I just returned from a trip to England and Scotland with my wife and our two young kids (ages 1.5 and 4). It was the first big international trip that my Wife and I had taken in a while, and our first one bringing the kids along. Overall we had a really great time!
Our basic itinerary was as follows
- Bath 3 nights
- Birmingham area 1 night
- York 2 nights
- Edinburgh 2 nights
- Oban 2 nights
- Isle of Skye 3 nights
- Edinburgh 1 night
- London 3 nights
Packing
We didn't want to check bags so limited ourselves to two backpack style carryons and two smaller sling bags for our personal items.
We packed 3 days worth of clothes each as most places we were staying had laundry machines. I wore my hiking boots on the plane and packed another pair of shoes for wearing around town. Probably the most important item we brought along were our baby/toddler carriers. With these we could wear the kids on our backs and freely explore.
Day 0
Got to Dulles airport around 4:30 PM, took the shuttle from the lot to the terminal. Made it through security in less that 15 minutes as there was practically no one there. The security process is so much smoother now compared to last time I flew, no more taking off your shoes or removing anything from your bag!
The flight was fairly uneventful. Our youngest kid was a bit upset and fussy for the first couple hours, but they both eventually went to sleep. I can never sleep on planes so I stayed awake for the whole flight.
Day 1
Our Plane got into Heathrow around 7:30 AM. We walked to the passport checkpoint through the deserted walking passageway instead of taking the train (this was much longer walk than we thought). We got some coffees and a bite to eat at Costa, outside of the Arrivals area at the terminal. After we had caffeinated and collected ourselves, we headed for the trains. I was not sure exactly what to do but I purchased tickets to Bath at the Kiosk. Fortunately I had heard from some kind posters here that we needed to get to Paddington in London in order to connect to Bath, so we took the Elizabeth line train to Paddington station. At Paddington you have to go up and out of the underground Elizabeth line station to the main rail station. For some reason our tickets did not work for either exiting the underground station, or entering the main rail station. However, the staff at the gates let us through. We got there at around 10:27 and saw that the next train to Bath was leaving at 10:30. So we made a dash for platform 3 and made it without a minute to spare.
Our train arrived in Bath at around noon. We had a few hours to kill before we could check into our Airbnb, so we decided to take a short walk around town and find a coffee shop. We walked a few blocks north from the station and found a small cafe (LuLu Coffee). Bath is such a beautiful city, and sitting outside enjoying a cup of coffee and a sweet treat was a perfect way to soak up the architecture and people-watch. After coffee, we decided to head in the direction of our Airbnb which was about a mile south of the city centre. We wanted to find a playground in that direction too, as the kids were surprisingly energetic. We saw Alexandra Park on Google maps in that direction, so we decided to check that out. This turned out to be a really great spot! To get there we had to walk along this narrow little path up a super steep hill, and then climb a series of steep steps, in total a few hundred feet of elevation! But, at the top we were rewarded with an incredible view of the Bath skyline. We checked into our place, got some groceries from Tesco. Attempting to make dinner was interesting as we could not figure out how to turn on the oven. After both of us looking up manuals on the Internet and checking the breaker box, I resorted to messaging the host. They quickly informed me that there is an on switch for the oven on the wall. Turns out this is a common thing in the UK!