Even before we’d booked a single night of our seven-day Scottish Highland tour, Jackie had already picked the highlight of her vacation: the scant ninety seconds it would take to cross the Glenfinnan Viaduct aboard the Jacobite steam train, also known as the Hogwarts Express. As a long-time Harry Potter fan, Jackie agreed to this…
I’d heard about e-bikes before, but it seemed a bit like cheating, you know? Nova Scotia influencers Davey and Sky raved about them on one of their YouTube videos and my Vancouver Island friend, also called David, urged me to buy one saying it would be a game-changer for “those of us with a few…
My uncle used to warn me against whirlwind, jam-packed vacations that go by so fast that you find yourself saying: “If it’s Thursday, it must be Frankfurt!” I was good at taking his advice — until now. This spring we booked a unique Scottish highlands tour: TourRadar’s seven-day Scotland by Train tour (actually trains, coaches,…
I didn’t know much about Madrid when I found out I’d be traveling there in May for business. Yes, I had spent three days in Barcelona last year, but that was the entire sum of my Spanish experience so far. In planning my trip, I quickly discovered that Madrid has been the capital city of…
As a native Scot, I’ve been to Edinburgh a few times in my life. But this was my first solo trip there. I say solo, but in actual fact I was there with business colleagues for the first part of the week as it was one more of those business trips to which I’d tacked…
Before my visit, I didn’t know much about Amsterdam, or the Netherlands for that matter. Some of us might remember the famous childhood story about the young lad saving Holland by sticking his finger in the dyke. I also knew about Dutch wooden shoes and windmills, the fact that the country was lower than sea…
Before touching down in Barcelona for a business trip earlier this year, my only brush with the city had been through television: watching the Spanish Grand Prix in the early 1970s and the Olympics in 1992. I honestly didn’t know what to expect beyond some great architecture and a coastal vibe. What I found, however,…
I was born in Glasgow, raised in Glasgow, but left Scotland for Canada when I was just seven. My memories of the Scottish countryside are more like fragments: family holidays in Millport, the fishing village of Portsoy, a day trip to St. Andrews. For years, my returns to Scotland revolved around family visits—always time well…
Years ago in an email, my father gushed that he and 14 others had just been on a bus tour around Scotland’s Whisky Trail, including the famous Bowmore distillery on the island of Islay (pronounced “eye-la”) in the Inner Hebrides. Though he was 1400 miles away in Canada, his enthusiasm was palpable. The Bowmore Distillery…
