Alba the Brave

As soon as the Commonwealth games were over, our children begged to be taken to Scotland. Ismay, having been named after my sister who in turn was given a Scottish name as a nod to Grandpa's Scottish ancestry was particularly keen to visit. (Mia was eager to go because her favourite Disney princess is Merida from the film "Brave", and ever since that film came out she has been desperate to see glens and lochs in real life!!!)

Jason spent many holidays in Scotland visiting his Aunty Hilda and Uncle Jimmy and has some lovely memories of Scotland. As for me, horror stories about my Glaswegian family - their rows, fights, squabbles and fallings out was enough to put me off ever setting foot in the place........however, I'm so glad my kids forced me to overcome my harsh judgements.

So we decided to take the train. What a lovely way to travel. £50 return for all of us, we were seated by the loos, the kids could spread out, and best of all, FREE WIFI. Although I'm smiling in this picture here, I was actually VERY apprehensive at the thought of navigating a new city by myself with three small children.

I got the children to pack their own bags of food for the journey and let them have control over what they put in it and when they ate on the proviso they didn't ask for anymore and when it was gone there would be nothing else!

I was impressed with the things the kids had packed in their bags to keep them entertained. On the whole, I was very proud of their behaviour. Eden was most impressed with the Star Trek like toilet door!!

We arrived in Glasgow and set about exploring. First stop was the tourist information office where a lovely lady gave all the children Glasgow pins from the commonwealth games. Ismay was in her element as everyone complemented her on her name which is an old Scot first name and surname. She proudly told everyone that Mackenzie was her middle name and she got to handle the tartan.

Next, we bought metro tickets and used the subway. The man at the booth gave all the kids a special commerative holder to put their metro tickets in when he learned it was their first time in Scotland. We loved using the metro. It was quick, clean efficient and the kids got such a thrill out of swiping their cards through the scanners.

The first place we went to was the Ibrox stadium. Here we bought Rangers t shirts. The kids got loads of lovely comments from Rangers fans about how cute they all looked.

We then hopped back on the metro and went off to visit Glasgow University where we had a lovely picnic in the grounds. The children loved running about.

Next, we hopped back on the metro and checked in at our hotel. After getting caught in a massive downpour, we decided to take refuge in a chip shop.  We got to try deep fried haggis. We all liked it (I didn't like the deep fried part though).

As we were having dinner,  Mia remarked that she was disappointed that she hadn't seen any one in "Glasglow" (sic) wearing a kilt and playing the pipes. Just as we were walking back to the hotel, she got her wish, hearing Scotland the Brave played on the pipes. Just magical.

Whilst we were out  we squeezed in a quick visit to the cathedral and necropolis. Both were resplendent gothic tributes and I imagine them to be quite spooky places at night.

We were really impressed by the "tardis", we found quite a few of them.

As a special treat, I let the children watch television. They watched a programme about vets and they had some scenes of the operating theatre. Following this, Ismay announced that she'd quite like to "cut open animals!!!" and if she married a farmer she could do it all day!!!

The next day was our highland adventure. We caught the train from Galsgow central and headed to Wemys Bay. I bought the children magazines to read to occupy them during the journey. Boy did I regret letting them all choose different ones as they all seemed to want what the other one had.

We loved Wemys Bay train station. The kids (having only ever had Harry Potter read to them and never having seen the films) said this is just how they imagined Hogwarts station to be. We had about five minutes to queue and buy tickets for the Ferry. The children were sooooo excited.

Once on the ferry I started to feel a little outnumbered as the children enthusiastically ran about. I had memories of a school trip to France where we had 60+ children to look after and all of a sudden 3 didn't seem to bad. The main thing is we arrived at Bute Island in one piece!

What's not love about Bute island? Just gorgeous, castles, beaches, mountains och it was lovely.

The children wanted to wear tartan scarves as quite a lot of other people were wearing them due to the Highland games being held that weekend. At £15 a pop that seemed far too much for three children. We managed to find a charity shop that was selling the Stewart tartan in fleece fabric fo £2. I asked the lady behind the counter for some scissors and made it into scarves. (I figured that as we have some Stewarts in our ancestry it was ok to wear that tartan!!)

We caught an afternoon ferry back to Wemys Bay and from there hopped on a bus to Largs. Thanks to Horrible Histories, my kids have a slight obsession with Vikings and we'd been told we might see some there.

Largs didn't disappoint, we did indeed find Vikings, and Palm trees and ice cream.

We had been told by our taxi driver that Nardinis served the best ice cream in Scotland. It was lovely, but as Mia said "no offence mummy, but the place that Uncle Jordan and Aunty Clare took us to when you were in hospital was better"!!!

During the journey from Largs to Glasgow Central, a quick phone call to Daddy was made as Eden's behaviour started to become, ummmm challenging. He soon straightened himself out after his little chat with "Dadda" (Edens special name for Daddy, none of the other children use it!!) and was even very helpful about getting me to the toilets!

Daddy booked us into a posh hotel for our final night in Glasgow. It was in a nice area near the Royal crescent and had a lovely play park close by where I took the children to run off steam before bed.

In the morning, we got up and had a final wonder around. The atmosphere on a Saturday was lovely, live music everywhere, the pipes, kilts......

Eden was desperate for a kilt but they were shockingly priced in all the shops we went into.  We happened to pass a market on the way to the train station, and the man on the stall, impressed that Eden was wearing a Rangers top, gave us a very good deal on a kilt and a sporan and even gave the girls some Scottish flag pins and pencils as a freebie.  He explained to Eden that if he wore his kilt he would get plenty of kisses.......

I am so glad we made the effort to go to Scotland. Our first impressions were that it was a lively friendly place and we will most definitely be returning soon.