Summer Trip to Scotland: Road Trip through the Highlands Overview

01/21/202501/21/2025globegazers 4 Comments

In the summer of 2024, we took a trip to Scotland with our two children, ages six and three. After a longer than expected journey getting there, and two nights in Edinburgh, we rented a car and took a road trip through the Highlands.

Itinerary

We mostly based our itinerary on what Rick Steves recommends here, with some modifications for what we thought would be most interesting for our family. Along the way, we almost exclusively stayed in hostels run by Hostelling Scotland, which were nice, affordable options for our family of four. We also found it easy to work with them to book all of our stops ahead of time.

Day 1: Pick up car and drive to Stirling. Visit Stirling Castle. Drive to Oban and spend two nights there.
Day 2: Sightseeing in Oban. If the weather cooperates, consider a trip to the islands of Mull and Iona.
Day 3: Drive from Oban to Glencoe. Explore the scenic valley and do some hiking. Drive on to Glenfinnan and visit the monument (and maybe see the steam train on the viaduct). Spend the night in Arisaig (to be near the ferry port of Mallaig).
Day 4: Catch a ferry from Mallaig to the Isle of Skye. Drive to Portree, then around the Trotternish peninsula, stopping at scenic spots along the way. Spend the night on the island in Broadford.
Day 5: Drive off the Isle of Skye on the Skye Bridge, headed towards Inverness. Stop at Loch Ness attractions including Urquhart Castle. Arrive in Inverness. Spend two nights there.
Day 6: Explore Inverness and the surrounding area, including Culloden Battlefield.
Day 7: Leave Inverness. Head first to Nairn and play on the beach. Drive south to Newtonmore and visit the Highland Folk Museum. Spend the night in Perth.
Day 8: Drive from Perth to Edinburgh in the morning, leaving enough time to explore the city in the afternoon.

As we mentioned in previous posts, this was not exactly the original plan. We had originally planned on spending three nights in Inverness, and then on Day 8 we would have driven from Inverness all the way to Edinburgh (stopping in Newtonmore), only arriving in the afternoon/evening. Since we wanted to have more time in Edinburgh, we asked Hostelling Scotland if we could shift that last night. They didn’t have space in Edinburgh for an extra night there, but they did have a room at the hostel in Perth. Perth is only an hour away from Edinburgh, so that was our best option for spending most of the day in Edinburgh.

Driving in Scotland

We rented our car from Budget, using the location that ended up being walking distance from our Edinburgh Airbnb. We were happy to see that it was the same price (and maybe a little bit cheaper) to rent in town versus having to return to the airport.

One thing to note for travelers from the US like us is that the car selections are generally smaller than in the US. You don’t find many options for large SUVs like you might be used to! We chose a Compact SUV which we thought would be fine for our family of four (and hopefully big enough in the back for the younger kid’s car seat), plus maybe a little more able to handle any rugged roads we went on. We ended up being assigned a Nissan Juke. It felt a bit more “compact” than “SUV,” but it worked fine for what we needed.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed in one of the pictures above that the car had a manual transmission. That is another thing that travelers from the US may need to be aware of: in many cases it is easier and cheaper to get manual transmission instead of automatic. Fortunately for us, Della learned to drive a manual transmission growing up and still remembers well enough to feel confident enough to do it on this trip. Another thing to consider is that in Scotland the driver sits on the right side of the car, so they have to shift with their left hand. We did have some experience driving this way on our self-drive safari so we were pretty confident we could figure it out. Unfortunately, the UK is a little more restrictive than the US in terms of allowing multiple drivers of the car. We could have added Eric as a secondary driver, but it would have added a lot to the cost, so Della said she would do all the driving.

One big decision we had to make as traveling parents was what to do about seating for the kids. Back in the US, we hadn’t felt like our six-year old was big enough to ride in a booster, so he was still in a big car seat (and obviously the three-year old was as well). You can rent car seats from the car rental company or from local services, but the cost for eight days felt like enough to buy a brand-new nice seat! We didn’t want to bring our big seats from home, so we thought about bringing along some lightweight seats we have. Still, that wasn’t a great fit because we knew at the end of the trip we would be using the London Underground and we didn’t want to lug two seats around on that no matter how lightweight they were. Finally, we came up with a hybrid plan:

For the three-year old, we would bring a lightweight car seat that was very close to reaching its expiration date, so at the end of the road trip we could just dispose of it in Edinburgh and not have to have it in London
For the six-year old, we decided to purchase the RideSafer Travel Vest, a small harness that allows the child to be securely strapped into a regular seat. This packs down very compactly, so we thought it would be great for this trip and future ones as well

When stopping for a quick photo-op, it was easier to leave the vest on rather than take it all the way off

Yet another thing for drivers from the US to consider about driving in Scotland is that the highways may be much more narrow than you are used to, especially if you live in the western US like us and are used to wide-open spaces. Scotland does have some roads that are as big as interstates, but many of what were listed as highways were much smaller two-lane roads that we were used to. They also had in many places narrow shoulders with not much room for error, tight and blind curves, and large trucks coming from the opposite direction. Yet they still had a speed limit of 60 MPH! Not to mention the fact that we were driving on the opposite side of the road that we were used to, so we missed the intrinsic feel of where to put ourselves in our lane. All that probably combined to make the locals frustrated at us not feeling comfortable driving as fast as we could be.

Tried to capture a feel for what the highways were like

If you are planning to go to the Isle of Skye or another smaller location, you need to familiarize yourself with the rules for single-track roads. These are roads where there is only one paved line which is expected to be used by drivers going both directions! You should study how to use the marked “passing places” to yield to drivers coming from the other direction, and what the rules are for which driver yields. We saw someone (almost certainly a tourist) ignore these rules on Skye and cause a huge mess for everyone else, so they are definitely important to understand.

If someone were coming from the other direction, we could have pulled into this passing place on the left to allow them to go by. Never pull into a passing place on the right!

One final thing to think about is what you want to listen to! We thought it would be fun to put together a playlist of songs from Scotland to match the beautiful scenery we were seeing – including plenty of songs from the Outlander tv show!

We hope this overview post helped to set the scene for our Scottish Highlands road trip! Next up, we will describe the different stops along the way in more detail.

Summer Trip to Scotland: Edinburgh

01/12/202501/11/2025globegazers 6 Comments

In the summer of 2024, we took a trip to Scotland with our two children, ages six and three. Our trip started and ended in the country’s biggest tourist draw, the city of Edinburgh.

We originally planned to spend three nights there at the beginning of the trip and one night at the end (with a road trip in between), but our travel troubles getting there meant we missed out on our first night. We ended up adjusting our road trip itinerary some to give us extra time in Edinburgh on that final night.

Arrival and Settling In

As mentioned in the post about getting there, we took the tram from the Edinburgh airport to the flat we had booked through Airbnb, located just to the northeast of the city center. We loved the location, which was right off a road with grocery stores and bus lines to help us get around. It was definitely nice to have multiple bedrooms for the first nights as we were fighting jetlag.

Nice sitting area overlooking the city street

After getting settled, we decided we needed to get out and enjoy the sunshine to try and help adjust. We caught our first of many double-decker buses, which the kids really enjoyed.

We rode the bus to the middle of the Royal Mile, the main tourist and historic road which runs through the city center. From here we walked downhill, using the second half of the Rick Steves’ self-guided walking tour to help describe what we were seeing. Some of the highlights were Canongate Kirk, Dunbars Close garden, and an alley where some scenes from Outlander had been filmed. The kids did not have a lot of patience for sightseeing though, so we were a little more rushed than we would have liked to be. We ended at the bottom of the Royal Mile by looking through the gates of Holyrood House palace.

From this point, we decided it was actually just as easy to walk back to our flat. On the way, we stopped at a grocery store and got some breakfast supplies and some prepared food for a simple dinner. We watched the movie Brave, then all crashed pretty early!

Exploring Edinburgh

After a good night of sleep, we were mostly rested and ready to explore Edinburgh on the only full day we would have in the city.

Our first destination was Edinburgh Castle, which sits at the top of the Royal Mile. To get there, we took the bus again and got off by the National Museum, then walked up the hill to the castle, passing by scenic Victoria Street in the process.

We had followed the advice and booked our tour online ahead of time, which turned out to be a good idea because the tickets had been sold out by the morning of. Instead of just buying entrance to the castle, we had gone ahead and purchased Explorer Passes, which are good for 14 days and would allow us entrance to many of the historical sites we were planning to visit.

To tour the castle grounds, we again followed Rick Steves’ self-guided walking tour to provide a route and context. The castle staff also gave us a kids activity guide that provided some information for their age range. We enjoyed touring the grounds, which provided great views over the city. The kids especially liked climbing on the cannons. We did stand in line for some of the interiors of the buildings as well.

After the castle, we headed down the Royal Mile. Almost immediately we decided to stop at an attraction called Camera Obscura and World of Illusions. We had wondered if it was a tourist trap, but it ended up being an enjoyable visit. We got to travel through different floors filled with many interactive optical illusions. On the top floor is a 19th century device called a camera obscura which uses lenses and mirrors to project images from outside onto a table, looking almost like a video feed.

We took a break from the Royal Mile and went back to Victoria Street for lunch at Bertie’s Fish and Chips. Eric got the fish and chips, and Della tried her first haggis of the trip (fried this time).

We returned to the Royal Mile and did the first half of Rick Steves’ self-guided walk, taking us past more scenic older buildings and atmospheric closes (alleys). It had gotten a little damp so we did pause for a bit in St Giles Cathedral. We made it back to the middle of the Mile and caught the bus back to our flat for some nap / quiet time.

Then, for dinner we went to a food hall called Edinburgh Street Food. Here we met up with our friend Christine from Denver along with her niece, who were coincidentally visiting Edinburgh at the same time! We were able to order an eclectic mix of food: plant-based tacos for Della, bao buns for Eric, and pizza for the kids. The kids also got some interesting flavors of soft-serve ice cream for dessert.

Before heading to bed, we decided to try one other amenity of our flat: a chest full of dress-up clothes to allow us to dress like Scotsmen!

The next morning, we had to check out of our flat and go pick up our rental car for the Highlands road trip. Stay tuned for a future post about that!

Return to Edinburgh

After a fun trip in the Highlands (foreshadowing!), we returned to Edinburgh for one night. Since we had missed some of our sightseeing time at the beginning of the trip, we made some changes to the road trip itinerary to allow us to get back to Edinburgh in the morning so we could have most of the last day to explore as well. We were able to drop off our luggage at our accommodations for the evening (more on that in a bit), and then headed out into the city to explore.

We caught a bus (double-decker!) back to the National Museum area. We first got lunch at MUMS Great Comfort Food, a homey diner serving some traditional Scottish food. Eric got the haggis tower which came with mash (mashed potatoes) and turnips. Della got two different types of sausage with mash.

From there, we walked through the nearby Greyfriars Kirkyard to find some of the headstones with names that appear in Harry Potter, like Thomas Riddle.

We then visited the National Museum itself. It is free which was a nice perk, although that did mean it was crowded. We once again used the Rick Steves self-guided tour to help us chart a path through the varied exhibits. We walked through the technology section to a separate wing with different eras of Scottish history on different floors. The floors were ordered chronologically, but we found ourselves a little frustrated that within each floor there was not a well-defined path to follow for a good story of the era. We had to just poke around randomly on each floor, looking at items that interested us. After finishing on a nice rooftop terrace, we went back into the main wing and explored some of the exhibits on animals. We paused to rest our legs, and then decided to head back to the hostel to relax.

We were staying at the Edinburgh Central Youth Hostel, part of a network of hostels across the country called Hostelling Scotland. We had stayed at a number of these hostels on our road trip (more foreshadowing), so we knew what to expect. The Edinburgh Central hostel was definitely the fanciest one we stayed at! We got a private room with an ensuite bathroom, so it was basically the same as a hotel room, except that the beds were bunk beds. The kids’ favorite feature of the room was that our window looked out on a major road where they could watch the trams and buses go by.

For dinner we walked to Vittoria Italian restaurant (the “on the Walk” location). We had seen this on lists of good restaurants for families in Edinburgh so we thought it would be a good stop for our final meal out in Scotland. Both the adults and kids found some good things to eat, including some nice ice cream for dessert.

After dinner, we debated taking advantage of the late light of Scottish summer evenings and doing one last Rick Steves walk in New Town, but we could tell the kids would probably rather just go back and relax in the room, so we listened to our parenting side over our traveler side and called it a night.

The next morning, we got the breakfast at the hostel which was included in our rooming package – called the “Wee Breakfast,” it was your standard continental breakfast of cereals and breads with some fruit. Each hostel did it slightly differently. The main difference at Edinburgh Central was that we had to fight through swarms of other travelers trying to eat at the same time – it’s a big and popular hostel. After fueling up, we caught the tram to Waverley Station, where we caught a high-speed train to London. We would spend the night there and then catch our flight back to the US the next day!

Summer Trip to Scotland: Getting There

01/05/2025enjean2013 6 Comments

Before we had kids, when we were planning our summer trips, we would come up with a short list of candidate destinations, and often Scotland was very high on the list. It’s always been one of Della’s goals to travel through the Highlands that she read so much about in the Outlander series. Scotland never became our final choice, but it has always been on our mind.

When we had kids, we put big European vacations on hold for a bit, but in the summer of 2024, now that they were six and three, we decided that it was maybe the right time to go. We thought Scotland might be a great place to go with kids, especially since we were planning on renting a car and doing a roadtrip which would allow for a little flexibility.

Flying Four to Scotland for $22

As with past trips, one goal was to use miles to book our plane flights. Now that we have to pay for four tickets instead of just two, it requires a lot more miles. Eventually we decided that the best strategy would be to use United Airlines to fly one direction directly to or from Edinburgh, and American Airlines to fly the other direction via London (no direct flights to or from Scotland). Based on the available flights and our schedule, we chose to fly into Edinburgh on United, then out of London on American.

Since we have a United Airlines credit card, there was a little more availability of flights at the cheaper rate of 40,000 miles per person. In the end we chose the flight with a layover in Washington, D.C, and were able to get all four for 160,000 miles and $22.40 in fees.

Smoothly at the Start

The first part of our journey went exactly as planned. We rode the train to the Denver airport, and had enough time to eat lunch before flying to DC. In DC, we took advantage of the three hour layover and had dinner, then walked up and down the entire length of the terminal for exercise.

Here Come the Delays

As we were wrapping up our walk through the terminal at 8:30, we got a text from United that our flight had been delayed until 11:00 PM – our inbound airplane was arriving late due to lightning in Newark. We weren’t too worried yet…

But we watched through the United app as our inbound airplane still never left Newark. The delays kept trickling in.

At 9:30 PM, the flight was delayed until 11:27 PM
At 10:00 PM, the flight was delayed until 12:27 AM
At 10:45 PM (past our original departure time), the flight was delayed until 1:27 AM
At 11:OO PM, the flight was delayed until 2:15 AM

Through all this we had to try various things to keep the kids entertained. Even though it was late (even for our bodies on Denver time), they didn’t show much interest in sleeping.

At 11:55 PM, the flight was delayed until 3:00 AM.

At 12:05, there was a moment of optimism, as we could see that the Newark flight had left its gate. The delay was updated to be only 2:15 AM again.

At this point, with it being after midnight, and not looking like we would leave for two more hours, we got one kid to sleep, but the other still refused.

The flight from Newark was in the air, and we were feeling tired but confident.

At 1:25 AM, the flight was cancelled.

There was then a big scramble to figure out what to do. Agents passed out cards with a QR code to connect with a virtual booking service, but we tried and nothing would connect. Our gate became chaos as United had reassigned it to a flight that was heading back to Newark. Eric eventually realized United agents were setting up at nearby empty gates and lingered enough to get in the front of one of those lines.

Talking with an agent, the best they could do for the four of us was to get us on the flight from DC to Edinburgh on Monday night – two days later than the original flight. This was not ideal, but it seemed like the only option.

We chose a voucher for a hotel through a link United sent us. Unfortunately, there was some sort of bug and the options seemed to be assuming we were at the other DC airport (Reagan National). There was no way to fix this, so we just chose the one that said it was closest but was actually more than 30 miles away in Alexandria.

We did have one car seat along, but the other travel harness was in our checked bag. Because it was so late, the United agents said there was no way we could get our checked luggage because there was no one to bring it out. We asked multiple times, but never got a better answer.

The best they could do was give us a voucher for the taxi service, which supposedly had car seats available. We lugged two very tired kids through the empty airport and out to the taxi, where we did find one with a seat. (Thank goodness for the stroller wagon we had purchased a few months before!) We took a very late taxi ride, got checked into our hotel, and crashed.

Unexpected Adventure in DC

We tried to sleep in the next morning, but it was hard to: we were still in our dirty clothes, and thinking about how much time we were losing in Scotland with the 2 day delay.

Eric had the idea to call the rebooking line again, hoping that it would work better during more normal hours. Thankfully it did, and that rebooking agent was able to find seats for us on the flight to Edinburgh from DC that night, so only a 1 day delay. We accepted that and then made a plan for the day.

We spent much of the morning lounging in the hotel room, which actually was pretty nice. We also used meal vouchers to eat lunch at the hotel restaurant.

Note that we are all wearing the same clothes as the day before

It was very hot in the DC area – they were under a heat advisory, and we didn’t want to spend another day and overnight flight in our same clothes. So, we had the idea to go buy some new outfits with shorts. We found a Ross nearby, and rode the free local bus there and bought a shirt and shorts each. (Side note: does this count as visiting the state of Virginia for the kids?) We changed into the shorts at the hotel (keeping the clean shirts in reserve for the flight), then rode the metro to the Mall for a little sightseeing.

It was too hot to do much walking around the Mall, so we just walked through the middle and over to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, which we explored until closing time.

We had time for dinner at Hill Country Barbecue, then rode the (long) metro back out to Dulles airport.

Let’s Try This Again

Back at IAD, we got checked back in and to our gate in plenty of time. Thankfully, this time the inbound airplane had arrived earlier in the afternoon, and was already sitting at the gate. We got on board and breathed a sigh of relief as we headed to Edinburgh a day later than intended!

Our flight to Edinburgh went fairly smoothly. There was some weather in the area which meant that we spent some extra time on the tarmac before taking off, and in-flight service was delayed after takeoff. The kids fell asleep quickly, but the adults were unable to sleep well. It didn’t help that they still did a full meal service once the flight attendants were able to get up and move around.

Getting from the Edinburgh Airport into Town

We made it to Edinburgh roughly on time. The adults were very tired, while the kids were mostly in good spirits. We were definitely glad to see that our checked bags had made it to Edinburgh as well!

It’s actually very convenient to get from the Edinburgh airport to the city center. We were staying in an Airbnb just east of the main part of town, so we took the tram, which was well-labeled and easy to find.

After a 15 minute walk, we made it to our Airbnb flat. We were all tired, but still wanted to make the most of our (even more limited than expected) time in Edinburgh!

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Month: January 2025