State of Astonishment
Everything you ever wanted to know about our trip to Scotland
A week ago, we came back from our 12-day trip to Scotland. It was the first adventurous trip we’ve taken with the kids and it was a total success, the kind of restorative, thrilling, endlessly wonderful journey that you think is lost forever when you first have babies and then attempt to travel with those babies. Our boys are six and ten now and it feels like we’re in the sweet spot so many have told me about: The boys are no longer so little that we have to worry about naps and food issues and the inability to stay on their feet for more than an hour, but they’re not yet so big that they want nothing to do with us any more.
A few years ago, Hugo started showing a deep interest in medieval English history that has only grown with time. Both boys are obsessed with knights and castles. I’d been to Scotland once for a few days with friends but that was long ago. Max had never been, but had always wanted to go. Last year, we started to think about taking a trip to the U.K. to look at the many castles that Hugo has memorized by sight from his history books. Eventually, we settled on Scotland, encouraged by various friends who had been traveling there for years.
The boys have a two-week spring break around Easter. We figured this would give us more than enough time to do a good amount of exploring. But at first, travel planning felt so overwhelming. How on earth would we ever narrow down where to stay and what to see?