Background
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.
This post covers our 2 days in Edinburgh
For more on our United Kingdom trip, see our posts here
Arrival in Edinburgh
We flew from Nashville to London connecting to Edinburgh on British Airways. We were team carry-on for this trip as carrying suitcases up and down subway stairs can sometimes be difficult. Our usual routine is to take an uber from the airport to our hotel on the first day and get the hang of public transport and other options throughout the trip. However, on this trip we found it very straightforward way to take a 30 minute tram with a 10 minute walk to our hotel.
The cost of taking the tram from the Edinburgh Airport to the city center for a family of four (2 adults and 2 children) was less than 20 pounds. Tickets can be purchased at the tram stop ticket machines before boarding. For more details, you can visit Edinburgh Trams.
Transportation in Edinburgh
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.
Hotel
In Edinburgh, we stayed at the Hilton Double Tree City Centre . The hotel is located a 5 minute walk of the castle, and very convenient to the rest of the city. Views were absolutely gorgeous and the hotel was fantastic with a great breakfast and bar and super kind staff. We used points to stay for free and were even gifted some drinks and small chocolates for our status. For breakfast, there was a buffet along with the ability to order pancakes, omelets, and other small add-ons. If you’re interested in an AMEX Hilton card, the sign-up bonus points are usually pretty high. We were in a small 2 double bed room which was a little snuggly but we didn’t spend a lot of time in the room (except for sleeping and minecraft world building)
Our 2 day itinerary in Edingburgh:
Day 1: Late Arrival, National Museum of Scotland, Christmas Festival
After our afternoon arrival, we checked into the hotel and then walked towards the main area of town. It was a little snowy but the city was so cute with all the lovely buildings and cobbled streets. Our first stop was Greyfriars Kirkyard with is a historic cemetery famous for inspiring many names in Harry Potter. Tom Riddle, Crookshanks, McGonagall. If you’re interested, search online for a map. We wandered a little bit, saw Tom Riddle’s grave and then moved on.
Our next stop was right next door at the Museum of Scotland. The only thing I knew going in was that Dolly the cloned sheep was housed here! We spent about 2 hours at the museum. It was great! There was a technology area that the kids loved. It was very hands-on like a science museum. We also took an elevator to the roof and caught a brief cloudy view of the city from the rooftop. If we had more time, I definitely would have loved to come back and seen more of the history or art sections of the museum as well.
After our visit to the museum, we walked to the city’s winter festival. We stopped here on several nights, it was so cute. The old monuments and shiny bright carnival lights made for a really fun backdrop to our exploring. There were also several bagpipers playing Christmas music. So fun! Last year, we did Christmas markets in Germany and Austria and it felt like a mini-version of some of those markets. We had some yummy food and explored. We didn’t do any rides much to the dismay of the kids. In this area near West Princes street, there are a few standard favorite shopping spots like H&M and Uniqlo. We also had to grab a power converter that we forgot to pack at a shop near the railway station. Everyone did a great job fighting off jetlag and we went to bed at a totally reasonable 8p.
Day 2: City walks, Harry Potter-themed tea and escape room, Royal mile, Christmas Festival
Magic Mile
We had a little bit of a late start. After a quick hotel breakfast, we headed out for our day. The sun was shining and it was a lot less gloomy than the evening before. We walked past the gorgeous large castle, and for a little bit of the main High street. I read a little bit of context from Rick Steve’s tour book but we were mostly interested in just soaking in the vibes <3 We decided on this trip to skip some of the castle and palace tours because the middle part of the trip would be very history heavy. I think the kids would have enjoyed it but we’ll just have to come back again another time.
Department of Magic
I highly recommend making time in your Edinburgh trip to visit Department of Magic. This cute cafe/experience is so great if you have kids into Harry Potter (or if you are a fan). We did an escape room with different puzzles to solve and prophecies to find. Everything was cutely themed and the kids were really into it. We tried our best to let them take the lead and asked the person for clues because it was important for us to succeed. We actually missed the completion by a few seconds but still had a blast. The kids said this was one of their favorite experiences of the whole week.
After our escape room, we had a reservation for afternoon tea that came with a tower of savory snacks and sweet and potions making drinks! They gave us recipes and we poured beakers and syringes and were little alchemists. So fun! I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the snack tower. Although the sweets were enjoyed, no one was really into the sandwiches and the potions were really the main highlight.
Self-guided Walking Tour
We continued walking the Royal Mile towards the Holyrood Palace. I found a cute yarn shop and spent too much money on Scotland-dyed yarn. Like earlier, I read some interesting facts about the history of the city from my online library Rick Steves tour book. Fun fact: A tavern named after William Brodie is said to be the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We walked through the museum of childhood (A free quirky little museum of old toys) and visited some gift shops along the main streets. There’s definitely a lot of restaurants and churches and sights to see that we rushed past. I would save half a day for this walk even though its only a mile. Near the palace, there’s also a hike to Arthur’s seat that was recommended to us but we decided not to do. We instead worked our way back toward Victoria Street. Victoria Street’s unique look, with its layered levels and vibrant facades, mirrors the whimsical and bustling nature of Diagon Alley. It was fun to imagine how it might have influenced Rowling, the author of Harry Potter series. The cute colorful shops felt very insta-worthy ha! There were several Harry potter themed stops on this street, including gift shops, and the Elephant House cafe where Rowling reportedly wrote parts of the series.
Evening: Sunday Roast and Ice Skating
It’s very important to have down-time on trips and more important to be diligent about finding time to fit it in when one member of your party uses the time for running, preferably while the sun is up. The kids used the time to build up their minecraft worlds. After a day of walking, its important to have time for everyone for their own personal pursuits. Mine is crocheting and watching kdramas <3
We happened to be in town for a Sunday evening and had read that Sunday evening roasts were a special event in town with unique menus and festive sides. After some research, we chose Hawksmoor Edinburgh and had some excellent roast. Both kids are great eaters but Ellie especially could eat a pound of steak if we let her. Little but mighty. It was a little fancy but there were other kids and it was open and loud and didn’t feel stuffy. Food was delicious!
The Christmas festival that the city hosted was actually spread throughout several spots in the city. On this evening, we walked past and thought about exploring a Christmas Tree maze but decided it wasn’t worth our time. The kids are convinced it would have been the best thing ever if we had just said yes.
After dinner, we walked over to the Christmas Ice skating rink. We were a little disappointed that the reservation was only for 40 minutes of skating. It was still fun but maybe not worth it if it’s not a high priority. We had fun. And then we stopped back by the main market for churros <3 Maybe one year we’ll see what the Spain Christmas markets look like.
Continuing our UK Trip
For the next part of our trip, we took a 3 day bus tour to the Highlands that departed early on our third morning. We were able to leave some of our suitcases at our hotel because we booked the same one for our return stop-over. When we returned from our bus tour, we stayed for one overnight and took an early train to London.
More Thanksgiving 2024 Posts
For more on our United Kingdom trip, see our posts here
