Ranting about holidays

I was struck by the number of holidays the girls school has while the local school where a friend’s son studies has considerably less, so I did a quick analysis of number of holidays and both schools and found that the girls school has totally 4 months and 3 weeks of holidays and the local school has only 3 months of holidays. That means our school has on average 7 weeks more holidays than the local schools. And we are paying money for this? Makes no sense. Also difficult to justify me working if the girls have so much leave…what do you think?

Scotland trip with Ajja and Ajji

Ajja and Ajji are here (were here in London with us by the time I got around to posting this) and girls are enjoying spending their summer holidays with them. This summer turned out to be a bit of a mish mash, what with me getting a 3 month temporary assignment over the summer break and the girls being off for a long 2 months! The first five weeks was spent in a mix of summer camps, the hubby taking 2 weeks off to spend with the girls ( as detailed in the last post) and 1 week between the nanny and me spending time with the girls. The last 3 and ½ weeks have been a breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief for me and the girls, with my parents here. The girls enjoy going out with them to the garden, listening to Ajji’s stories at bed time, playing games, doing homework (Mummy has set daily targets) and generally goofing around, getting up late, being in pyjamas the whole day.

Last weekend we made a 4 day trip to Scotland with my parents. We were extremely lucky with the weather as it was sunny every day! It was quite an involved journey getting to Inverness. Being the start of the long Bank holiday we were worried that we would get heavy traffic on the way to Gatwick so we took the complicated route of Home –Uber- Railway station-Train-Gatwick South terminal-Shuttle-North Terminal, leaving home at 12 noon for a 15:20 flight. We reached pretty early and made the mistake of stopping for a coffee and ended up rushing to the flight after being delayed at security check. We were the last passengers on. We reached the hotel around 7 pm and after an unimpressive dinner in the hotel restaurant called it a day.

The next morning the hubby drove us to the Glenfiddich distillery, about 1 hour 45 mins away. The hubby, my dad and I went for  a 1 ½ hours tour of the distillery while my mum was in charge of entertaining the kids. After some nice whisky sampling at the end of the tour, we had lunch (again very disappointing, cold quiche and stale bread!)  and then headed back to the hotel. Everyone was too tired to head out again for the day, so I took S to the nearby park (A refused to come, would rather do painting with Ajji!) which turned out to be really nice with all sorts of playground and exercise equipment including a small zipline! We were tired of the terrible Scottish food so decided to go for Indian/Italian for dinner. Luckily I called up a couple of places to make a reservation and they all turned out to be completely full. Talk about everyone landing up in Inverness for the weekend and heading out for Indian food. WE decided to try our luck with an Indian takeaway which delivered to our hotel. The food was only comme ci comme ca as A would say but at least it was warm food with a hint of spice.

The next day we decided to venture out further to the Isle of Skye, stopping at many tourist and picturesque stops on the way. It was a 2 hours 45 mins drive to the Talisker Distillery in the Isle of Skye. We decided not to do a tour, which anyway turned out  to be impossible since we reached only at 6 pm after all our meanderings. On the way we stopped at the Loch Ness Information Center where we saw an exhibition/film which showed how people had scientifically proven that the Loch Ness monster does not exist. They had taken each sighting and claim and proven through various scientific experiments/facts that a creature as big as the Loch Ness monster could not be in the Loch Ness – lack of food, not traceable using sonar inside the lake, not visible despite cameras continuously filming etc. I liked the scientific approach as it showed us (hopefully the girls got something out of it) that we should not accept things at face value, but try to logically and scientifically see if they are true/possible. After we went to Urquhart Castle, which is on the Ness river. The castle was in ruins but parts of the structure were still there and the location was just outstanding. Standing on it you could see across the Loch Ness and it was a wonderful sunny day. Mum and Dad stayed back at the café at the entrance- which had a lovely view of the Loch Ness and the castle while we went to have a look around. There was a sheet for the girls which questions to be answered by reading the boards at various parts of the castle, including fun activities like counting the number of steps from the base to the flag on top. So they were quite entertained. After the castle we had lunch at the café itself. Just sandwiches for everyone – now we were really missing our home cooked hot food! We then drove to the Isle of Skye stopping to see beautiful landmarks on the way –  Seven Sisters of Kinteal, Eilean Donan Castle, the bridge at Kyle of Locaish, Beautiful lakes reflecting the sky on the way, a brief stop to feed some yaks by the mountainside. We reached the Talisker distillery only around 6 pm. We didn’t do the distillery tour, but went around the shop and bought a bottle of whisky. We drove straight back to the city centre of Inverness where we had booked an Italian dinner at Zizi. It was super crowded and we had to wait a long time for some pretty ordinary food.

The fourth and last day, we decided to drive to Glencoe which is a very beautiful part of Scotland and we were advised not to miss the drive there. It’s about a 21/2 hours drive from Inverness and we had to be back at Inverness at 4 pm for our flight back. It was more or less a drive to Glencoe, with a few stops on the way to look at beautiful sights/landrmark such as the Waterfalls near Loch Ness, Fort William area etc. Glencoe is really beautiful and I would love to spend a couple of days hikinh or walking around in that beautiful mountain/lake area. We had an Indian lunch at a restaurant in Fort William and then headed straight back to the airport.

That was our Scotland holiday. Short but beautiful.