American Mom in London: Edinburgh and the British Open

In late July, we took a quick weekend trip to Edinburgh. Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and is a four and a half hour train ride from London. We found this to be quite the LONG train ride as we hadn't purchased Colin a separate seat. Since he refused to sit on our laps, we had to cram him in between our seats. Not exactly the most comfortable! We were all happy when we arrived in Edinburgh. We didn't have much time to see the city since it was such a quick weekend trip so we pretty much left the apartment we had rented for the weekend as soon as we checked in to start seeing the sights. We were able to do a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the city and visit the Royal Yacht Britannia, which is Queen Elizabeth's retired yacht, before Colin had enough for the day. We had tickets to the British Open the following day so we all needed a good night's sleep.

I had given David tickets to the British Open for Valentine's Day this year. It was one of the things he really wanted to do during our time here in London. We weren't exactly sure how it would work out with Colin. Fortunately, I realized that the sitter service we use here in London is UK-wide so was able to reserve a sitter for the day for Colin in Edinburgh. The sitter came right on time and was awesome with Colin. They had a great day visiting a museum and playing at the playground while David and I went to the British Open.

The British Open (Open Championship as it is called here) was held at Muirfield Golf Course this year. It was an easy train and bus ride to get there from Edinburgh. We spent the day walking the course in reverse and were able to see almost all of the golfers. David of course loved it, and I actually had a lot of fun as well. I think we will be going to more golf tournaments in the future! We had to see Phil Mickelson win from the comfort of our couch on the TV of the rental apartment though as we had to leave before the end to rescue Colin from the sitter.

The next day, we had a bit of time before we needed to catch our train back to London. We visited the Edinburgh Castle and did some whisky tasting at the Scotch Whisky Experience. Then, it was time to hop back on the train for another four and a half hour ride. It was in the high 80s and the air conditioning was broken in our car. Not the most pleasant end to our trip, but we all agreed that we loved Edinburgh. Here are some pictures from the trip.