Who'd have thunk it?

We don’t use public transport, mainly because there isn’t any. There are two buses a day come past the end of our lane, one at 7am (Ben catches it to go to work in Edinburgh) and one going back the other way at about 6.30pm towards Peebles. Neither is at a particularly handy time when you have two small children, and you can’t take your pushchair on them if they’re full. So buses not exactly our thing, well actually, that’s not true, buses are EXACTLY Isaacs ‘thing’ he loves trains best, then buses and then anything else with wheels. A couple of weeks ago we went to the train station to drop granny Jan off and the train driver honked his horn and waved at us and it really made Isaacs day. He was stunned by the sight of a real live train. SO with that in mind, and the fact that I am in desperate need of changing my address with bank we decided we’d take a trip into Edinburgh, and we go via the park and ride.

So, Saturday morning, we loaded up the car, we didn’t want to take the double pushchair as it’s a bit of a pain at the best of times and we couldn’t take our off-road single as it’s gone a bit broken, so the Bugaboo it was. I was secretly pleased as it gave me the opportunity to show off my hood I made for it out of my own fabric. So, Oscar in the pushchair and Isaac with his little life ‘lead’ on off we went. We had a great time on the bus, with the hood back Oscar could stare up at the sky and trees flashing past through the big windows, and Isaac and daddy went upstairs to check out the view. I could hear him squealing with delight as we went through the city centre and he spotted all the other buses out the window. Unfortunately the fact he was actually ON a bus seemed to pass him by a little, I don’t think he quite put two and two together, but he was excited nonetheless and although nervous about the whole thing (mainly about potential emergency occurring in town and us not being able to get back to the car without going on a 30 minute bus journey) I enjoyed it very much.

The fun did not stop there! Once in town I changed my details at the bank (what a faff) and then we went to Jenners for a mooch and to have lunch. In case you don’t know, Jenners is a great big department store on Edinburgh’s main high street (I think it’s actually a House of Fraser). It’s kind of old school with lots of mezzanine levels and alley ways and none of the lifts go to all of the floors, you have to keep getting out and wandering about looking for another one that goes where you want!

The restaurant over looks Princes Street gardens, and we got a great window seat where Isaac could see all the traffic heading up and down Market Street towards the Mound, and also see people popping out onto the viewing deck on the Scott monument, much to his surprise, luckily he didn’t notice until the end of lunch that if he stood up in his highchair he could also see all the trains going in and out of Waverly Station!

Once done, we wandered back towards the bus stop, Isaac was getting tired, he’s only 17 months and it’s a lot to ask him to walk everywhere without the pushchair really. We got back on the bus and this time me and Isaac went upstairs to see what was occurring, and Ben stayed downstairs with Oscar. About 5 minutes from the park and ride drop off Isaac went pretty quiet, and by the time we got there he was fast asleep, I had to lug his dead weight down the stairs without falling head over heels! Both my children were impeccably well behaved, having daddy around made the whole process much less traumatic and I have to say somewhat surprisingly it’s been one of my favourite family days out so far.