Trip motivation
For Thanksgiving break 2024, our family visited England and Scotland! Last Christmas, we visited Germany and Austria and loved the long train rides through the countryside. We decided that the Scottish Highlands would be the perfect adventure for our next trip to Europe. We spent a few days in Edinburgh, took a bus tour to the Highlands, and wrapped up our trip in busy and historic London. European travel is quickly becoming one of my favorite things with family-friendly towns, easy navigating with trains and so much history and beauty. Traveling internationally with kids can be daunting but with a little preparation and research and tips from other travelers, we had a successful trip!
This post covers our flights, itinerary, planning process, and international logistics such as using the subway, getting a phone card, and finding budget restaurants.
For more on our United Kingdom trip, see our posts here
- England and Scotland with Kids Winter 2024: Flights and Logistics
- 2 Days in Edinburgh, Scotland: Itinerary with Kids
- Our Family’s 3-Day Tour of the Scottish Highlands
- 3 days in London, England: A Family Itinerary
Planning our Itinerary
I love planning trips, especially through well-traveled places where there’s a ton of information to read through and make plans for. Many online blogs were really helpful! We were in each home-base for around 4 days and read numerous blogs and books (Rick Steves is always a must-read for Europe trips). One tip for traveling with kids is take a 3-day best of guide and cut out half of it to make it actually realistic to manage in those same 3 days. Mix in some kid-focused/less touristy options like malls, playgrounds, hotel pool. We did a lot of bus and train travel on this trip and our kids loved reading their new kindles on the trains and this was a great time for just chatting and reconnecting with gorgeous views.
Several months before, I sketched out our plan in excel and on google maps with a balance of activities, rest time, food, rest, and fun. We made sure to research how far areas were and tried to schedule several anchor points with a few optional activities so we didn’t overstuff our schedule.
Overview
Flying to Scotland and London
We used the Chase Portal and Chase Points to fly to Edinburgh (stop in London) and non-stop from London on the way back
Tips for Long Plane Rides
Sleeping on planes West to East:
- Plan to sleep! For the overnight red-eye flight to Europe, we emphasized that after dinner service, everyone was going to try and get some sleep. I gave each kid a dose of melatonin and they passed out pretty immediately. We packed these cheap pillows from Amazon (They came with eye masks!).
- On arrival, get outside and try to limit naps so you can readjust.
Activities for long flights East to West
- On the long flight, the kids were happy playing with the personal screen and alternating between coloring, reading, tv, games, and snacks. Ellie has been loving the Magic Treehouse books and when they were little, they used to love activities in the Magic Ink and small play pack coloring books (Amazon links). We have one Nintendo Switch that the kids love.
- For more on our favorite activities and tips for flying, see our post here.
Transportation in Europe
Train travel and public transportation is one of our favorite things about Europe. Everything is pretty straightforward and inexpensive.
In Edinburgh, we walked to most destinations and took a few buses that were easy to tap pay at the front. One top tip for international travel is to download the city map to google so that it doesn’t continue to use data every time you load.
We took the LNER train from Scotland to London. We should have purchased tickets ahead of time as prices went up closer to departure. For our family of 4, it was still very cheap and only $300 for everyone.
In London, we took the underground subway and double decker buses everywhere. Kids are free and enter through the wheelchair gates. We took one long train ride to the Warner Bros studio and these tickets were a little pricey ($30 for all round-trip) but overall bus and subway travel went really smoothly excited!)
I love how easy train travel is in Europe. We mapped destinations using google maps and compared the time/cost/effort to use a taxi, train, bus, or walk. We used uber or the train depending on where/how far we were going. If you have little ones, it might be harder to use a taxi due to the car seat. If you plan on using a stroller on the subway, many have elevators, but be prepared to fold it and carry up stairs.
Eating in Scotland and London
Several of our hotels came with free breakfast, and we also stopped by grocery stores for easy cheap meals to start our day and snacks for the hotel room. Tesco pancakes for 60 pence was our favorite snack.
During the day, we tried to balance quick meals with sit-down meals. We did do a few fancy meals like a Sunday Roast in Edinburgh and a Brazillian steakhouse. And a lot of fish and chips. In London, we did a few market type set-ups where everyone could get their own meal (i.e., I got curry while others ate pizza or mac and cheese) A few restaurants had kids menus or we would get entrees to share. We always say trips are for eating. We ate a wide variety of yummy foods at the Christmas markets including churros, fresh stroopwafels, and more.There are so many delicious things to eat!
Other International Logistics
Passport: Before you fly internationally, check those expiration dates on your passports! Note that some countries require your passport to be valid for 3-6 months after your flight
Phone/Internet Have you heard of an e-sim card? Prior to our arrival, we bought an Airalo e-sim card. For $30 each, we had a phone with 5 GB of data. The phone switched to the international sim without needing to stop by a store to physically put a sim in.
Language: The King’s English is spoken here!
Currency Exchange We had to use cash for our Loch Ness tour in Scotland. We stopped at a bank and used our bank debit card to pull out the equivalent of $300 for some Pounds.
More UK Thanksgiving 2024 Posts
For more on our United Kingdom trip, see our posts here
