind.) Given how my kiddos do in ridiculously long lines, I was extremely grateful.

What are things in Scotland that I wish we had at home? Besides rain, I'm going with recycling! Yeah we recycle, but not everywhere. Not at McDonalds. Recycling bins are almost more common than rubbish bins. Most takeaway containers are biodegradable, they have wooden disposable cutlery instead of plastic, and no plastic straws. There simply isn't a reason for us to still be using styrofoam and single use plastic. Nowhere in the country are then disposable plastic shopping bags that I could see, you just bring reusable bags. None of these things are that hard to implement and it's dumb that we don't.

Another on my list is I wish we had more free museums at home. I really appreciated how many fantastic museums do not have entry fees. The National Museum of Scotland, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, GOMA, Riverside Museum, Hunterian Museum, and  Kelvingrove Museum are all FREE and accept donations in lieu. They are all big, awesome museums, so I think it's pretty rad that they are so accessible to people. 

Does Everyone wear kilts? No. Kilts are generally considered formal dress for special occasions, like a wedding party we saw in Edinburgh all dressed in formal kilts. Other than that, we saw tour guides wearing kilts sometimes. From what I could tell, Scots dress casually and for the weather, though it's not always easy to tell who are the tourists and who are the locals out on the streets. Lots of water proof outerwear and wellies.

What does Scottish money look like? Well, Scotland uses the GBP (Great British Pound) but Scotland's 3 big banks print their own bills. Typically English pounds all have the monarch on them, but Scottish notes don't. Each bank prints different notes, so there is a great deal of variety in the Scottish pound notes.

What about animals and pets? I've posted here a lot of photos of the wildlife (and farm animals) of Scotland, what isn't pictured is just how dog friendly Scotland is. There were a lot of walks, hostels, and restaurants that welcome dogs. Far more than I'm used to seeing at home. The kids loved all the cute dogs they got to meet as a result.

How did Scotland compare to my expectations? I expected flowers in springtime, but I didn't expect for there to be so many wildflowers. They were everywhere and absolutely beautiful. The thistle is the national flower of Scotland. I believe it was first adopted by one of the Stewart monarchs as a symbol of the Stewarts but slowly became a symbol of Scotland itself. Thistles weren't really in bloom while we were there, but I managed to find this sweet little early bloomer in Inveraray.

I was expecting to have slower driving times and worse traffic. I read a lot from people who said traffic around the touristy areas was terrible and that google maps was so unreliable with driving times. I didn't find that to be the case. Generally, google maps was off by just a couple minutes (maybe a error of 10% at the most) and we only ran into backed up traffic twice. Maybe we were just still in shoulder season and there weren't that many tourists yet, maybe we just didn't visit the areas where the traffic is notoriously bad, but I found it to be not a problem at all and was pleasantly surprised.

Something I did not expect or even consider was how much easier it was for me to hike in Scotland. It's no secret that Salt Lake has pretty poor air quality, what with inversion and wild fire season lasting all year now. Plus a baseline of over 4,000 ft above sea level. Scotland has exceptionally clean air (coastal winds do that) and the highest mountain in Scotland is less than 5,000 ft above sea level. It turns out, I don't really have asthma issues in Scotland. I could hike steeper paths longer without any breathing discomfort or wheezing. At home I am used to my lungs giving out long before my muscles do. In Scotland I never felt the need to catch my breath in the same way, even on a steep hike with Arthur on my shoulders.

What about the food? Groceries prices were pretty comparable to prices at home, eating out felt more expensive with the big caveat that tipping isn't a big thing in Scotland so it probably evens out in the end. For good table service you can round up a bit or give your server a pound or two as a thank you, but it's not an essential part of their wages.

What should I eat in Scotland? Obviously an island has excellent seafood. Fish and chips is a staple, but there are lots of other seafoods that are fresh and delicious. I believe I already mentioned Cullen Skink in a previous post, it is a must try. There are lots of sweets and treats that are wonderful. Scotland is known for shortbread, which is always tasty, but also tablet. Tablet is a sort of caramel flavored fudge. Extremely sweet, my kids did not care for it but I absolutely loved it. The real winner for all of us was Irn-Bru, Scotland's favorite soda. Nearly everywhere else in the world Coke is the best selling soda, but not in Scotland! Irn-Bru outsells Coke. Irn-Bru is orange in color, but not in flavor. It is like Dr. Pepper in that the taste is not based on an existing food, so it's hard to describe. I'd say it's sort of a creme soda, Inca Cola, bubble gummy flavor. We bought a ridiculous amount of Irn-Bru on our trip, drank it nearly every day, and I will definitely miss it the most. I can make tablet at home, no such luck for Irn-Bru! 

But the most famous national dish of Scotland is, of course, haggis. Haggis is made from the...left over meats of a sheep, combined with onions and spices and oats and traditionally cooked in the sheep's stomach. They don't use a real stomach these days, but it's still served with the traditional sides of neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes). We did try haggis and it was actually delicious; like a more tender version of meatloaf. Ours was served with a creamy whisky sauce, and it was fantastic, I'd eat it again any time!

Long story short, I loved Scotland but I should probably visit in the winter before I decide to buy a vacation home there. I hear terrible things about soggy Scotland winters.

From Glasgow to London

We arrived in Glasgow in the late afternoon. We didn't really have to time to see any museums or sites since most of them close at 5, but we did got for a little walk, grab some groceries and checked into our second worst hostel of the trip.

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland. Where Edinburgh's Old Town is so visitor centric it feels like it's practically a theme park, the city centre of Glasgow is more of a lived in city. There are lots of visitors, but lots of locals and students as well out shopping, working, and living. The vibe is different, the architecture is very different. Most of the beautiful buildings are more modern that Edinburgh's; no more than 200 years old. Glasgow had it's own Art Nouveau style in the form of architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald. They were like a art and design power couple. As Gaudi is to Barcelona, Mackintosh is to Glasgow: beloved local makes stuff for the city that is beautiful and unique. 

 

I've been teasing the story of our crappy hostels, here's one: this hostel didn't have a kitchen. What kind of hostel doesn't have a kitchen?  Apparently they used to but the management decided not to open the kitchen to guests anymore? So there wasn't so much as a microwave or kettle in the place. I say that is utter rubbish, and based on the complaints I overheard from other guests I am not alone in that assessment.

So our hopes of cooking dinner disappeared, but we bought some food that we had thought we could just heat up in a microwave so it wouldn't be a big deal to eat some of the items cold. Like some fried chicken, what could go wrong? Turns out that chick wasn't fried YET. We learned that when I took a bite of it and...that was the least pleasant experience of my life. Lee went to a doner kebab place down the block to buy some food and told the guy about our raw chicken problem and he offered to throw the chicken into the fryer for us! He absolutely saved the day for us. Lee gave him a big tip and bought some additional chips and food from him.

We started our next morning with a walk through central Glasgow. We walked through a beautiful art nouveau shopping gallery (very Mackintosh), strolled the shopping boulevards, but mostly we kept our eyes peeled for the big murals in the alleys and side streets.

Glasgow has excellent street art scattered throughout the city. We downloaded a map and used our GPS to track down as many as we could. And we found some really fun ones!

There are so many more, but we didn't think we could walk the entire city. We took a little break from all the mural hunting to visiting the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). Out front is the iconic statue of the Duke of Wellington who always wears an unusual hat. That's the Glaswegian sense of humor for ya!

We had the great fortune to meet an extremely nice woman in the museum shop. There was a smashed penny machine and the kids wanted one. Awesome, we smashed a penny and Arthur wanted to hold it. Before anyone could stop him, he stuck it in the slot to pay for a new smashed penny. there was a note on the machine to check in the shop if you had problems, so I came and apologized as I was worried the machine might be out of service as a result. She was so sweet and gave us a new penny with a different stamp on it, then came and tried to get the penny out. When we thought it was stuck, she just grabbed a pound coin out to see make us another brand new one. Miracles, that jiggled the original one loose! She still chose a third different pattern and had Arthur turn the wheel to crank out a third penny and told us to keep them all and have a lovely day. I'd heard Glaswegians were friendly, but she went way beyond friendly and into saintly territory.

This gallery doesn't have a bunch of famous paintings, but there were some fun exhibits and local artists showcased. More importantly for us there was coloring, activities, and toys for kids. I had no idea this would be a such a kid friendly place, but it was a great rest and change from all that walking about. I hadn't even intended to stop in to visit, but I'm so glad we did.

After the museum we made our way to our fancy lunch reservation at Mackintosh and the Willows Tea Room. Tea rooms were popularized in part because of the temperance movement (to give people an alternative to the pub), but also as a place ladies could go unchaperoned. An upper class woman wouldn't go to a pub, but she could go to a tea room, chat with friends, share revolutionary new ideas about suffrage...

I really wanted to go do a fancy afternoon tea and it seemed like a perfect replica of a turn of the century Charles Rennie Mackintosh/Margaret MacDonald designed tea room would be the awesomest place to do that. The original was owned by a Miss Cranston opening in 1903. 

It was elegant--strikingly modern, with the signature swooping patterns and long lines in all the Mackintosh designs I saw in Glasgow--but still had a kids menu with crayons.

The hot chocolate and kid food got mixed reviews from the boys, it was probably just too delicious for their preferences, but Lee and I ordered an afternoon tea service and it was fantastic.

All you can drink tea (many herbal teas, we tried nearly every variety), scones with clotted cream and jam, little sandwiches, and excellent desserts. I loved it!

After tea, I could not get any phone service. We'd been using it without a problem for two weeks and now nothing! It left us not able to find our bus stops or even know which bus we needed to find. That slowed us down a lot and left us wandering. Probably my lowest point, I was losing my mind trying to figure out what to do. It took probably a full hour to get to a useful bus stop, but we did eventually find one. It was later than I'd hoped when we finally made it to the Riverside Museum.

This museum is a big, really fun, and free museum. It is all about transportation and really focused on Glasgow and the history of the city. They have Glasgow's old street cars and trams and subway cars, and so much more.

There was this neat historic street area, which shops and little things you could go in and explore. I wish the kids had been more interested in that area so I could have spent more time exploring it myself. They just wanted to drive the pretend fire engine for eternity.

Arthur loved playing train conductor, bus driver, and fireman. I could tell he was getting that thousand yard stare and so tired, but he didn't stop. He just kept going. The kids were just so busy, we stayed until closing time and filled every minute.

Arthur noticed as we were leaving that they had our car, same make and model, on display. Our car is already a museum piece. I know that bit really impressed Arthur because he's brought it up several times since.

Docked just behind the Riverside Museum is the tall ship Glen Lee. I had hoped we'd have time to go on board and visit the ship, but it just didn't time out with our navigation issues from earlier.

At least we could still see the ship and enjoy the views of Glasgow along the River Clyde.

The kids were wiped out. We did an evening in playing cards and eating dinner in our room and tried to get tucked in for an early bedtime.

Our final day of Scotland is here! We checked out of our rooms and stored our luggage for the day, then we headed out to the rather ancient Glasgow Cathedral.

This is one of the very few churches that survived the reformation unscathed. The building started in 1136 but took 350 years to finish. I am such a sucker for gothic architecture and stained glass, I'm glad we were able to squeeze this one in.

The cathedral is dedicated to St. Mungo, a much beloved saint from the 6th century who lived in this part of Scotland.

Behind the cathedral is the Necropolis. The kids were less than thrilled to be hiking up a hill to see this city of the dead, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Throughout the trip, the boys wanted to take turns taking pictures instead of being in all the pictures. They managed to take some pretty good ones too! Most any time Lee and I are together in a photo it's because a kid wanted a turn to be the photographer. George took this one and I think it rocks:

We didn't explore very much of the necropolis; the kids didn't have the stamina or interest and it's just soooo big. Thousands upon thousands of Glaswegians were laid to rest in this huge hill for centuries, but we only saw a small fraction of them. We made our way back down the hill and headed to an appropriate bus stop. Along the way we saw probably Glasgow's best mural, a modern take on St. Mungo.

We had a good long rest on the bus ride across town to the Kelvingrove Museum. Another free museum, folks! Glasgow is full of them.

Kelvingrove is named for Lord Kelvin (like the measure of heat Kelvin, same guy) and the building itself is pretty amazing. We had a picnic out in the park by the museum and got to explore the exhibits during the 1PM Organ recital. This glorious building has a huge pipe organ because why not?

This is a museum chock full of exhibits that are fun for kids and it's very eclectic.

We explored the natural history wing, I especially liked the depiction of a "wild haggis".

 There is something about museums that seem to sap energy, we were really feeling that afternoon drag. I took a couple minutes to see a few pieces by Glasgow's artists, including Charles Rennie Mackintosh, then we took our leave and headed into Kelvingrove Park.

We stumbled upon a playground and suddenly Arthur was full of energy. After a short play, we got caught in a substantial cloudburst and had to hide out under a tree to stay dry. Luckily it was pretty short lived. We passed the statues of Lord Kelvin and John Lister (a pioneer in the use of antiseptics in surgeries) and crossed Kelvingrove park to our next destination.

The gorgeous campus of the University of Glasgow. Founded in 1451, Glasgow is the fourth oldest university in the English speaking world. Paul was left unimpressed by the Hogwarts-esque university buildings and cloisters, but I thought they were quite beautiful.

Because it was still a bit wet out and chilly out and some of us were feeling out of sorts, we popped into the Hunterian Museum. 

Arthur thought it was pretty cool they had a "nessie" skeleton. He also was impressed with their collection of "brains"...they were corals. 

Paul found what he needed right away:

In the corner was a whole kids area full of science-y toys and arts and crafts. George was having a good time, Arthur didn't want to leave, mostly we just enjoyed being warm and dry with happy kids.

We passed through the beautiful cloisters on our way out and we headed to the bus.

The kids had asked us multiple times over the course of our vacation to please take them to McDonalds. We don't even go to McDonalds at home, but they were desperate. Paul had been bribed through most of the day with the promise of ice cream, so Lee offered to get them ice cream at McDonalds. Well it was dinner time anyway, so we got them their McDonalds, and their ice cream, but the night was still young.

We weren't quite ready to get to our bags from the hostel and we needed somewhere to be until about 10PM. Just a block away is Cineworld and a movie seemed like just the thing to get through the wait. The interesting thing about building a huge movie theater in the city is how many floors it needs to have. Our theatre was on the 8th floor. Thank goodness for escalators! I'll try not to take it personally that going to McDonalds and seeing a movie were names as trip highlights by a majority of our children.

One Lilo and Stitch later, we were back on the streets heading to the hostel for our bags and then on to Glasgow Central Station. We hopped aboard the Caledonian Sleeper and said our good-byes to Glasgow and to Scotland.

We got tucked into our cozy bunkbeds in our two tiny adjoining rooms. The kids fell asleep almost immediately and slept pretty much the whole night. Lee says he fell asleep pretty quickly and slept just fine. Apparently I'm the one who can't sleep on a moving train. The beds were actually pretty comfy, better than some hostel mattresses for sure. All the same, I didn't really sleep, but everyone else did so it was good. Except when Arthur woke up in the morning and got uncontrollably sick.

We kind of stumbled off the train at 7:15 in the morning with a tummy upset Arthur, all of us darn tired, and we took the kids to Kings Cross Station.

The kids really wanted to see Platform 9 3/4, and it has gotten a lot more organized and elaborate since I was last there. They got props, got posed, and there was a guy doing those souvenir photos. We took our own photos. Paul and George both said it was one of their favorite places of the whole vacation.

After that we grabbed a taxi and dropped our bags at what would be our worst hostel. Arthur stopped getting pukies after eating some breakfast and we headed back out into the city. Riding the bus around the city reminded me why I love London, that it's such a beautiful city, and that it is somehow so much cleaner than a city that size could possibly be.

I let Paul and George decide what we did in London. They requested the Princess Diana Memorial Playground at Hyde Park. Well, we accidentally went to an ordinary type playground then walked the whole length of Hyde Park to get to the cool one.

Passing the pond and the ducks, the statue of Peter Pan, and the gooses battling each other for dominance and to protect their goslings.

We grabbed some picnic lunch foods from a nearby convenience store and ate our lunch at the Princess Diana Memorial Playground.

I suspect the kids were quite happy with their choice, they had such a blast running around playing at the best playground ever.

I loved seeing the kids play and revisiting a place I haven't seen since I was a kid. I want to do a side by side and show the boys what this playground looked like in 2001 versus now. Honestly, I think it's more fun now than it was then.

The weather had been great all morning and afternoon, but there was a lot of rain expected. I convinced the kids we should leave the park before it rained and we hopped on the tube.

Paul had requested we visit the British Museum, it was insanely crowded. I've never been in London in the summer time, and I think I'll continue to avoid visiting in the summer. This was quite the crush of visitors.

The Grecian Wing is huge, none of us had enough sleep, but we did have a kid's map activity book to help us bring some context. Some of the kids were more cranky than others, but we functioned.

We were able to do a decent exploration of the Greek artifacts, but once we tried to Egyptian wing it was so crowded that we were worried we'd lose Arthur and never see him again. I made sure Paul and George squeezed in to see the Rosetta Stone and then we were done.

We got seriously rained on as we went back to our hostel, we got seriously rained on as we picked up some Lebanese take out that was AMAZING. We packed up our stuff and dubbed this our worst hostel. Primarily because our shower didn't work, our window was stuck open and dripping water into the room, and, once again this hostel didn't have a kitchen. They also didn't have the advertised laundry room. Or, rather, the room was there but it didn't have any washing machine in it. It made me pretty annoyed to have booked a place based on wanting to do one last load of laundry and not being able to do that. Ultimately, my biggest regrets were our last two hostels, but at least bad experiences can make for good stories. At least the staff both places were kind and accommodating even if the facilities were crappy.

But we still had a bed to sleep in at night. We waved good-bye to the Shard (George says, "isn't that where Mr. Brown works in the Paddington movies?") and hopped on the train to head to the airport and fly home.

Well, we didn't fly home quite yet. We stopped over for the night visiting Auntie Megan and cousins Kaden and Violette in California. It was one million percent better to get out of the airport and spend a night with them than to spend all day at the airport and not get home till after midnight. Instead we got to visit and the kids had a sleep over in the backyard.

Now that was one heck of a vacation!