Author Topic: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids  (Read 7362 times)

Offline Yehoshua

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Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« on: August 16, 2018, 01:35:56 AM »
Scotland and Ireland 2018 Trip Report
 
Trip Planning
 
We knew we wanted to go to Europe again this summer way back in December. The problem was that our daughter, DN, would be two years old and would need a seat. Our other daughter, NR, would not need a seat as she was just 9 months old during the trip.
 
Flights
After looking at fares for a while and hoping to find 3 business class seats, I realized that finding more than two seats would be impossible from LAX. Besides that, we wanted the most direct routing possible: no stops unless direct routing was not available.
 
As such, I decided to redeem Chase UR points and book a revenue ticket at 1.5 cents per point directly from chase. The revenue cost of the tickets was only $1018, so it ended up costing around 66k points per adult, 25% less for DN, and around $100 for NR, all paid for with UR, including the infant.
 
Our routing was quite simple: LAX-DUB-EDI, GLA-DUB, DUB-LAX. This would allow us to visit Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow in Scotland for a week and visit Dublin, Galway and Athlone in Ireland for another week before flying back to LA. The ticket was actually cheaper doing a multi-city ticket than flying just LAX-DUB-LAX, and Air Lingus (EI) offers special fares where you can stop in Ireland for up to a week for free. Because of that, the ticket was really LAX-EDI, GLA-LAX with a stop for a week in DUB.
 
Hotels
For hotels on this trip, we used a variety of options. For the first two nights, we redeemed 30k Marriott points per night for The Glasshouse in Edinburgh. We then paid for an Airbnb for the next two nights to be 115 steps away from Chabad for Shabbos at the cost of about $120/night.
 
For Sunday night, we redeemed Chase UR points once again for the Park Inn by Radisson Aberdeen at the approximate cost of 6k UR for the night.
 
For Monday and Tuesday nights, we spend another 30k Marriott per night to stay in the Marriott Glasgow.
 
On Wednesday we flew to Dublin. We spend another 30k Marriott for The Shelbourne Hotel. While we wanted to stay there for two nights, there was no availability the second night, so instead we moved to the Intercontinental Dublin for Thursday night using a free anniversary night.
 
Once again for Friday night and Motzei Shabbos we went to an Airbnb in Terenure, about a mile away from shul. The cost was a bit more than the previous week, at about $150/night.
 
Sunday night we spend at the Clayton Hotel in Galway at around 4k Chase UR for the night. Finally, on Tuesday night, we spent the night at the Sheraton Athlone for 4k SPG for the night.
 
Food
For food, we really needed to plan ahead. While we don’t have POM meals available in LA, we were lucky enough to find good caterers in Europe. In Scotland, we ordered food from Mark’s Deli in Glasgow for the week. Mark has an extensive menu to order from for travelers, which I got from him by asking via email. Plus, while he normally charges a lot to deliver to Edinburgh, he also delivered there “fortnightly,” or every other week for us Americans. Once he’s delivering anyway, we just paid him £10 for delivery to our hotel. We ordered a bunch of frozen meals for during the week, and a whole lot of dips and salads for Shabbos. We also got bread, bagels, and challah from him. We ordered enough to have food through Aberdeen, until we got to Glasgow on Monday night.
 
For our second night in Glasgow, we went out to L’Chaim restaurant for dinner. I emailed them in advance also, and they said they just charge £20 for a soup or salad, entrée and dessert, but that I’d need to order in advance. I ended up ordering on Sunday, via email, and we ended up having a lovely meal at their restaurant.
 
For Ireland, we ordered food from Melanie Stein. She’s a kosher caterer in Dublin who makes travel meals out of the shul. While we didn’t order any meat at all (I’m vegetarian), I didn’t have any kashrus concerns with her food. If you want to order meat or have kashrus concerns, AYLOR. We ordered travel meals form Melanie for during the week and Shabbos as well. She met me at the hotel in Dublin to deliver the frozen food while we had the hotels heat up each night. For Shabbos, we stopped by the shul (where her kitchen is) to pick up the fresh food, challah and wine for Shabbos. She charged us €30 for delivery initially to the Shelbourne, and I didn’t want to pay an additional €12 to have the Shabbos food delivered. We had food from her until the very end of the trip.
 
Additionally, we brought some tuna packets, tortillas, peanut butter and jelly from home for lunches in Ireland (in Scotland we had so much food from Mark, such as cheese and bread, that it was unnecessary), and of course bought loads of fresh produce and some dairy products in both countries for lunches.
 
In the end, all the planning paid off. Everything worked out just fine with the flights, hotels and the food, that we couldn’t really complain. Well, besides for one flight, which I’ll get to later.
 
Tuesday, July 24 and Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Our Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, in economy, was at 7:20 pm on Tuesday night. We got to the airport early, checked in without a problem, and proceeded to security. I was debating buying refundable Delta tickets so we could get Precheck to get through security (Aer Lingus leaves from the same terminal as Delta, T2, in LAX), but decided not to after seeing the non-existent lines at 6pm in T2.




I stopped off at the Priority Pass restaurant in the terminal to get some bottled water and juice. It was super crowded at dinner time, but it wasn’t that bad once I got someone to help me. The flight left on time and was quite the experience for us. It left right at bedtime for both DN and NR, so they went to sleep shortly after takeoff. About an hour after that, they both woke up and wanted to be held for the remaining of the flight while they tried to sleep. Needless to say, it didn’t make for a very comfortable flight, and we arrived in Dublin quite tired.

Breakfast on the plane:






After a few hours in the Priority Pass lounge, we headed to our turbo prop flight to Edinburgh. I’d found out that on this flight they may not allow car seats on board for DN, but they would have a safety harness available. That worked out just fine, as the flight attendant installed the harness before we left. It was a quick 1 hour flight to Edinburgh.
 
We took an UberXL to our hotel and arrived just around 8 pm. We were so tired from the sleepless night in economy that we all just crashed and slept.

Our hotel room at the Glasshouse, Edinburgh:



















The Glasshouse, Edinburgh, public areas:












Thursday, July 26, 2018
While I’m normally a big morning person, being up for so long got to me. We all slept until 1pm Thursday afternoon. It was another 2 hours until we got out for the day to start exploring Edinburgh. We decided to talk to Edinburgh Castle. It was a short, 15 minute walk from the hotel. We arrived at around 4 pm (they close at 6) and spend the next two hours looking around. We bumped into a nice Israeli family,and they took some pictures for us. . The castle was quite nice, and even very stroller-friendly.


















Edinburgh Castle




View from Edinburgh Castle

After the castle, we walked back to the hotel to have dinner. While Mark had delivered the food to our hotel before we arrived, we asked them to heat up our meals for us, which they were happy to do. We ate dinner and went back to bed.


Dinner from Mark’s Deli in Glasgow
 
Friday, July 27, 2018
Friday we woke up early after so much sleep over the past day. We started our morning with breakfast in the hotel, which was complementary. We just ate cereal and yogurt that were on the London Beth Din’s kosher list, but it was more than enough.
 
We then walked to Hollyrood Palace, the Queen’s residence in Edinburgh when she comes at the beginning of July each year. We took a self-guided tour of the palace and gardens, which was quite nice. We got there just as they opened at 9:30am, so it was quite quiet. We then walked up the royal mile (at least most of it), to our next activity: a Harry Potter tour.

Holyrood Palace:















Edinburgh city hall

We did a free Harry Potter walking tour of Edinburgh next. It met not far from the royal mile, and was a slow-moving tour. It was at noon, so both girls slept for the entire thing, one in a stroller, one in a baby carrier. The tour showed the graveyard where JK Rowling got a lot of her inspiration, as well as other inspiring points around the city. While it wasn’t an interesting tour for non-Harry Potter fans, it was excellent if you’re a fan. While the tour officially says that it’s only recommended for ages 5+, we were ready to leave at a moment’s notice if the girls didn’t behave or we couldn’t push the stroller around.


The Elephant House, “Birthplace” of Harry Potter


This building was part of the inspiration for Hogwarts


The Riddell’s graves. In the book it’s spelled Riddle so the anagram would work


The inspiration for Diagon Alley

With the tour done, we headed back to the hotel to pack up and leave to the Airbnb for Shabbos. We took another UberXL there and got in via a lock-box with the key which the owner had given me the combination to beforehand. We settled in to the apartment and got ready for Shabbos. Since there was not going to be any minyan for Friday night at Chabad, we just put the girls to bed, I davened by myself at the apartment, and we had a nice Friday night meal.

Airbnb for shabbos:
















Shabbos, July 28, 2018
Shachris was at 10:00am, as per Chabad’s custom. Thank goodness for the very late Sof Zman Tefila! I walked to Chabad, which just had a minyan, davened, and had a nice Kiddush/lunch afterwards. I then walked back to our apartment where I stayed with NR while DN and my wife went to shul. There was no minyan for Mincha/Maariv on Shabbos, so we spent the rest of the rainy day either taking quick walks around the block with DN between rain showers or resting and playing in the apartment. Shabbos ended (finally) at 10:46pm.
 
Sunday, July 29, 2018
On Sunday we went to Aberdeen. We left the Airbnb early to catch our train at 10:50am. In the rush to get an UberXL and get to the station, we ended up forgetting our stroller at the Airbnb, which we only realized once we were already on the way to Aberdeen. I messaged the host and told him we could come get it on Tuesday once we had a car in Glasgow, so that’s what we planned.

We arrived in Aberdeen and I walked a half a mile to get our car while everyone else stayed in a hotel across the street from the train station. I picked up a car from Enterprise (I booked through National), picked everyone up and headed to the hotel.
 
I found a parking spot just outside that was free on Sundays. We got a room at the Park Inn that didn’t have a bathtub. I asked if we could switch rooms, and the hotel happily obliged, moving us to the room next door. While it was pouring rain once we arrived at the hotel, we just spent the remaining part of the day in the hotel relaxing and resting. We asked that the hotel heat up our meal, but they refused, saying it was against their policy. We therefore ate cool meals and went to bed early.

Park Inn Aberdeen:













 
Monday, July 30, 2018
Monday started a lot less rainy than Sunday was. We started the day with a very nice breakfast (of cereal) in the hotel’s restaurant after I moved the car from the free street parking which ended at 8 am. By 9 am, we were in the car on the way to Balmoral Castle, the summer home of the Royal family. After a lovely 1.5 hour drive, we arrived and went in. It was really nice to walk around the estate and see the one room in the castle which is open to the public. DN spent some time running around on a large patch of open grass, as well as exploring the rose gardens.


Breakfast at the Park Inn

Balmoral Castle:










We only spent around 2 hours there, before we headed back in the car for the same drive back to Aberdeen. We stopped briefly at Enterprise to pick up an employee who drove us to the train station. We arrived with plenty of time to take our train to Glasgow.
 
The train ride to Glasgow was nice. We ate a dinner of leftovers from Shabbos on the train and arrived in Glasgow on time. We took another UberXL to the Marriott, arriving there right around 8pm. We had the hotel heat up our food, which they were happy to do, had a good dinner and went to bed.

Marriott Glasgow:














Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Tuesday started with a nice breakfast in the hotel’s club lounge which we had access to. After breakfast, we walked the .4 miles to Enterprise/National to pick up a car to drive to Falkirk to see the famous Falkirk Wheel. When we picked up the car, it was on empty, so we had to bring it back in the same condition. This car showed now many miles until empty; we had 63. I filled it up just a bit (£15 worth of gas), before heading out. The first stop though was on the outskirts of Edinburgh to pick up the stroller.


Breakfast in the Marriott lounge

Our host was super nice about the whole thing. I mentioned we’d be in Glasgow on that day and have a car to drive to Edinburgh to pick up the stroller. He offered to meet me on the outskirts of town closer to Glasgow in a parking lot. We arrived at the parking lot at the arranged time and met his uncle who had the stroller with him. He was so nice about the whole thing, we really appreciated it.
 
We then continued on to Falkirk while both girls remained asleep. We arrived in the late morning, parked (you can pay for parking with a credit card at the shop instead of in cash on arrival if you want), and got tickets to go on the boat that goes up the wheel. While the tickets were for 2:40 pm, we had some time to kill. After lunch (an hour) and playing in their water play area (they also have a playground which was closed due to vandalism), it was finally our turn.

Falkirk  Wheel:








On the way to queue up for the boat ride, we met two chassidish families from London who were there on holiday. We said a quick hello, but other than that didn’t really speak to them.
 
The boat ride is nice and about an hour long. It’s really cool to go up on the boat lift/elevator to see how it worked. It’s amazing that it only uses the same amount of energy as 6 toaster ovens! After going on the boat ride, we bought the girls some souvenirs (a little stuffed animal for NR and some Walker’s shortbread cookies for DN) and headed back to Glasgow to go eat.
 
By that time it was around 4:00pm, still quite early. We figured we’d be way early for dinner at 6:15pm, so when the GPS said it found a way that was 10 minutes quicker I just ignored it. That ended up being a mistake, as we got stuck in some rush hour traffic, and only arrived at L’Chaim Restaurant at 6:14pm.
L’Chaim Restaurant, Glasgow:


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Fried Zucchini appetizer (free, not included in what we ordered)


Butternut squash soup


Chopped liver


Salmon entree


Ribs entree


Chocolate mousse

We had a wonderful dinner at the restaurant. It was really nice to have some hot soup (I know that sounds weird in the middle of the summer, but it was quite chilly outside), and a fresh meal after a week of heating up meals. We bumped into some people there who knew my wife’s grandmother from when they were in school together years ago, so it was nice speaking to them.
 
I davened mincha/maariv at 7:30 pm in the shul, only my second tefila with a minyan in a week. Because shkia is so late, shuls always daven mincha before plag and maariv right after plag, just like we do on Fridays, so they don’t have to wait up so late for maariv.


Mincha
 
We drove back to the hotel without any traffic and parked there. As it turned out, it was cheaper to pay for parking at the hotel for one night and pay the one way drop off fee of £15 by dropping the car off at the airport than it would have been to take a car from the city and return the car that night.
 
We went to bed, all ready to go to Ireland the next day.
 
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Our flight to Dublin was schedule for 11:30 am. After another breakfast in the club lounge, we packed up the car and headed off to the airport, this time thankfully against traffic.
 
We returned the car and walked to the terminal which was only a few minutes’ walk away. When we returned the car, there was only 40 miles left until empty, so I’d say the amount of gas we used was spot on.
 
We checked in for our flight, including checking in our car seat, since we knew it wouldn’t be allowed on the prop plane this time either.
 
We made it through security ok (despite the UK’s notoriously strict security, they were fine with all the baby food and bottles we had), stopped by the Priority Pass lounge for a bit, and made it to our gate where we were allowed to board first (which meant going to the bus first).

Priority Pass lounge:










Flight to Dublin:

 
The flight was ok, sort of. While on the way to Edinburgh we had requested a safety harness for DN, on this flight the flight attendant insisted we didn’t. Despite tightening the belt all the way, there was still at least 6 inches of slack between it and her lap that we felt unsafe. We asked the FA about this, but he just replied that he’s been a flight attendant for 6 years and has never needed one on a child. We said we felt safer with one, yet he still refused. Not wanting to get thrown off the plane, we took our chances and the flight proceeded without incident.
 
We landed in a very cold and rainy Dublin at 12:30 pm and took a taxi to our hotel. While I generally hate paying cash for things, and only had €25 in cash on me, I didn’t know there was another option, as Uber is really expensive in Ireland. The cabbie agreed to stop at an ATM for me to get more money, and we made it to the hotel for about €36.
 
We checked into the amazing Shelbourne hotel and got settled. I met Melanie in the hotel lobby to pick up the food which she delivered. By this time, DN just needed to run around, so we walked across the street to St. Stephen’s Green to go to a great playground. It had stopped raining and everything had dried off pretty quickly at this point. Both girls had a great time playing at the park. We headed back to the hotel, which a quick stop at Trinity College just to look around.
 
We walked around the college for a bit, before heading to the Dunnes Store to pick up some produce and back to the hotel for dinner. The hotel was excellent about heating up our meals, and we had a nice hot dinner once again. Bed time came quickly after dinner, and it was once again time to go to sleep.

The Shelbourne hotel, Dublin:




















Trinity College:



















Stephen’s Green Shopping Centrel where the Dunnes Store was:


Dinner from Melanie: pasta and vegetables:



Thursday, August 2, 2018[/u]
Thursday morning started with a wonderful breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant. We didn’t have anything better than we normally eat, just cereal and fruit, but it was in a nice setting.

Breakfast in the Saddle Room:



 
At breakfast we decided to do a free walking tour of Howth, a small seaside village not far (about 45 minutes door to door). As it turned out, we were the only ones on the tour, so it was a private tour, which was real nice with a baby. Normally the tour goes over parts that are not suitable for a stroller, but we just skipped those parts. Our guide was very knowledgeable, and it was nice to get a little history of the area. It really was quite a relaxing day.


Pearse train station to Howth


Piano for anyone to play in the Pearse station


DART train

After the tour, we went to a park in Howth to allow the girls to play. We were outside for quite a few hours, and while unusual for Howth, the sun was brilliantly shining, giving all of us some sun burns.


Island off the coast of Howth


Howth




Old footprints from King George IV


Howth cemetery




Howth




Fun signs from a random store in Howth

We took the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) back to the hotel area and walked to the kosher bakery, Bretzel Bakery, about a mile away for some bread and pastries. The walk was nice and the pastries and bread were even nicer. We walked back to the hotel and packed up to leave to the Intercontinental.


Bretzel Bakery


Scone from the bakery
 
By this point, I figured out that what most people use in Dublin is an app called MyTaxi, which is basically just like Uber. I downloaded the app, and 5 minutes later we were set to go with a driver. The best part is that since it’s just ordering you a regular taxi, if you say you have 6 people, you’ll get a larger van taxi for the same price (which comes in handy when you have loads of luggage). €18 later and we arrived at the gorgeous Intercontinental.
 
We got a room first that was really outdated in terms of decor. The good news was that it didn't have a bathtub, so they switched us to a newly renovated room that did. The room ended up being quite nice, though the service was a bit lacking. Getting things in and out of the freezer proved to be quite hard for them. They also took over an hour and a half to heat up our meals for 20 minutes. The shower handle ended up being broken, and the drain in the shower was clogged. Because of all of these problems, we ended up getting a free breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant buffet which worked out quite well. It was a really nice breakfast and everyone ate well.

Intercontinental Dublin:


Old room”






New room:












After arriving at the hotel, getting settled, eating and bathing the kids, it was time to go to bed.
 
Friday, August 3, 2018
Friday was a quiet relaxing day. After a really nice breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant, we decided to take a walk to Herbert Park a few minutes away. We walked around for an hour or so while the girls were sleeping, and then we went to the play area once they woke up.

Hotel breakfast, Intercontinental Dublin:

 
As you may be able to tell by this point, we spent a lot of time going to parks and doing things the girls would enjoy, which is a different way to travel. While we’re not exactly used to traveling this way, it ended up working out quite nicely and everyone enjoyed.


Herbert Park

After a couple hours at the park, it was time to walk back to the hotel. We stopped very briefly at the US embassy just to see it before heading back to the hotel to pack up and go to the Airbnb for Shabbos.
 
We wanted to order a taxi again using MyTaxi, but we couldn’t get a van taxi this time. Instead, we just took a regular van taxi that was waiting outside the hotel at the time who also took credit card. Score!
 
We first stopped off at the shul in Terenure, the Jewish community area, to pick up the food for Shabbos. Melanie had made us fresh salmon and salads for Shabbos, as well as challah. We picked everything up while the cab waited (including a small bottle of wine), before heading to our Airbnb.

Airbnb, Dublin:















It took us a minute to find our Airbnb’s location, but after calling the owner who came to open it for us, we realized we were right nearby after all. We got into the Airbnb (which was awesome except for the smell of cigarette smoke), did some laundry (boy do European washing machines take a long time for not a lot of clothes), got ready for Shabbos, went to Aldi (a supermarket) nearby, put the girls to sleep, and I went to shul. It was a mile away and not very complicated. Davening was quite nice, and they had a bigger crowd than expected. I came back, we had dinner, and went to bed.
 
Shabbos, August 4, 2018
Shabbos was very nice in Terenuere. Davening was not too long, and it was followed by a nice Kiddush. I practically ate lunch at the Kiddush, as they had a lot of cheese, fish balls, crackers, and vegetables in addition to all the cake.
 
I walked home and we had a nice lunch with more of Melanie’s food as the girls napped. The afternoon itself was relaxing, and I had a chance to take a nice little walk with DN. There was no eruv just like in Edinburgh, and I was happy that she didn’t start crying or refuse to walk. We gave the girls dinner and put them to bed all before mincha at 8:45 pm.
 
I went back to shul for mincha/maariv and had a nice seuda shlishis there. I met an Israeli couple that knew a close family friend of ours as well as a few other visitors from Canada. All in all, it was a very nice meal, and maariv was over before 10:30pm.
 
Shabbos in Ireland was very nice, but it was time to go to bed after a very late havdala at 10:45pm!
 
Sunday, August 4, 2018
This Sunday our train was not until 11:40am. We got up and I went to daven Shachris at 8:30am. After shachris, I stopped by the Lidl supermarket (related to Aldi) to pick up some more fruit and veg, as well as some juice and formula. We ate some more oatmeal packets for breakfast before calling another MyTaxi to come get us.
 
I was actually worried that we wouldn’t be able to find one on a Sunday morning of a holiday weekend, but we were and did. Soon we were off to Heuston Station to catch our train to Galway.
 
We got to the station quickly and got on the train without too much fuss. Unlike on our trains in Scotland where there was no assigned seating due to a computer glitch, there was on the Irish trains. Not only that, but every other seat was taken and then some! People were standing and sitting all over the empty space between cars.
 
We got to Galway and walked to Budget to rent our car. Like some city center rental locations, this one didn’t have the cars nearby but rather they were in a garage not far away. After seeing how much stuff we had (I thought we were traveling pretty lightly), they gave us an upgrade to an Audi A4 for free. We got the car and made it to our hotel not far away.


Our Audi A4 in Galway
 
I’m not quite sure why, but for some reason this hotel booked us into a room with two queen size beds and one twin bed that was a nice corner room with loads of windows. It was way nicer than a standard room, but it could be nothing else was available. We spent some time in the pool before going back upstairs to eat. Again I asked the hotel if they could heat up our meals, and they said no. There’s something about these smaller, not as expensive properties that have issues with health code violations that the nicer, more expensive places don't. We heated up the food with a blow dryer until it shut off to cool down, but basically had room temperature food.

Clayton Hotel, Galway:
















View from the room:




We ate early, and both girls went to sleep quite exhausted from the day of travel without a nap.
 
Monday, August 6, 2018
We woke up early Monday morning to go to the Cliffs of Moher. We ate breakfast in our room, checked out, and were on our way by 9:00am. We drove most of the way to the cliffs without incident.
 
About 15 minutes before we got there, NR started crying. We pulled over as soon as we could and noticed she’d vomited all over herself and the car seat. 15 minutes later, after changing her and cleaning the car seat the best we could, we were on our way and arrived at the cliffs a few minutes later.
 
The weather at the cliffs was a bad as can be for visibility: 0%. It was misty outside and slightly rainy, but really, really foggy. Undeterred, we went anyway to try to make the most of it. With visibility so bad that you couldn’t see more than 10 feet up the path from you, it was futile to see any of the cliffs. We enjoyed the visitors center and even walked around outside for an hour or so, but eventually we just gave up. We went back to the visitors center, had lunch (we had an extra set of meals from Melanie) and headed back to Galway, thankfully without anyone getting sick this time.
 



Cliffs of Moher in the fog

We made it back, returned the car, and got on our 3:00pm train to Athlone, about halfway back to Dublin. I purposely decided to stay in Athlone for two reasons: one is that it was close enough to Dubin airport that we could make it there within 1.5 hours by bus. The second reason was because there was a Sheraton I could use points at that was a 2 minute walk from the train and bus stations.
 
We arrived in Athlone and walked to the hotel. While we got an accessible room, it was nice to have the extra space even if it meant bending down to use the sink and turn off the lights. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking around the small mall that is under the hotel before going back to our room, having the last of Melanie’s meals, bathing the girls and putting them to bed.

Sheraton, Athlone:










I then walked to the bus station to confirm what we'd need the following day for the bus tickets. It was a good thing I did, because a week beforehand they had changed the schedule and didn’t inform me. It turns out that the bus we were booked on was not going to be the X20 express bus, but just the 20, a local bus. The good news is that you are welcome to go at any time you want all day that you have tickets for without having to let anyone know. We decided to go on the 10:10 bus instead, since I would rather be early to the airport than to have to rush.
 
With that information, I headed back to the hotel room, made some peanut butter sandwiches on the tortillas we’d brought, and went to bed.
 
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
We got up at a nice hour and went to the hotel’s restaurant for a nice and free breakfast. I had club lounge access on account of having an SPG business card, but there was no breakfast in the lounge. I asked, and they said they served breakfast to club members in the restaurant. Nice! Another breakfast of cereal and fruit is better than just oatmeal.

Sheraton, Athlone breakfast:






We packed up after breakfast and were going to walk to the bus station. A very nice hotel employee offered to walk with us all the way there (2 minutes) so we didn’t have to schlep our bags ourselves. It was so nice of her. We got to the station about 20 minutes before the bus was to leave, but it ended up being fine. We took the bus to the airport which was quite uneventful.
 
I will mention that the bus driver said we didn’t need seats for our daughters since they were under 5 but could put their car seats in seats anyway. NR’s car seat didn’t fit the right way on the seat, but she slept just fine most of the way, only waking up right before we go to the airport.
 

NR sleeping on the bus to the airport

We checked in and went through security just fine. We stopped at an empty gate to eat before going through US preclearance security. Security was interesting as they don’t x-ray you again, they just scan your bags.
 
Global entry was quick and easy, and before you knew it we were at our gate. The flight boarded a few minutes after we got there, and we were amongst the first on board. The flight was quite smooth, and the girls both slept for the last 3 hours or so.




Hermolis kosher meal

We landed back in LA half an hour early, waited on the plane for an hour for a WestJet plane to get out of our way so we could park at our gate, got picked up at the airport and were home a few minutes after that.
 
It was quite a different trip than I’m used to, but that was expected. I thought the girls did great, both with the time change and just being in a different environment and on a different schedule. It was a lot of fun, I hope we can continue to do nice trips like this for a long time to come.

Offline AJK

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #1 on: August 16, 2018, 02:00:23 AM »
Great report! I can't even imagine traveling like that with two kids. Totally different way to travel for sure.
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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #2 on: August 16, 2018, 06:33:32 AM »
Great report! Can’t imagine the time it took to write this up and adding all the pictures in the format. Thanks.

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #3 on: August 16, 2018, 09:14:20 AM »
Great report! I can't even imagine traveling like that with two kids. Totally different way to travel for sure.
It was tough and certainly different than we used to travel, but in the end of the day it was still fun. Just took a lot more planning and missing out on things we would have otherwise wanted to see.

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #4 on: August 16, 2018, 09:15:10 AM »
Great report! Can’t imagine the time it took to write this up and adding all the pictures in the format. Thanks.
Thanks! I wrote the TR on the plane on the way back when the girls were sleeping. The pictures came at night this past week.

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #5 on: August 16, 2018, 11:51:18 AM »
Great TR - appreciate the time it took to write this up.

I have just one question, did you go to Scotland and not visit any distilleries?? That is like going to restaurants and not ordering any meat  ;)

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #6 on: August 16, 2018, 11:55:08 AM »
Great TR - appreciate the time it took to write this up.

I have just one question, did you go to Scotland and not visit any distilleries?? That is like going to restaurants and not ordering any meat  ;)
Thanks! Yup, no distilleries at all, but then again I wouldn't have gone even without kids as I don't care for alcohol. Kinda like you pointed out for meat.

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #7 on: August 16, 2018, 10:00:54 PM »
Thank you for the TR and nice pictures, really enjoyed reading  :)
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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #8 on: August 16, 2018, 10:18:07 PM »
really nice TR ! great pics. cant imagine such a long trip with my little kids!
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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #9 on: August 16, 2018, 11:12:00 PM »
Thank you for the TR and nice pictures, really enjoyed reading  :)
Thank you.
really nice TR ! great pics. cant imagine such a long trip with my little kids!
Thanks. It's really fun, you should try it.

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #12 on: August 17, 2018, 07:27:37 AM »
Well done, sir!

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #13 on: August 17, 2018, 09:12:31 AM »
Paging @Moishebatchy
I had a feeling someone would mick up on that, I just thought it would be @moishebatchy directly.
Well done, sir!
Thank you.

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #14 on: August 21, 2018, 01:07:27 PM »
Wow! Incredible report and wonderful pictures! I'd love to do an Ireland/Scotland tour (with a few days visiting distilleries!)
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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #15 on: August 21, 2018, 01:48:12 PM »
Wow! Incredible report and wonderful pictures! I'd love to do an Ireland/Scotland tour (with a few days visiting distilleries!)
Thanks!

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #16 on: August 22, 2018, 01:03:56 PM »
Great report as always and good to see a bit about traveling with kids. Glad you still had a nice time! Shame about the fogginess of Moher, can't predict that.

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #17 on: August 22, 2018, 02:25:21 PM »
Great report as always and good to see a bit about traveling with kids. Glad you still had a nice time! Shame about the fogginess of Moher, can't predict that.
Glad you enjoyed. Yeah, sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate, but overall we had good weather for traveling to a generally rainy location. People said this was the driest year in 30 years.

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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #18 on: August 22, 2018, 02:45:37 PM »
I'm agreeing with everyone else here.  Great report and I appreciate all the details of traveling with kids.  Thanks also for the details of how you did the food.  Ireland and Scotland are on my bucket list but I need hot food so thanks for sharing all that info and also your insight that the smaller hotels seemed to have more problems with a willingness not to heat it up.


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Re: Scotland & Ireland with 2 small kids
« Reply #19 on: August 22, 2018, 03:04:53 PM »
I'm agreeing with everyone else here.  Great report and I appreciate all the details of traveling with kids.  Thanks also for the details of how you did the food.  Ireland and Scotland are on my bucket list but I need hot food so thanks for sharing all that info and also your insight that the smaller hotels seemed to have more problems with a willingness not to heat it up.
You're welcome. Yeah, it's always a treat to have hot food when travelling, especially if you don't live near POM in NYC. Hopefully you'll get there one day soon.