England and Scotland Trip *Updated 12/6*

FSU Girl

DIS Veteran
Joined
Oct 20, 2016
Welcome!
Full disclosure, this is not a cruise trip report and doesn't really have any Disney elements. Some people asked for me to write a trip report of my recent honeymoon trip where I spent two weeks in England and Scotland. I figured since these can be places to visit either on a cruise or before or after a cruise some of this can be helpful to planning a British Isles cruise with Disney. I'm going to try and keep this short since there isn't a Disney element to this. If you want to read a more in depth view into my trip I have a travel blog I recently started called Travelswithalysia.com

The Who's, Where's and Why's
Who: My husband and I. This was our third and final honeymoon trip.
Where: England and Scotland, a week in each
Why: This was the main honeymoon trip I wanted to do, we added our other two honeymoons to be closer to our actual wedding date and my love of Disney.

We flew from Miami to London Heathrow airport direct. We decided to travel in style and fly first class, something I've never done before and has totally spoiled me for future flights. I chose a later flight that left at 8:20pm so we would arrive in London around 10am. I hoped that with the later time I'd be able to sleep on the plane and not be as jet lagged as normal. We chose the Double Tree by Hilton West-End for the first two nights of our trip. I had booked this specifically for it's location. I had booked a tour to visit Highclere Castle, the filming location for Downton Abbey. The pick-up location for this tour was at the British Museum, so I figured it would be easiest to get there if we stayed nearby.

One thing that worried me before our trip was transportation from the airport to our hotel. We decided to get Oyster Cards and take the Tube into the city. There are a few different ways you can get into the city, but this is by far the cheapest option. It will take about an hour though with all the stops along the way. We went to a person instead of using the machines while stay at the airport. They had a 7 day pass that we would end up buying later, but it needed to be used consecutively and we were going to Scotland for a week in the middle of our trip, so we just added money to our cards to use for two days. If staying in the British Museum area there are two Tube stations you can use, either Holborn or Russell Square. We did this with two huge suitcases and didn't have any issues. There were some stations that didn't have elevators though, so if you can't lift a heavy suitcase be sure to check which stops are handicap accessible.

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When we arrived at our hotel the room wasn't ready yet so we went to the British Museum to kill a few hours, fight off jet lag and explore all the history that's inside there. A nice thing about this museum is that it is free to get in. You are also allowed to bring big backpacks inside, although they will make you take everything out to inspect it. This really helped us since we had our carry-ons with us after dropping off our luggage at the hotel.

Hotel rooms in Europe are smaller than a standard hotel room in America. Our other two hotels we were upgraded and had larger rooms, but this first hotel was small. It had two twin beds and not much room to get around them.

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A thing I found common over here that is not common back home was the glass wall over the shower would only cover half the length. I was not a fan of this, it made the shower feel colder and water would get out more. All three of our hotels had this style so I think it's just what's common in the UK.

For cruises, I highly recommend flying in a day or two before in case there are any delays with your flight. When I had first started planning this trip I had planned on doing a British Isles cruise, which is why we had two days in London and then went to Scotland then came back due to our flights being locked in. I had planned two days in London originally with the cruise.

This trip was the first time I ever booked tours outside of a cruise. Before going I was very nervous how this would go and did a lot of research on each company we used. I really love the show Downton Abbey and wanted to visit Highclere Castle. They are only opened a small portion of the year since the family still lives there. It technically should have been closed when we were there, but they were having a special event for a week. I booked a tour with a company called International Friends. This was probably my favorite tour out of our entire trip.

How this tour worked. They gave three different options for pick-up locations within London and then at the end of the day dropped off at a single point at Victoria Station. This is probably my only complaint for this company. I didn't like being picked up and dropped off in two different spots. It was especially confusing since we had just gotten to London and didn't know our way around well. I also forgot my Oyster Card and had to pay a one way ticket to get back to our hotel. We chose the British Museum spot since I knew what that building was and could easily figure out a way to get to it. The meet time was also 7am so I didn't want to rely on transportation that early in the morning and wanted to be able to walk.

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This tour was slightly different from a normal tour here with the company. Due to the special event we had to visit Highclere Castle first, normally they go there last. We got to sit in on a lecture from the real Countess that lives here, which was really cool. We spent a few hours here, having enough time to explore the gardens, listen to the lecture and get a guided tour of the inside of the castle. We also got to go to the Cotswolds where they filmed the city of Downton and a farm that was used within the show. It is an all day tour and we got back around 6pm.

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This tour could easily be done before going on a cruise. Highclere Castle can be visited on your own, but it is complicated to get there without a car. It's two hours outside of London and not near the train station. I'm not sure what the child restriction is on the tour, but the website does have children as young as 3 available to book, so I believe they could go on this tour. There were only adults on ours, but when we were at Highclere castle I did see children running around as well as the farm we visited.

One Disney element we did have on this trip, our dinner that night. We decided to eat at our hotel, which was actually a fantastic meal. It turned out that our waitress used to work at Disney and was so excited to learn we had gotten married there. She was super sweet and brought us out complementary champagne and a dessert. It felt like we were back at Disney.

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To get to Scotland we decided on traveling by train. We took the Tube to Kings Cross Station and then a train to Edinburgh. I highly recommend buying tickets as far out as possible (3 months) to get the cheapest rate. We decided to go first class, which I would definitely recommend and do again. Unlike flying, it isn't crazy expensive and if you book out far it can be a reasonable price. It comes with unlimited drinks and they serve food to you at your seat along the way.

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In the lobby of Kings Cross Station they have platform 9 3/4 set up. They have a photographer there, but also let you take pictures on your phone. The line for this can get very long, so I highly recommend getting there early.

If traveling in first class they have a lounge you can wait in that has drinks and snacks. They have TV screens with the trains and platforms. When we arrived we didn't have a platform number yet, so we waited there. Once we did, we hurried off to get on our train. The luggage storage is limited and we wanted to ensure that we could see our suitcases from our seats.

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Yes, we have Mickey and Minnie suitcases :)

If you are doing a Disney cruise that begins or ends in Dover all of the activities we did can easily be accomplished before or after a cruise. Our Scotland trip could also be accomplished if you have a few more days. I hope this can help some who are planning what to do around their cruises or if they are looking at taking a trip to England or Scotland. I did so much research I'd love to be able to help someone out with the knowledge I acquired.

Up next Scotland...

 
Looking forward to reading what you did in Scotland. I live just outside of Edinburgh and probably don’t appreciate the city the way tourists do. DH works there and his parking spot is in the car park right next to the castle.....must be the car park with the best view in the world! I remember reading you wanted to see a Highland Cow, did you manage that? If not, hope you enjoyed all the cute lambs in the fields instead.
 
Looking forward to reading what you did in Scotland. I live just outside of Edinburgh and probably don’t appreciate the city the way tourists do. DH works there and his parking spot is in the car park right next to the castle.....must be the car park with the best view in the world! I remember reading you wanted to see a Highland Cow, did you manage that? If not, hope you enjoyed all the cute lambs in the fields instead.
I feel like that goes for anyone living where people vacation. I live in Florida and almost never go to the beach that is really close to my house. I walked by that car park when I went to the castle, that is a really nice location! I did find a highland cow! I was really excited and they were super cute. They were in an area in front of a castle we visited. I ended up buying a stuffed animal version when we were at the Kelpies so I named it Kelpie lol. It moos when you push it's foot.
 
Scotland, Part 1

I fell in love with Scotland. The country is beautiful, the people are so nice and we had amazing weather the week we were there.

We stayed at Hilton Carlton, which is located just off the Royal Mile and a fantastic location for getting around Edinburgh. The hotel itself is very nice and we ended up getting upgraded for our honeymoon to an Executive King Suite so we had some space too.

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Our arrival day was really the only day we had to explore Edinburgh. I had booked tours for all the other days we were there. We decided to go explore Edinburgh Castle since it was closest to our hotel. We only had about two hours there and did have to rush a bit, but I'm glad we were able to visit it.

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There were great views of the city from all the way up here.

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Edinburgh Castle is located at the top of the Royal Mile and Holyrood Palace is located at the end of the Royal Mile and is where the Queen likes to vacation. I would have liked to see it, but the Queen was visiting while we were in town. They fly a special flag to let people know she is in residence, a yellow flag with a red lion. Fun fact about the Royal Mile, it is actually slightly longer than a normal mile, about 1.1 miles long. It is a very popular spot for tourists with shops and restaurants along the way. I would recommend buying souvenirs slightly off of this street for better quality and prices.

Disney Cruises have a stop in Scotland that is about two hours away from Edinburgh. If you are planning on walking the Royal Mile know that it is a steep incline going up towards Edinburgh Castle. I didn't really know this before arriving there and was surprised how steep it was when we walked to the castle. It is also cobblestone roads in parts and can be difficult to walk on.

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That night we found a bar that was showing the second to last episode of Game of Thrones since it wasn't available at our hotel.

For tours I booked through two different companies: Rabbie's and Highland Explorer Tours. I really enjoyed both of these companies and would recommend either one. I did a lot of research before booking and was a little nervous since I hadn't been on a tour outside of a cruise before, but they all were fantastic. Both companies offered longer tours like 3-day or 5-day tours. I chose to do a bunch of 1-day tours so we could have a home base in Edinburgh with one hotel and not have to move around a lot.

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Rabbie's used these small 16 passenger vans. It was nice having a smaller group of people instead of the massive buses used by the cruises. They also had a guarantee that they would go no matter how few people signed up for the tour. That wasn't really an issue though, most were almost fully booked.

For our first tour day in Scotland I booked West Highlands, Lochs & Castles. It was a very busy day and we say a lot from 8am until 6:30pm.

The city of Edinburgh is located in the lowlands. The highlands are really beautiful and should be visited when in Scotland. It's where you'll find all the huge mountains and gorgeous lochs (Scots for lakes).

Castles we saw:

Doune Castle
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This castle might look familiar, it is where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed as well as Outlander.

Kilchurn Castle:
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This castle was pretty much a ruin, but it was where I got to see the Hairy Coos, so it was my favorite stop of the day.

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Inveraray Castle:

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We went to a loch where a lot of locals brought their dogs. We also visited a place called Rest and Be Thankful that had gorgeous views.

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It was an amazing day, with perfect weather. I really liked this tour even though it was a little exhausting by the end of it. We got back into Edinburgh around 6:30pm and had dinner in the city.

 




Scotland, Part 2

I used two different tour companies while in Scotland: Rabbie's and Highland Explorer Tours. I did A LOT of research on the different tour companies and read soooo many reviews on TripAdvisor the good and bad to try and figure out who to use. I also didn't want to use just a single company for the week in case they turned out bad.

There were a few differences between Rabbie's and Highland Explorer Tours:
Rabbie's:​
  • Only has small vans that max out at 16 people​
  • Entry Tickets are bought day of at a discounted rate​
  • Slightly longer tour days ending around 6/6:30pm​
Highland Explorer Tours:​
  • Has much larger buses that varied in size the two days I used them​
  • You have the option to purchase Entry Tickets ahead of time at a discounted rate when you purchase the tour​
  • Slightly shorter tour days ending around 5pm​

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The two tour companies were very similar in touring style. They have a home base on the Royal Mile where you check in 15 minutes early. It was a slightly shorter walk for us to get here. This day the tour bus was a full sized charter bus and there were about 40 people on the tour. We had two tour guides in addition to the bus driver. Although it was a much larger sized tour, it really wasn't noticeable. We got seats up front so we didn't have to wait long to get off the bus at each stop. They have microphones to talk to everyone on the bus so hearing them wasn't a problem and they played Scottish music like all my other tours while driving.

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Across the street was a cute shop, we unfortunately didn't go inside, but I loved the name.

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A view of the Royal Mile. If you head off in this direction you'll reach Edinburgh Castle.

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The other direction will take you down to Holyrood Palace. I think Queen Elizabeth was at the Palace the week we were there or someone else from the Royal family because the Palace was closed to the public and they were flying the flag that signifies the Queen is in residence.

Our tour for the day was called: Loch Lomond Stirling Castle the Kelpies. Our first stop was the Kelpies.

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These Kelpies are also built on the battle ground where William Wallace was defeated and captured by the English. These were built 30 meters high! It was another perfect day in Scotland with sunny skies and temperatures in the low 70s. There is a park around the statues and a gift shop. I did buy a little stuffed animal of a Hairy Coo and named it Kelpie. When you squeeze his foot he moos.

The Kelpies are a relatively newly built statues of mythological creatures. Legend has it that Kelpies are creatures that take form of usually a white horse that you’ll find near a loch and if you try to jump on it to steal it you’ll become attached to the creature and it’ll dive to the bottom of the loch and eat your soul. It’s apparently an old wives tale to try and scare kids away from lochs so they don’t accidentally drown as well as a lesson not to steal. Before coming here I had never heard of them, but it was a really interesting story and the statues were very impressive.

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We spent a good amount of time here before getting back on the bus and heading off to our next destination Loch Lomond, which is the largest Loch in Scotland.

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It was a gorgeous day out, probably our nicest of the entire trip. A lot of locals were out because of the weather even though it was the middle of the week. It's apparently very common for people to call out sick on good weather days since they are so rare there.

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We went for a hike around part of the Loch. Our bus was parked at the little town and some of the path was on the sidewalks and street, but then the road ends and the path is really jagged. I wouldn't recommend it unless you can walk really well. Although no one is in my picture it was actually really crowded and it could get complicated walking the narrow path with other people walking the other direction.

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This place was beautiful, I'm really happy we were there on a day it wasn't raining.

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We found our two tour guides and bus driver at a "beach"

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Some adorable pups showed up and played in the water. The one of the left was chasing rocks his owner was throwing and finally caught on that he couldn't retrieve them because they would sink. They were gorgeous dogs and I've decided I want to get a Golden Retriever from Scotland. The dogs there all just seemed so much healthier than ones found here in the US. A thing I loved about Scotland was how dog friendly everything was. Everywhere we went dogs were welcomed in shops and castles. You'd find dogs everywhere or little bowls of water left out for any pup passing by.

We made our way back to the little town and decided on some coffee. Another thing I noticed in Scotland was coffee seemed way more popular than tea.

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This was delicious. We were sitting at a large table and two older couples asked if they could sit with us. They were the nicest people! Both couples were celebrating their 43 wedding anniversary and were on vacation from England. They lived in Shrewsbury, where Charles Darwin is from. We chatted with them for a while and then had to say goodbye since it was time to get back on the bus.

Our final stop of the day was Stirling Castle. This is the famous location for the battle William Wallace fought and won against the English. I had watched the movie Braveheart before, but it apparently wasn’t very historically accurate. There was apparently a bridge that was the main point to the whole battle and they don’t even include it. As we drove there they pointed out where the bridge would have been and a new bridge has been built since then. Stirling Castle has a lot of history and free guided tours of the castle are included in the ticket price.

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This castle is known to locals as the gold castle on the hill. Up close I didn't really see how it looked gold, but on a different day we went to the Wallace Monument and it did look gold from a distance. The castle is in the middle of being restored. This was freshly painted within the last year.

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A view of the city Stirling from the castle.

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I’m always excited when the wind picks up just right to give me a great flag shot.

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Off in the distance is the William Wallace Monument. We would be visiting on a different day.

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Did you know that Scotland's national animal is the Unicorn? It apparently is the only creature that can defeat a Lion. Know what countries national animal is the lion? England...

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We got back to Edinburgh around 5pm. I had a fantastic time on this tour. I really love history and learned so much about Scotland while I was there.
 
Scotland, Part 3

No trip to Scotland would be complete without a visit to a whisky distillery. We were with Highland Explorer Tours again, but on a slightly smaller bus this time.

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Our first stop was at the William Wallace Monument. It was nice going here the day after we were at Stirling Castle. This monument is located at the top of a high hill (mountain? I'm a Florida girl so anything elevated seems like a mountain to me.) It's about a ten/fifteen minute walk up, or you can use their free shuttle that runs every ten minutes. We decided to walk. There are great views of the city from up there.

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Off in the distance you can see Stirling Castle. It has a nickname of the golden castle and from this distance I can actually see how it would look a little gold (not so much up close)

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After a short visit we headed back down the path.

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Up next was our Whisky tour of a working distillery. This was a lot of fun and I don't even drink Whisky. I learned a lot about how to properly drink it and every step of the process to make it. It's located in the city of Crieff, where actor Ewan McGregor is from.

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Our fun Whisky tour guide. At the end of the tour we were able to try two different types of whisky they make there. A single malt and a blended. I preferred the blended, it has a smokey peat taste to it that I liked. I learned you are to never drink whisky with ice, if anything you add a few drops of water and that's it. They even had to-go containers for people who were driving so they wouldn't get tipsy before leaving. That's something you'd never see in America.

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After the tour we ate at the cafe located up on the roof. I had a delicious egg salad sandwich. They have indoor and outdoor seating, we chose outside because the weather was so nice.

Next we went to the Hermitage Nature walk to a waterfall.

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This looked like the part in Bambii when he stands at the cliff looking out over the forest with his dad.

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This was a pretty easy walk, mostly flat paths.

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We made it to the waterfall!

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This was our bus for the day.

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Scotland, Part 3 Continued

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Our last stop of the day was Dunkeld Cathedral. It was a very cute little town.

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Inside the cathedral you find the Wolf of Badenoch. Our tour guide said there is a legend that he had hundreds of illegitimate kids and if you rub his statues head it will make you have lots of children yourself.

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We had some delicious ice cream here.

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It was really pretty here.

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On the way back to Edinburgh we drove over the river forth. There are three bridges over the river forth, this is the middle bridge. It's only open to buses and taxis. The bridge to the right is for cars and to the left is for trains.

This was a really fun day I highly recommend doing this tour.
 
Wow I just love the pictures. I love all the history you can just see it everywhere. Looking forward to more!
 
Scotland, Part 4

To distract myself from Hurricane Dorian heading straight for me I'm going to do an update of my awesome trip :)

We did another day tour with Rabbie's tours called Alnwick Castle, the Northumberland Coast and Boarders

This was one of my favorite days of the trip. We got to walk across a bridge from Scotland into England. How cool is that?

Most of this tour actually took place in England, but did start out in the same location in Edinburgh with Rabbie’s. We started out of the day going to a little town near the border called Kelso, where there is a ruined Abbey.

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Kelso is known for having the largest cobblestone town square in all of Scotland.

Our tour guide was Jude, a woman from the Netherlands who moved to Scotland. She was awesome, a great story teller and I think should do audio book work.

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Jude dropped us off just before a bridge where Scotland ends and on the other side of the bridge England begins. We were able to take pictures with the Scotland sign before walking across the bridge into England where she was waiting with the bus. I found it so cool to walk into another country!

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We made it to England, woohoo! A much less bloody invasion than history's past.

It looked soooo different from Scotland...not. If there hadn't been signs I wouldn't have realized I was in a different country.

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And we were off to Northumberland to see Alnwick Castle. When I booked this tour I thought you’d pronounce Alnwick phonetically, that would be wrong. Alnwick rhymes with panic so like Ann – ick.

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Alnwick Castle might look familiar to you if you’ve seen Downton Abbey, Harry Potter or even Transformers. This castle has been used many times in movies and TV shows. The Percy family who own this castle actually still live there, with only a small portion of the castle open to the public. We weren’t allowed photos inside the castle, but there is a room that looks very ancient, except for the large flat screen TV. I thought that was really cool, you can see that they truly do use these rooms and enjoy the castle they live in.

We got a discount to Alnwick Castle since we were on a Rabbie’s tour, which was nice. They have a few different options for tickets, you can either get tickets to the gardens, castle or both. We decided to get both and started with the garden. This was a little by accident, we did get lost. I had wanted to start with the castle.

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Scotland, Part 4 Continued

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I wish we had more time here, the gardens are quite extensive and we didn’t have enough time to see everything. One thing I wish we had done was see the poisonous garden. They have guided tours and every plant is highly toxic.

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The fountains had water spouts that went off randomly and did get a few people nearby wet since there is a walkway just beneath them. We decided to head off to the castle.

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These trees weren’t labeled, but I think they are cherry blossom trees and were really beautiful.

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I love Harry Potter and instantly recognized parts of the castle that were used in the first two movies. When you watch the scenes where Harry is at his first Quidditch class it was filmed here. They offer free guided tours of the castle and one option is a movie tour that takes you around telling you about all the famous scenes filmed there and the history around it. I found it fascinating.

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The space between those two buildings is where they CGI'd the Quidditch field off in the distance. They even offer broom riding classes here. It looked like a lot of fun for kids.

I do wish we had more time to spend here. It's really beautiful and so much to look at. If you are here, don't eat lunch in the castle. It was pretty awful and limited. There was a cafe by the gardens that looked nicer or a full tree house restaurant I'd recommend over it.

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This tree house is huge! A full restaurant is located inside it along with a little quick shop and lots of walking area. It was fun to explore and I wish I had discovered it sooner. We saw it as we were walking back to the bus.

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Scotland, Part 4 Continued

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Inside the tree house.

After the castle we went to the beach. It was a bit different than going to the beach here in Florida. We had to hike a bit to actually see the water.

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It was also the first time it was starting to get cold out so I had my jacket on while at the beach.

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Finally found the water! This is the North Sea.

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Our return back to Scotland was back on our bus, no walking into the country this time.

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We drove by Holyrood Palace and I noticed the flag was different on top. This flag means that the queen is in residence. I had kind of guessed that was going to happen it was closed to the public for the week we were there.


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Scotland, Part 4 Continued

This day was definitely one of my favorites in Scotland and definitely recommend this day trip. Afterwards we decided we needed to try some Haggis, a traditional Scottish dish that our tour guide talked up for the day. The idea of it kind of grossed me out, it's a mixture of sheep's heart and lungs ground up. It actually ended up tasting really good.

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I wanted to find somewhere that had Haggis on their appetizer menu so I wouldn't have to fully commit to it in case I didn't like it. This place is located on the Royal Mile and seemed really popular we had to wait for a table and they did turn away a lot of people throughout the night.

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I had a delicious espresso martini.

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My husband got a whisky flight.

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I don't remember which one he ordered, probably should have pointed to it when I took the picture.

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The star of the evening, Haggis! It was really good, but I was a little weirded out by what I was actually eating.

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I ordered a chicken sandwich and my husband got a salad lol. The food was good I'm happy we went here.

The weather started to get more Scottish as the day went on. While we were eating it poured, but then stopped when we went back to our hotel. It did rain through the night and continued on the entire next day. I was okay with the rain, it felt wrong to be in Scotland a whole week without seeing any rain.

 
Really interesting to see all this through your eyes. The border (at the moment , who know what will happen in the next few months) between Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - UK is exactly the same as the border between Scotland and England. Technically though with the Scotland and England border you are not crossing country borders, just region borders, as both are part of Great Britain / United Kingdom. With the border between Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - UK you are crossing into different countries, we have different currency, different laws etc.

The beach you visited would be very typical of beaches in Cork / Kerry / West of Ireland. Your photos of the beach are almost identical to the beach I used to visit as a child in Kerry with my family.
 

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