The banks really are pretty bonnie…

Four score and seven years ago, I decided that we needed to take a little vacation. Not the kind of ‘vacation’ we usually take to some unknown land where we are seeing things 23 of the 24 hours in a day, and walking across entire cities so we don’t miss anything. No, I wanted to take a slow, leisurely, pressure-free vacation with my family. I was envisioning a sunny beach, some lounging, some playing, and lots of relaxing.

I realized that we had a TON of Tesco points. You get points every time you shop, and we had acquired a lot that we just weren’t using. So I started perusing the ‘rewards’ section of their website and discovered there were all kinds of hotels that would accept our points toward the price of a stay.. And the best part was, our points were tripled! We had about £85 worth of vouchers, which meant we had £255 to use for a stay somewhere. Perfect!

This lead to me searching through ALL the hotel and hostel options to find the very best one in the very warmest place with the very best beach. And lo and behold I found all kinds of very bests! The problem was, we still had to get to these fabulous locations, and it turns out flying isn’t free.. go figure. So after lots of hemming and hawing and changing our minds and changing our plans and going back to the drawing board, we made a decision. It was a painful process that ended with no sunny beach and no flight.

BUT, we were still going somewhere, and it ended up being just right.

We paid a grand total of £30 (we even got free breakfast – I know!) to stay from Monday to Friday in a REAL hotel a few miles away from the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond. The hotel even had a POOL, I kid you not. It was an easy two-hour drive into some beautiful scenery. We had no itinerary, no plans, just hopeful to swim and relax together as a last hurrah before traveling becomes that much more complicated (insert baby #2).

And we had a great week! We were reminded that our first child is terrible at sleeping away from home, but it totally didn’t matter because we had no schedule to keep! It was perfect.

We had a nice room, hot though it was..

We spent time at the loch..

And we played..

And we woke up sweaty and extra curly from hot afternoon naps..

(this is the face he makes when he knows the flash is coming :)

We ventured out and played with rocks at the water’s edge..

We peddle-boated in a little cove and discovered Aed does not love life jackets..

and we laughed.

We did lots of walking and took a ride on a big boat to see more of the pretty area..

And we spent lots of time in the pool! We went swimming every day and Aed loved it. He is a water bug for sure and even thoroughly enjoying ‘jumping’ into the water and going completely under.

As always, we were ready to come home again, but were so thankful for the opportunity to go away (even on a budget!) for a little while and enjoy some leisurely days.

Click on the slideshow in the sidebar if you want to see more pictures of our trip!