Scotland: Day 1

Christian and I headed to SFO Sunday morning and checked in at the United Airlines desk to kick start our Scotland trip (thank you Gregg for getting us there)! Our United clerk, Ms. Kristina San Pedro, was THE nicest airline worker we have EVER encountered. She was so chipper and friendly; I completely appreciated her for contributing to a great start to our vacation.

I was pretty nervous while waiting in line to get through security, simply because this was my first trip out of the country. Everything went fine though and we had plenty of time to spare. We decided to grab a little bit of food from “Deli Up Cafe.” Christian thinks it’s a play on “belly Up” but who would want to name their business with a play on those words???

After my very so-so salad, we went to wait patiently for our plane to board. Turned out to be the longest line ever once we got up to get on the plane. Our seats were in the last row of the plane by the restrooms (which turned out to be pretty okay – no stench and lines weren’t annoying). I was on the aisle and Christian was one seat in. Each seat had movie screens on the back and a channel guide of movies and shows. It ended up being that only two channels would work for me, so I watched “Changeling” (which was very good, by the way) and “Twilight” (turned out to be a bit fluffy and over dramatic, but still glad I saw it). At two  points during the flight, they served us Morocco Chicken, salad, veggies, and an oatmeal chewie as one meal and turkey sandwich with cheese and yogurt.  I crocheted some, listened to music some, tried to sleep some (but failed miserably at it). My back was killing me by 3/4 of the way into the trip and I couldn’t wait to get up and about.

We landed in Heathrow at around 7 and had to go through customs (was pretty nervous about that and no one there was exactly friendly). We then went through security AGAIN – that was annoying. Once we were all cleared and arrived at our gate, we took the opportunity to make our first purchase with the British pound by purchasing water and orange juice.

We ended up being in line behind an old American couple while boarding the connecting flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh.  They were a bit funny like old couples can be, but the wife TOTALLY reminded me of Clark Kent.  She was wearing a bright red long-sleeve top and uber-bright blue pants.  Either she is a very proud American citizen who wanted to display her pride for all others to see, or she  was a closet Superman freak.  I vote for the latter since it had potential to be so much more interesting of the a story.

I was finally able to fall asleep for about 20-30 minutes in to the connecting flight, but that really wasn’t a whole  lot of rest that I could have taken advantage of.  Oh well.  On a side note, it’s 830 PM Scotland time as I draft this post, and I’m nodding off a bit and losing track of where I am, so pardon me if I stop making sense at some point or miss something… All right, back to connecting flight.  It was nice and sunny in London (would have been great for photos) and then became uber-foggy as we headed into Edinburgh.  We landed a bit early and had our baggage claimed a ready to go pretty early on.  We had never offiicially discussed the specifics of our pick-up with Christian’s sister Stefania (aside from agreeing that she and her boyfriend would pick us up), so we weren’t sure whether the default thing to do was to sit in the baggable area team and wait, or find a spot curbside and wait.  We figured the easier thing for them to do was to pick up curbside, so we went with that guess. After doing a sweep of baggage claim (in case they were in there somewhere)  We waited for almost half an hour before her boyfriend came out and got us.

Ooops for not connecting better about that tidbit of info.

We went back to her place, dropped stuff off, (no elevators, btw) and stopped by her Forestry Commission Office to check the place out and meet the people.  Appparently, the Forestry commission has a guy in their lunch room that makes deep fried Mars Bars.  MMmmmm they were good.  And so bad for me.  After meeting her co-workers and getting a tour of the office and greenhouses, we decided to head to the Rosslyn Chapel since we were in the neighborgood.  For those who are unfamiliar with “The Da Vinci Code,” the chapel is the setting for a pivotal plot point in the book.  We were a bit disappointed when we got there.  There was construction all over the place and admission into the mid-constructed/restored chapel was more than we were willing to pay, PLUS they didn’t allow picture taking once inside the chapel.  It would have been awesome to have seen the chapel closer than we already were, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Once we were done sneaking around the perimeters of Rosslyn Chapel to get peeks of the building, we went on our merry way to Costco.  That’s right.  We went to Costco in Scotland.  We’re heading up to a cabin by a lake for the rest of the week, so the  Costco shopping trip was for food for all of us while we’re up there.  Christian and I each bought a hot dog and coke (even though he gave his sister his soda cup – sacrifices for lent).  Stefania ordered this thing called a “jacket potato” which was basically a baked potato topped with stuff.  She got one topped with Tuna.  Yeah, I thought it was a hair weird too.

Once done, we stopped by Stefania’s boyfriend’s (Keith) flat in order to pick up his Wii to take with us while we are up in the cabin.  Boy, we sure know  how to have a good time, huh.

Once we dropped all of the Costco groceries back at Stefania’s place, we headed out to a local bar that was featuring Irish dancers (one of which is one of Stefania’s good friends and former flatmate).

The performance was fun!  Once that was over, we headed out, took a few photos of the castle near the bars, and then taxied back to the apartment.

I can’t believe I managed to get through all of this.  Some of it may not make sense…  So sorry about that.  I’ll edit the post to include pictures from the day – I just need to rest now *yawn*  Hope to post again in a few days if not sooner.