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2024 London/Scotland

May - June 2024
A 22-day adventure by Juliet Sinclair's Trips Read more
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  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 1

    Day 1: London

    May 18 in England ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    After an easy travel day, we arrived London just after noon. The immigration process was surprisingly easy and fast!! Way better than the process we endured on our recent trip to Toronto. The Canadians should really learn something from UK.

    Our hotel is located at the heart of London. Walking distance to many attractions in the city.

    I was fortunate enough to book a tour at the Parliament House, since they only open to the public few times a month.

    Walking towards the Parliament House should’ve been an easy 18 minute walk, but a massive pro-Palestinian protest slowed down our pace.

    There were at least 40,000 people, carrying cease fire and pro-Palestinian signs, shouting slogans, and making speeches on a stage. Many Met Police officers were watching the march with vigilance. It was chaotic but peaceful.

    We also encountered protests for Zimbabwe and Sir Lanka on our way. Not as big as the pro-Palestinian march, but they also made their voices heard.

    The entire heart of London was sea of people everywhere we looked…until we reached the Palace of Westminster, where House of Parliament is.

    The Big Ben clock tower soared into the sky, welcome us with its magnificence. The line for the visitor entrance wasn’t too long at all.

    Walking into the massive hall where past Kings and Queens made their speeches to public was definitely awe inspiring. The signature gothic architecture style is consistent throughout the entire palace. The magnificent mosaic window reaches all the way to the celling.

    The staff working here were very polite and efficient. I accidentally dropped my water bottle and spilled water on the stairs, a staff was by my side almost immediately, smiled at me to ease my embarrassment, and talked on the walkie to ask for cleaning up.

    Considering the house of parliament is a working space for the lords and MPs to make policies, it’s remarkable to us that they open it to the public at all. We got the chance to walk through the glittering halls with golden ceilings, viewing the royal portraits and the statues of important Prime Ministers, like Churchill and Thatcher. Most amazingly, the halls of lords and commons where they actually debate and making laws and regulations. I wonder if they allow the public to walk through the halls in US congress like this.

    By the time we completed our tour, all the protesters had dispersed, but there were still massive crowds everywhere we went. I was just glad we didn’t need to take any public transportation at this point.

    Dinner was at one of the best Indian restaurants in London called Colonial Saab. We were delighted to see there were many dishes on the menu that we don’t usually see in other Indian restaurants. The food was delicious! There was an extra layer of complexity in the flavor that made it stand above the other Indian dishes we had before, including the food we had when we were in India a few years ago.

    By the time we got back to our hotel, we were tired but content. Early bed time for us today!    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 2

    Day 2: London

    May 19 in England ⋅ 🌙 16 °C

    Churchill has always been a leader that’s admired by both Steve and I, so we were very excited to be able to visit his war room.

    Walking into the underground bunker was a surreal moment, knowing how much this place had made a difference in defeating the Nazi in WW2. With his ruthlessness in leading the army, his charm leading the people, Churchill was exactly what Britain needed to win the war. We’ve learned so much about the man during this tour.

    When I visited the British Museum many years ago, I remember being angry seeing the artifacts that I could only see as photographs in our text books, but could see in person here. Now, I was back here this afternoon, and my feelings were mixed. As our excellent guide had pointed out to me, how many of these artifacts would’ve been destroyed during Cultural Revolution if they were still in China? Yeah, I was not mad about the museum as before. Seeing all these magnificent artifacts from different cultures and different times in history all in one place, it’s kind of nice actually. Not to excuse all the evil the imperial had done to the world, but the result may not be all bad.

    After an excellent dinner at The Ivy Restaurant, we went to see a play called What Play that goes wrong. Seen some episodes on tv before and loved them, seeing it in person was way better!! The talented cast did a fantastic job to bring so much laughters and excitement to the whole theater! Most importantly, kept me awake from falling asleep from jet lag. Highly recommended!    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 3

    Day 3: London

    May 20 in England ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C

    We had another full day of activities today again! First in the morning, Westminster Abby! When I went inside of the Abby many years ago, I was stunned by its beauty, today, my draw dropped once again. We have been to many magnificent religious places in the world: St Paul’s Cathedral in Vatican, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and my personal favorite, Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Westminster Abbey is in my top three list. It’s the perfect blend of elegance and grandeur, the sunlight shining through the mosaic windows certainly added even more beauty to the space.

    Finding out that Stephen Hawking is buried right next to Newton warmed my heart.

    Due to the approaching of King Charles birthday celebration in June, the regiment of guards were having rehearsals. Our guide told us that it’s rare to see so many guards together like this, along with the full march band. We saw them rehearsing their formations at the horse guards field, and later marching on the Royal Mile towards the palace. So very cool!

    We then took the River Cruise on Thames River, sailed to Tower of London, which is one of my favorite historical sites. There are so much mysteries and so many deaths happened in this amazing fortress, not to mention the 35 Beefeaters walking around the compound, linking the history with the present. Also, the biggest diamond in the world, the crowns wore by all the Kings and Queens (happened as recently as just few months ago), and the royal armors/swords… so many cool objects at one place to showcase the wealth of a empire. It really does get any better than this!

    I was delighted to see a beautiful little girl in her fancy dress, running and dancing on the lawn in front of the King’s house (once held the notorious Guy Fawkes), and then hear booming voice from a Beefeater, telling her to get out the grass. Hilarious!

    Dinner was at a tiny little Italian restaurant where they made refresh pasta in front of your eyes. The food here was delicious!!    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 4

    Day 4: London

    May 21 in England ⋅ ☁️ 14 °C

    When Rome conquered London 2,000 years ago, they built some grand buildings and a wall around the old city of London. After they left London, so did many educated and Latin speaking Londoners, therefore there is little historical documentation on what or where those buildings were. As the high rises started to be built in London, they dug deeper and deeper, and uncovered some amazing archaeological sites from the Rome period.

    Which is why, having a private tour with an archaeologist in London is a cool thing for us to do. Our guide is actually one of the archaeologists who are currently processing a newly discovered site in London, and was very excited to tell us all about the history of London and the architecture aspect of the buildings from different time periods. We walked a large section of the London that the tourists may not set their foot into.

    We learned so much from him! I have to say, standing on the top of Tower Hill, the site where many famous people were beheaded, was a surreal moment of our trip.

    The National Gallery is celebrating 200th year of its history, so they have free admission this whole year. The luck we had for the past 4 days of sunshine has finally run out. With the constant drizzle outside, walking the grand halls of National Gallery seems to be the perfect thing to do as we spent the last full day in London.

    Dinner was at one of the best restaurants in London called St John Restaurant. The bone marrow salad was delicious!

    Heading to Edinburgh tomorrow!    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 5

    Day 5: Edinburgh

    May 22 in Scotland ⋅ 🌧 13 °C

    The train to Edinburgh was delayed due to a pedestrian’s collision with a train in the morning, the train supposed to depart before us was cancelled. In a remarkable British fashion, there was no dispute among the passengers regarding who should get the seats despite the fact two trainload of passengers squeezed into one. Can’t say the same would happen if it occurred in America, can definitely say there would be many arguments if it occurred in China!

    The rain has haunted us from London to Edinburgh, and it will remain throughout our stay here. Sadly.

    We have decided to give Evan a proper hand made Scottish Kilt as his birthday present (possibly his Wedding attire in the future!). As we walking into this Traditional kilt maker shop, we knew we had come to the right place. There were old ladies making kilt right there on the second floor of the shop!

    Evan picked a very nice Sinclair tartan with red hue, it’s called Sinclair Modern pattern. I can picture a very handsome Evan wearing it on his wedding day in the near future. A mother can dream!

    I have to give a shoutout to a fantastic restaurant here called Baba, it’s a midwestern restaurant with some amazing food! Seriously, besides the lamb shoulders and pork neck dishes that melt in your mouth, I really don’t know how anyone can make a simple cabbage dish so tasty! The best food we had so far on the trip!

    There is also a hot chocolate shop here. Can you imagine the entire menu of hot chocolates? Every item listed where is sourced and % of coco within it. What’s even more unbelievable was the fact adding Sichuan pepper powder (they grind it right in front of you) can elevate the taste of hot chocolate to another level! The best and most unique hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted!

    Looking forward to a full day of activity tomorrow!    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 6

    Day 6: Edinburgh

    May 23 in Scotland ⋅ ☁️ 11 °C

    The rain was relentless today and certainly dampen the mood a bit. When I came here many years ago, a beautiful blue sky was the backdrop of this charming city, which helped making it my top 3 most beautiful cities in the world. Today, the visibility was so low that you can hardly see anything even looking out from the top of the castle. However, rain is very much part of Edinburgh’s character. As a lady tour guide told us later in the day:”If you come to Edinburgh, don’t complain about the rain. Because you came willingly despite of it.”

    Our first business of the day was actually laundry. We carried our big bag of laundry and walked all the way to the University of Edinburgh area. What should be the most mundane part of the day turned very interesting, because of the owner of this laundromat.

    As soon as you see him, you knew he was trouble. This overweight older gentleman with a red face is clearly fond of the bottom of the bottles. As soon as he opened his mouth, you can tell how much he likes to offend people.

    A university student from Edinburgh university came in and gave him an interview, asked him some local issues. He is anti-immigration, anti-establishment, almost anti everything!! We sat there listened and rolled our eyes. He later tried to talk to us, I didn’t take an easy on him with my mocking tune. He became exasperated and said they call a woman like me “Stalin’s grandma”! 🙄Since he seems to a know-it-all type of the guy, Evan asked him:”is there anything you are not expert of?” He said:”Stay married.” I said:”Why am I not surprised?!” 😂 Although he does very three very cute dogs in the shop.

    After a quick lunch at a restaurant specializing Baked Potatoes, we had a nice tour of Edinburgh Castle, and was lucky enough to see the change of the guards here as well.

    Unfortunately our dinner at a French restaurant right by our hotel was mediocre, but the best thing of the day had yet to come.

    The Edinburgh Ghost Tour was excellent! There were so many interesting and sometimes grisly stories in this ancient city. Our tour guy was a lady who was very passionate about her job and was great at telling stories. After walking through the streets and alleyways of the cities, listening to the stories of hanging and tortures, we arrived at the underground cellars of the Edinburgh. It was very interesting to wander through the underbelly of a city with a rich history, getting to know about the operations of some more questionable methods.

    Just to make the day even more interesting, we saw a fire truck parked right in front of our hotel, and we were ushered into a nearby building by the security since our hotel was being evacuated. Fortunately, they determined it was false alarm shortly after.

    We will say goodbye to this city and head to Glasgow tomorrow.    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 7

    Day 7: Glasgow

    May 24 in Scotland ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    The rain has lessened a bit in our last morning in Edinburgh. We managed to get a couple good photos of the castle as the background.

    The train ride from Edinburgh to Glasgow provided some nice scenery of Scotland countryside: green meadows and rolling hills, dotted by black cows and white sheep. All seemed very pleasant and peaceful.

    We had heard that Glasgow was not a pleasant city, a trashy city with drunk people, but when we arrived here, we were happily surprised. The city is clean and grand, rows of Victorian buildings with wide streets in the middle. A major throughput is a pedestrian street which made the city very walkable. A large square right in front of the city chamber is dedicated to unknown soldiers memorial, and statues of writers and scientists, which is a nice diversion from all the statues of politicians we’ve seen.

    Best of all, we finally saw some patches of blue sky!

    Glasgow Necropolis is a very large cemetery about a mile away from the city centre. John Knox, the person led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, has his memorial at the highest center ground here. However, his body is actually buried in Edinburgh, currently under a parking spot in front of a church. I will post both photos with this post.

    Dinner tonight was at a very fancy restaurant near our hotel. Evan and I had been wanting to have a Beef Wellington dish since we arrived in UK, and we were very pleased that this restaurant did an excellent job with it.

    Although I did something quite embarrassing. I couldn’t find the ladies bathroom (it’s on a different floor than Men’s which is in the basement), so I went into the bathroom for disabled people. To flash toilet in UK, sometimes you need to pull a string. I mistakenly pulled the distress string for the disabled person instead of flush string. I frantically tried to find a way to stop the alarm but couldn’t. I had to walk all the way upstairs to tell the manager of the restaurant. He just laughed and told me this happened all the time. He was able to shut it off thankfully.

    We will be renting a car tomorrow and head west. Steve is rightfully nervous about driving on the “wrong” side of the street for the next two weeks!    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 8

    Day 8: Balloch/Loch Lomond

    May 25 in Scotland ⋅ ☁️ 15 °C

    Happy to report that Steve did a fine job driving on UK road! He got us out of Glasgow and drove us to a small town by Loch Lomond safely.

    Loch Lomond is the largest freshwater lake in UK. Balloch is a charming little town next to it with a busy dock. Our hotel is right across street from the dock. A busy restaurant is on the bottom floor of the building, they were getting ready for a large crowd due to the championship game of Scotland Football League when we arrived.

    We took a relaxing lake cruise, learned some interesting things about the area. The line dividing Lowland and Highland of Scotland is right in the middle of this lake. Mary Queen of Scot spent her last days as free person in a castle on an island of this lake.

    However, we didn’t truly appreciate the beauty of the lake until we climbed a little hill that locals fondly called “the dumping”.

    We were the only people climbing the hill, stopping once a while to enjoy some very classic Scottish scenery as we walked. Once we reached the top, the entire lake expended in front of our eyes. Stunning, simply stunning views of the sparkling water, the dotted islands, the blue sky and white/grey clouds, and the mountains peaks on the horizon. WOW!! What an amazing view!

    Since we were the only people on the hill, we lingered for a while and patted ourselves on the back for coming here.

    Next, we headed to Finnich Glen, a hidden glen near here that appeared in the show “Outlander”.
    There were very few parking spaces here and we were lucky to find one. Walking on the muddy path right by the cliff of the glen was a bit nerve wracking, and the stairs going down to the water was steep and broken. We decided not to risk our lives for photos, instead walked to the end of the trail and headed to the water in a much safer way. It’s interesting to see how red the water was…iron in the clay perhaps?

    The boys insisted having proper Scottish Fish and Chips for dinner. So we went to a take out place that seemed attracted many locals. The fish were fired golden brown and crispy! Although we had to take them back to our hotel room and sat on the floor to eat them. Very different than our posh dinner in Glasgow last night 😂    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 9

    Day 9: Balloch/Loch Lomond

    May 26 in Scotland ⋅ ☁️ 13 °C

    OK, I was a bit tired to full Scottish breakfast plate, and really missed having some healthy options for breakfast, but my search for a simple fruit cup came back with nothing. So our breakfast this morning was a trip to the grocery store.

    I got a nice healthy smoothie and packaged boxes of cut fruit, the boys got their various pastries. Cheaper than any restaurants, and everyone was happy. While in the store, a nice Scottish old lady who was a bit short, tried to get an attention from a tall guy about something. I saw him walking away unaware, and she looked disappointed. So I walked over to see what she needed. Turned out she just needed something from a top shelf and she couldn’t reach it. Evan got them down for her without an issue. “It’s kind of like helping Granny!” (She looked and sounded a lot like Evan’s granny Helen).

    There was no plans for today, we were just driving around and see what we liked to do. The first stop was at Bird of Prey sanctuary. Even though it was nice to see the birds up close, and they were all rescued birds from the area, it was still a bit sad to see them in cages and chains.

    After a bit of driving, we somehow ended up on a narrow road that’s supposed to be two way street. Fortunately we were way off the beaten path, there was hardly any car around, so we were able to enjoy the quintessential Scotland Highland countryside with only sheep, lots of sheep, as company.

    We took many stops, quiet and beautiful beaches, cloud shrouded peaks, twisty streams that cut through valleys, basically anything interesting was admired and photographed. It was nice to be the only people on the road!

    We rejoined the civilization in a town called Luss. Steve found an empty spot and parked there. We went into a store and bought some items. When we came out, we saw a cop chatting with some tourists. Steve went up to him and asked if he could park where we left the car, the cop exclaimed:”I was just about to put a parking ticket on that car! Is it yours?! No, you can’t park there!” LOL! We were seconds away getting a ticket. So glad Steve asked.

    The weather cooperated. We didn’t feel a drop of rain until dinner time. The restaurant, a nice Spanish Tapa place, was located in Helensburgh, a coastal town at the mouth of the Gareloch, not far from the Sinclair street. 😉    Read more

  • Traveler2024 London/Scotland
    Day 10

    Day 10: Fort William

    May 27 in Scotland ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    The Hill House was one of the few buildings that designed by the renowned architect/artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh, located in Helensburgh, Scotland. Since Evan’s great grandmother was a Mackintosh, and we all really like the artistic style, we thought it’s worth a visit.

    Charles and his wife truly poured their heart and soul into house, every corner of the house was meticulously decorated with their unique style. We simply loved every minute spent in this house!

    Our drive to Fort William was nerve wracking due to the narrow lanes and the speed we had to keep. The car in front of us was clearly driven by an American as well, unfortunately they got a flat tire just few miles out of town, cut by the potholes on the road. We got even more nervous after witness that! Fortunately we made to our destination without an issue.

    Our Bed and Breakfast is a lovely house by the sea. An amazing ocean view is right outside of our window. We will definitely enjoy our time here for the next two days.

    After several days without seeing the sunshine, we were blessed by the blue sky after a really nice dinner at a local restaurant. Without hesitation, we drove to the most spectacular place in Scotland called Glencoe, and snapped some beautiful photos. Who knows how much rain we will see tomorrow? We need to treasure any sunshine we can while in Scotland!    Read more

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