Spain: Valencia - Barcelona - Madrid

Once Norah's visa arrived, we were ready to plan a trip for President's Day weekend. I was just thinking today about how last year at this time, we were traveling to Amsterdam. I had recently found out I was pregnant with Norah and not many people knew! It's amazing how much has changed throughout the past year! Unfortunately for us, this weekend also fell on a British school break and Valentine's Day, so airfare was increased no matter where the destination. When we started looking in December at where to go, we decided on Spain because it was somewhere we definitely wanted to go while living over here and if we were going to be paying more than usual to fly, we figured we should probably go somewhere we actually wanted to go to. So we were able to get cheaper tickets into Valencia and arranged to take the train fairly cheaply from there to Barcelona. Our flight left around 7a on Friday morning, so we were up at 3a to get to the car park by 5a and then to the terminal to board by 645a. I was surprised at how smoothly things went with Norah.

Just making sure I know my emergency procedures.

The flight was about 2 hours and she only cried once for about 20 minutes and then settled in for a nap. We were in a row of three and met a very nice lady who just recently became a grandmother, so she was all about giving Norah some attention. Once landed in Valencia, we only had a couple of hours until our train to Barcelona, so when researching things to do in Valencia - we decided to go to their Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias, basically a science center.

We bought metro tickets and since there weren't any direct routes there via metro we picked a stop to get off at and walked through a park - Antiguo Cauce del Rio Turia to get there. While on the metro, a worker came around to scan our tickets and told us we needed to buy another ticket because we had only bought one. It was confusing when we bought the tickets because it said you could load up to 4 persons on one ticket, so we took that as up to 4 people can use one ticket, but it was that 4 separate tickets could be loaded onto one card. The weather was gorgeous for walking. We both took our jackets off while walking through the park but couldn't help noticing that the locals had scarves on, some with their winter coats on too. It had to be at least 60 degrees, which must be cold for those in Spain. While walking through the park we saw some orange trees and decided to pick one to eat.

I peeled and Aaron ate the first slice. His face was hilarious, he immediately spit it out. I tried a slice too after he insisted I do so. It was so sour and bitter! I thought it was a little bit like grapefruit. Aaron did some research later then and we discovered that they were called bitter oranges. I'm sure the locals were laughing at us.

We arrived to the science center and enjoyed wandering but it was getting to be time to head back to catch our train. Once to the metro we took it to the stop where we thought the train would be and the station was no where to be found near the metro. We took a look at a map on the street above the metro stop and could find nothing. A local tried to help Aaron and was telling him he had to get back on the metro and go to a different stop. I asked the worker at the information booth in the metro and she spoke minimal English but kept pointing up and saying, on the street, on the street. So we starting walking one direction, turned and walked the other direction and finally saw some people with suitcases coming from another direction and went that way. The train station was a couple of blocks from there. We didn't have much time to find our platform and board the train but we made it on successfully. We noticed that both the metro and the train were very clean and the train was quite spacious with more than enough leg room. I could have easily set Norah at my feet in a car seat, that's how much space we had. It took about 3 hours to reach Barcelona, we were delayed for a bit on the way there with some slowing down at times. Norah decided to have a major meltdown while on the train, which wasn't a huge deal - because we just took her in between cars, no one could hear her crying that way. I finally got her to sleep while watching the scenery go by. The coast was beautiful. Once into Barcelona, we purchased metro passes and headed for our hotel since it was late evening by then. We checked into Aparthotel Mariano Cubi, our home away from home for the next 3 nights. The staff were so welcoming and helpful. They gave us a map and circled all of the must sees and explained the best way to get around. Our room was huge by European standards.

I read in the reviews that it was close to a couple of very prestigious medical clinics in the city, that patients often stay at the hotel to recuperate before discharge. The room had a kitchen, king sized bed and big bathroom - so we were set. We put the pack and play they set out for Norah around the corner near the kitchen, hoping she would do well in her new sleeping environment. However, she slept horribly the first night.
We were up for good by 7a and decided to walk to our first sight that morning. It was about a 30 min walk to La Sagrada Familia. I had bought tickets online prior to arriving per suggestion, which I'm thankful we did so because there was a line we were able to skip to get in. I hadn't booked Norah a ticket - she was free but still needed a ticket but thankfully they let us in anyways.

I had to stand in line to get an audio guide for Aaron and while I was doing so, an Asian tourist spotted Norah and squealed with delight. She called her entire family over to Aaron and asked if she could hold the baby. She posed while her family took pictures with her holding Norah. It was beyond comical. Aaron kept catching my eye while I waited in line. The woman pulled out her phone and was trying to show Norah a video of a horse, Norah wanted nothing to do with it. Little did we know, this was just the beginning of all the attention Norah was about to receive. We headed inside once I obtained the audio guide.

A little bit of background information on La Sagrada Familia would be that Antoni Gaudi signed up to labor on this Gothic-style church in 1883. He worked on it for 43 years, until his death in 1926 and the project was 20% complete then. It has since been a work in progress. It was a bit disappointing to see the outside of the structure with cranes and scaffolding covering it but still pretty magnificent. While the outside is still under construction, the inside was astounding. Gaudi was a phenomenal person with quite the vision.

We wandered and then went to find the entrance for the tower that we had booked to go to the top. Once in line, we were informed that Norah was unable to be taken to the top but we could individually go. So Aaron got in line and I wandered some more. Once Aaron went to the top and came back down, I was feeling the effects of a not so great nights sleep, so I decided to skip going to the top of the Nativity tower.

We left La Sagrada Familia, went to a souvenir shop, ate lunch and headed for the Big Bus stop. We booked a hop on hop off tour for one day after reading this was the best way to see the entire city of Barcelona. Barcelona is quite huge and spread out making it hard to navigate just by walking. The bus had two loops, which we hoped to take advantage of.

We call this her I-forgot-to-put-my-dentures-in look.

Once on the bus, we rode to the center of the city, getting off to walk to see the Christopher Columbus statue and explore the marina area for a bit.

Then we walked down the famous La Rambla street, went to see the cathedral and decided to continue on walking to the famous Casa Batllo, Casa Amatller and Casa Mila.

We tried to hop on the other bus loop to go to the beach but Norah was starting to hit her tolerance level for the day so we got off and walked for a bit while Norah almost fell asleep. We thought we could stop and eat something for an early dinner and was able to order some tapas and she lost it. We took that as a cue to get back to the hotel and turn in for the night. We asked an awful lot of her and she did really well up until that point. She usually gets cranky in the evenings at home, so it was no surprise when she decided it was time to be done for the day. Once back in the hotel, she was having a great time playing with us. We put her to bed at a decent hour and she slept a little bit better than the night before but still did not get enough rest.
The next day, we walked to Park Guell - a park designed by Gaudi. We paid the admission to get into the "monumental" region of the park. While in line to enter the park, another Asian tourist asked if she could take Norah's picture. Aaron and I came to the conclusion that just as we think Asian babies are adorable, they must think that our little white baby is adorable in the same way. We're convinced Norah is probably some sort of internet sensation in China by now.

Park Guell was amazing as well. We took our time walking through the monumental region and got some pretty great views of Barcelona.

Once we were done there, we walked to catch the metro to go to the World Expo Fairground area. We rode the metro a couple of times while in Barcelona and each time once we boarded someone almost always immediately rose to give me their seat which was so kind. I often had Norah in our Ergo baby carrier and if she was sleeping, she would usually wake up if I sat down. So while it was nice to sit, I didn't really want to due to her waking up but I didn't know how to tell people this in Spanish. I've also been told that it is rude not to accept a seat when someone offers it to you, so I accepted most times. While on the metro, Norah would charm all of those around her. It's amazing what a baby does to people. I don't like the attention on myself but I enjoy watching Norah interact with people. Often times, the locals would just marvel at her in Spanish and I obviously couldn't understand a word they were saying and would be totally clueless to when they stopped talking to her and were instead addressing questions to me. So I often just smiled like a fool. I eventually did figure out the most commonly asked questions to be, is she a girl (I guess the pink polka dotted fleece wasn't a dead giveaway) and how old is she? Once off the metro, we discovered that we were in the area of Las Areans an old bullring now converted into a shopping center.

We decided to check it out and I was able to take care of feeding Norah and we also sat down to lunch there as well. We were able to take an elevator to the top of the building to get some more great views of the city. From there, we walked to the Magic Fountain area. When reading about Barcelona, I read about the water fountain show at night and really wanted to try and go to it but quickly realized having a 5 month old that wasn't sleeping well wasn't going to allow for such things to happen. Once we got to the fountain area, we discovered that the fountains were under maintenance anyways and there wouldn't have been a show that weekend even if we would have went at nighttime, so I'm glad we didn't even attempt.

From the fountains, we took the metro to the beach area and walked down to the beaches. For supposedly having some of the best beaches in Europe, we were not impressed but we did enjoy walking and seeing the sand sculptures in progress and listening to the local musicians. We also found some churros, freshly made and they were delicious.

From the beach, we headed back to the room where Norah and I spent the evening while Aaron was able to go a FC Barcelona soccer game.

He really enjoyed seeing the infamous Messi play and I thought I was watching the soccer game live on TV until he returned and informed me I was not watching the correct game at all. We turned in early for the night knowing that we had to catch the train early the next morning to Madrid.

Our train left at 550a, so we were to the metro by 5a - which was when it opened for the day. We were looking at a map with all the stops on it when a local who was also looking at the map turned and started speaking to us in Spanish about something. Once we told him we only spoke English, he quickly switched over and explained that the line we wanted to take was under maintenance and only traveling so far and not to the stop we needed to get to. So he offered to show us how to get to Barcelona Sants a different, more roundabout way. It was very kind of him and he was headed that direction as well but he didn't have to do what he did for us. We probably would have missed our train to Madrid otherwise. While on the train, he told us he lived in New York for awhile. We've found that many are proud to tell us they've been to the States when we tell them we are American. Often it is assumed that we are from New York City as if that is the only place Americans can come from. Once pointed in the right direction for the train station, we were able to get on the train and head towards Madrid for the day. We had most of the day in Madrid, but I hadn't been able to do much research on what to do and how to make the most out of the little time we had there. Aaron's family hosted an exchange student back in the early 2000's who now lives in Madrid. She originally planned to meet us for the day but ended up having to travel for work. Instead she gave us suggestions on what to see and do with our time which was so kind and super helpful. We ended up checking our bags at the train station for less than €4. We followed her itinerary backwards so that we would end back at the train station.

We were able to see a lot in a short amount of time and at one point spent 1.5 hrs straight walking so that Norah would get a proper nap in. She had another meltdown on the train from Barcelona to Madrid and I was starting to get nervous about the plane ride home. She was clearly exhausted from not sleeping well and getting quite hysterical when she got so tired she wanted to cry instead of sleep. We were able to get to the airport with plenty of time to spare and once we went to go through security, I had Norah in the carrier and they made me take her off to walk through the scanner. Unfortunately, she woke up and was not in a good mood. I struggled to get her back to sleep and she did fall asleep right before we boarded the place, which I knew was a recipe for disaster. I could just read the looks on peoples faces as they glanced my way while waiting in line to board. It was confirmed that this could possibly the longest 2 hours of our life. Once boarded, Norah continued to sleep just until takeoff. She woke up and cried for the next 1.5 hours. We felt so badly for her and everyone around us. She did finally sleep for the last leg of the flight. We had to disembark and walk outside, so that woke her up as it was raining. It took quite a long time to get through customs and then we had to walk awhile for the bus to the car park. By the time we got home, we were exhausted and thankfully so was Norah because she slept until 5a the next morning. While it was more of a challenge to travel with a baby, we enjoyed experiencing Spain and are so grateful for the opportunity to travel and are looking forward to our next adventure already!

Brussels with Aunt Nell

23 December - 24 December

Christmastime is bringing a new stream of visitors our way and Aunt Nell kicked things off for us arriving the week before Christmas. 

We were able to fit in a short trip somewhere and it came down to Paris or Brussels and Cornell picked Brussels. Our train from home to London was at 517am so we were up super duper early to get to the train station in time. Our Eurostar train from St Pancras was to leave at 650am. So we had from arriving in London at 620am to get to Eurostar and check-in. We were a little worried about it because they recommend allowing at least 30 min to check-in prior to leaving but we got there a little early and were on the train with plenty of time to spare. It took about 2 hrs to get to Brussels, with stops in Calais and Lille before then. We arrived in Brussels around 10a with the time difference. We took the metro from Bruxelles-Midi to the central part of the city. After spending the next day and a half in the city, we realized we could have probably walked to the central part of town as Brussels is very walkable.Their transportation system was very easy to navigate but it seemed more expensive than other places we’ve been. When we got above ground, it was raining. Being the stellar mom that I am, I forgot Norah’s fleece snowsuit and hat, so we stopped in a cafe to put an extra pair of socks on her as that was the only part of her body exposed outside of the carrier. She was otherwise nice and toasty all snuggled up against Cornell or I as we walked around. At the cafe, we were given menus and spoken to in French. We didn’t really want anything and pretented to look at the menu and then got up to leave. The manager approached us and asked why we were leaving and if it was because we were waiting too long. We just kind of nodded and smiled and then afterwards felt bad that the waitress was probably going to get yelled at for not waiting on us even though we didn’t even want anything. 

We spend the afternoon wandering. I also forgot my guidebook that I had checked out of the library that included a map. Cornell said she was going to count how many times I mentioned, “If we had my book ..”. We did have our smartphone though and were eventually able to use the GPS to find our hotel. Things were laid out pretty easy to find though and seeing that Cornell and I are both severely directionally challenged, we did okay. Belgium has a lot of really great architecture. 

It was also a plus that it was Christmastime and lots of markets were to be found with lights on a lot of the old buildings we were seeing. 

We ate lunch at a little pizza place. It wasn’t anything spectacular but it filled us up for the time being. We got our first taste of Belgian waffles and decided to go with nutella as a topping. 

It was delicious. I made the decision right then and there that Aaron and I would be back, just for the waffles. 

We went and checked into our hotel. I booked the NH Atlanta through Hotwire and got a really great deal. The room was huge by European standards. I had called ahead and arranged for a baby cot for Norah, so that may have been why our room was so big. The bathroom had a shower and a tub and there was a couch plus Norah’s play pen. Plenty of room. Cornell took a nap and Norah quickly followed and then I nodded off eventually too. We woke up reenergized and ready to see Brussels at night. 

We fought the frenzied holiday shoppers to buy Norah a hat and then re-traced our steps from during the day and saw most of the buildings we saw during the day all lit up. The one thing that I wanted to do was see the sound and light show at Grand Place. 

But since I didn’t have my book and we weren’t completely sure when and how often it happened, we kept returning to the Grand Place site hoping to see it and never did. Later I found out it only happened once every hour. But you can see what it was like here, 

We did get to see a lot of lights though and managed to stuff ourselves with frites and chocolat chaud. 

We found a chocolatier too, and bought a box of chocolates and some waffles to take home. Norah was telling us it was bedtime for her, so we turned in for the night.

The next day was Christmas Eve and the forecast was calling for rain. We decided to walk around for a bit in the morning and then see how the weather was after checking out. We found a patisserie where Cornell successfully ordered a pain au chocolat in French. 

We also got another waffle, plain this time and it was still just as good. By the time we checked out of the hotel it was densely misting. We decided to take the metro to the Atomium. 

By the time we got there, the weather hadn’t really changed but we decided to explore the structure, gift shop and surrounding area for a bit. 

Then we returned to Bruxelles-Midi to catch our evening train home. We had quite a bit of time but were content with all that we had seen. We went to a brasserie for a little bit and Cornell got to have her Belgian beer which she said tasted the same as it does in America, go figure. We thoroughly explored the train station and got in line to check-in for Eurostar as soon as we could. It’s a good thing we did too, because we were held up at the UK border patrol window for quite some time. Norah’s passport took quite awhile to arrive and by the time it did get to us in the end of November, I knew I wouldn't be able to complete her visa in enough time to get her passport back for the trip we had planned to Brussels. We’d been told that we had 6 months to complete the paperwork and seeing that Norah is only 3 months old, I knew it was okay to travel with her without a visa to enter the UK. I was still nervous though because we were traveling without Aaron and after being detained in January of this year after going to Rome, I know how strict they can be. So I made sure I had both of her birth certificates, a copy of Aaron’s orders, a notarized letter stating I could travel with Norah on my own and her passport, of course. When we got to the window, the agent questioned where her visa was and when I told him she didn’t have one yet, he exploded and wanted to know who told me I had 6 months to get one. He even picked up the phone at one point to call the Lakenheath hospital where Norah was born. What information he was going to obtain from them, I don’t know, but it was terrifying. He basically said Cornell was good to go, I was good to go with my visa but the baby would have to stay in Belgium. He told us he was going off shift and the oncoming agent would have to deal with us. He put us in the detainment area and walked away. I was a mess. I knew we would be able to prove my story if need be, but it was Christmas Eve, no one was going to be able to help us and we would more than likely be stranded in Belgium. The oncoming agent took over and pushed our paperwork to the side and started taking care of the people waiting in line. He was even more rude and mean than the first guy! At one point, I heard him saying to someone coming through line, “I’m not sure what’s so difficult about the question I’m asking you, it’s yes or no and there are a lot of people waiting behind you so answer faster.” We waited and waited and finally the original agent came up to us and gave me back all of the documents I had brought. Total attitude change, sweetest guy there was. He told me Norah does indeed have 6 months to obtain a visa, he would stamp her passport indicating this and we would be good to go. I was so shaken about the entire thing, I almost didn’t believe him. Cornell said she had been praying about it. The man returned with a card for us to fill out, escorted us through the line and wished us a very Merry Christmas. We boarded the train in time and were on our way back to London. Talk about nerve-wracking! 

Otherwise, Brussels was a major success. I missed traveling with Aaron, I don’t think we would have gotten quite as confused with where things were with him along but I really enjoyed traveling with Cornell and experiencing her excitement over learning the metro system and examining her growing set of passport stamps! Our next time to travel would be Martin Luther King Jr weekend, but guess what? We’ll be taking care of Norah’s visa, so that we can travel in February! Until then, we hope all of our friends and family - near and far, have had a wonderful Christmas and holiday season. We’ll see what 2015 brings!

Thanksgiving Travels: Scotland

November 27-30
We booked our trip to Scotland pretty last minute. We were waiting on Norah’s passport to make any definite plans.

After weeks of waiting, Norah's passport arrived!

We were hoping to go to Poland mainly because airfare was so cheap but by the time Norah’s passport arrived, airfare had skyrocketed. So we decided to stay within the UK and plan a trip to Scotland instead and ended up not needing our passports to travel anyways. We took the train from Peterborough, which is about a 40 min drive from our house. Our train left at 7:46 on Thanksgiving morning, so we were up bright and early. Who am I kidding, I’m up bright and early most days anyways. I never truly go to bed. Norah is quite the morning girl. She is full of all kinds of smiles for us in the morning, which make those long nights a little bit easier to recover from. It was about a 3.5hr train ride to Edinburgh. Our last trip before Norah was born, was to Edinburgh - so we were familiar with the train ride and couldn’t help smiling when we recalled sleeping almost the entire way there last time and booking the “quiet coach”. Now, we were just trying to keep Norah quiet enough not to disturb the rest of the coach and figure out the fastest, easiest way to the train car with changing facilities. Parenthood has certainly shifted our focus, but we are absolutely loving it and determined to share our travels with Norah! Thanksgiving dinner for us consisted of ham sandwiches on the train.

All tuckered out on her 1st Thanksgiving.

   Once in Edinburgh, we caught another local train to an an area outside of the city to Edinburgh Park to the car rental place. We booked a car through Arnold Clark and were able to get a 10% discount through the tour itinerary we bought before the trip. Typically, we decide where we are going and I check out a book on my kindle or at the library and start doing research on where we want to go and what we want to see. Since we weren’t able to do that this time around, we bought an itinerary through Secret Scotland. I found the site through a travel group we are part of on Facebook as it was recommended by someone that had gone to Scotland and used it. We bought the “Crazy Tour” - an itinerary for 3 days from Glasgow to Edinburgh. They called it the crazy tour because it was not recommended to try and see so much of Scotland in that short of time, but we knew 3 days was all we really had and decided to try to see as much as we could.
Once set up with our car, we headed for Glasgow. We decided not to stop in Glasgow. Now that winter is upon us here in the UK, we truly felt like we were chasing daylight the entire trip with sunrise after 8am and sunset between 3 and 4pm. Once through Glasgow, we headed along the itinerary route towards Glencoe - our destination for the evening. We weren’t able to see much of anything as the weather was quite dreary with dense fog and mist and then eventually darkness from sunset. Our initial goal was to get to the Loch Lomond area and try to see Loch Katrine in the Trossachs area. We must have missed a turn at some point because we couldn’t seem to find it. It was okay though, we ended up at another recommended place, The Scottish Wool Centre in Aberfoyle. We took the time for tea for 2 and explored the touristy shop.

We made some purchases here and were impressed by the really great prices of things. Aaron found Norah a sleeper that said, Baby-ness on it with a little Loch Ness monster for £5! The employees of the store just loved Norah (and her blue jeans) and she was handing out smiles to them, so naturally they loved her even more after that!
The first night, we stayed at The Glencoe Inn. They had a restaurant at the hotel but the chef was feeling ill, so we ended up getting something eat from the fish and chippy nearby. Our room was nice and simple with a playpen for Norah to sleep in. We had a difficult time finding rooms within our price range so last minute which is odd now that we have traveled there and back because things were pretty quiet in Scotland with tourist season seemingly over. I can’t imagine what the prices of rooms are like during peak summer season. The next morning, we made sure to go to breakfast as early as possible so that we could get started on the road towards Isle of Skye! Breakfast was a traditional English breakfast which we have yet to grow to really love. Lots of salty things! Aaron was able to try haggis and I had a small bite too. According to Wikipedia, haggis is the national dish of Scotland and is a savoury pudding containing sheep's pluck (heart, liver and lungs); minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased in the animal's stomach and simmered for approximately three hours.

The view from our table at breakfast was great and a good indication of the sights we were about to see! We’ve quickly learned that having a baby often draws all kind of attention our way. Norah is constantly marveled at and this trip certainly didn’t disappoint! We packed things up and headed towards Fort William and then onwards to the Lochalsh area.
The awesome part of this itinerary is that it took us on the “back roads” of Scotland. We didn’t spend much time at all on the main motorways which was exactly what we wanted. The drive towards Fort William was foggy in areas and then it would clear up in others. We stopped at the Commando Memorial which commemorates the elite WWII soldiers who did their intensive combat training in the hills around Spean Bridge between 1940 and 1945.

Because of the fog, we missed out on seeing Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland and the UK. We drove on towards the Lochalsh area and took a short detour to Ratagan Pass.

 One of the best viewpoints in Scotland is the Ratagan Pass. From the Pass, you have a panoramic view of the mountain range known as the Five Sisters of Kintail. The local legend behind these mountains tells the story of seven sisters. Two of the sisters were married to two Irish brothers who promised that their brothers would return to marry the remaining Five Sisters. When it became apparent that the remaining sisters would have a long wait, a local witch turned them into stone to preserve their beauty. The views were absolutely amazing and the pictures that Aaron captured could easily pass for postcards!
                     
                           
 From Ratagan Pass, we continued onwards and stopped for a little bit at Eilean Donan castle, one of the most photographed casltes in Scotland. For good reason too, Aaron was able to get some pretty good pictures here too!

Once crossing over the Skye Bridge onto Isle of Skye, we decided to attempt to get to Old Man of Storr before sunset. Once there, we realized we would have to do an awful lot of climbing to actually get there but we were able to see it from a distance just fine. Old Man of Storr is an unusual geological feature, which has created a sharp pinnacle of rock. Nearby was Lealt Falls and Kilt Rock. The sun was quickly disappearing on us so we went to Kilt Rock first.

Once there and out of the car, we noticed a search and rescue team with a distraught couple. I overheard one man say, “He was just trying to get back up off the ledge.” I also saw someone offer the woman a packet of sugar to help calm her nerves. We weren’t sure what happened and hoped it wasn’t anything serious. Later that night, Aaron searched for a news article and found this. https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/islands/western-isles/415722/dog-falls-200ft-death-skye-cliff-plunge/ The poor dog was off his leash and plunged over the side of the cliff. We got some really nice pictures here and Norah was able to get some fresh air. She spent a lot of time in her car seat on this trip but I must say, she had the life and enjoyed every bit of all the napping that she got to do!

Lealt Falls was next, I took care of feeding Norah while Aaron explored and got some more really great pictures.

We headed to Broadford and settled in to our hotel for the night, Dunollie Hotel. There was no wifi in the rooms here, so we spent some time in the lounge and got lots of looks while trying to entertain Norah. We ordered pizza for the evening. Having Norah with us at such a young age makes it tough to eat a sit down meal. She’s often a ticking time bomb and goes from smiling and content to screaming in a matter of seconds some times. So we looked at it on the bright side as we were saving lots of money not eating out as often as we usually do while traveling!
On Saturday, we wanted to take advantage of being on Isle of Skye and get to see a little more of it before heading onwards to Inverness and Loch Ness. So we drove to Glen Brittle and stopped to hike to the Fairy Pools which are a series of smoothly rounded rock pools carved by swirling boulders.

I hadn’t packed any sneakers for the trip and for good reason. I was able to fit all of our things into a carry-on suitcase and two backpacks, so there wasn’t any wiggle room with packing an extra pair of shoes. It made for the hike to the Fairy Pools quite rough though in my flimsy white canvas shoes. We crossed several brooks and I was convinced that I would slip and fall by the end of things. Aaron had Norah in the carrier seeing that his footing was a lot more secure than mine. We hiked for quite a long time and could have even went further but decided to turn back after seeing the first set of fairy pools. Our pictures don’t really capture the beauty of them but they were pretty spectacular.

After leaving Isle of Skye we backtracked for just a bit and then headed towards Inverness. We stopped briefly at Urquhart Castle, which is the castle that appears in all of the iconic images of Loch Ness. Then we went to the Loch Ness Exhibition Centre, which we both enjoyed very much.

It really left you to wonder what is really out there in Loch Ness; however, it also disproved some of the more common myths. No sightings of the monster but Aaron was definitely on the lookout.

We passed through Inverness and ended our day at our destination for the evening in Carrbridge at the Cairn Inn. We were able to eat at their restaurant and had some really great, fresh food from there. The breakfast the next morning was pretty great too! We were actually the only guests at the inn that night, which was pretty neat and nice to know that if Norah was crying at any point, she wasn’t disturbing anyone.
The next morning the owner of the inn was able to give us some suggestions on things to see on our drive back to Edinburgh. We were grateful for his suggestions because the intinerary was overwhelming with all of its things listed to do. We had a tough time picking what we wanted to see most. First, we took a short walk to see Carrbridge’s “Packhorse Bridge”.

The bridge, built in 1717, is the oldest stone bridge in the Highlands. It was severely damaged in the "muckle spate" (whatever that means) of 1829 which left it in the condition seen today. Then we drove towards Bruar and stopped at the House of Bruar, an upmarket shop specialising in country clothing, woollen wear, tweeds etc. We also took a short walk to the Falls of Bruar, where there was an arched stone bridge and waterfall.

After that, we went onwards to Queen’s View which offered amazing panoramic views of Loch Tummel.

By then, we had to start thinking about getting to Edinburgh to catch the train home. We really wanted to go to Hermitage where some of the tallest trees in the UK can be found along with some waterfalls but decided to start heading for Edinburgh. Almost 30 min from our destination, we got caught in accident and construction related traffic and were at a crawl for more than an hour. We were getting quite nervous about making our train in time which left Edinburgh at 4p. We had to drop the car off and catch a train from Edinburgh Park to Edinburgh and then get to our platform. We dropped the car off at 335pm. Literally ran to the Edinburgh Park. Aaron had Norah in her car seat and his back pack and I had the suitcase and my back pack. It was probably quite comical to watch as we were running for our lives. We caught the at Edinburgh Park at 352pm and arrived at Edinburgh at 403pm. We were 3 minutes late to catching our train home. So we had to go to the customer service counter and book entirely new train tickets. It was quite depressing (and not cheap). So we settled on a bench to watch for the platform number of our updated train and I went to go to the bathroom just as Aaron realized the train they booked for us was at 420pm! It was then 412, so we quickly gathered our things and ran to the platform and boarded the train at 416 and it left very shortly after that. Norah was clearly amused during the entire ordeal bc she remained calm just until we got on the train. She decided to be miserable for the next couple of hours as we journeyed home and I don’t blame her! We finally made it home just an hour later than our original expected arrival.
It was definitely a crazy idea to do the route we did in 3 days and we easily could have spent a week exploring Scotland. Such a beautiful place and such a great trip! Norah is a wonderful traveler and now that she has her passport, we are going to try conquering the airplane next!