New plan - hopefully the final one

I called our travel agent and asked about getting to Dublin in order to fly out. She says the best way is to fly from Edinburgh to Dublin. In order to do that and still make our flight from Dublin to Los Angeles, she's recommended that we stay overnight in Dublin instead of trying to fly in and back out in a short duration (our Dublin to Los Angeles flight leaves at 11am). The price hasn't changed and this is basically GREAT news as it means we'll be able to do this trip after all and all we're going to have to give up is a night in Stirling and now we also get to stay in Dublin :)

So here's the new itinerary:

Mon- Apr-21
Leave LAX via Aer Lingus

Tues-Apr-22
Arrive in Glasgow
Pick up rental car
Stay 2 nights

Thur-Apr-24
Travel to Fort William
Stay 1 night

Fri-Apr-25
Travel to Portree (Isle of Skye)
Stay 2 nights

Sun-Apr-27
Travel to Inverness
Stay 2 nights

Tues-Apr-29
Travel to Aberdeen
Stay 2 nights

Thur-May-1
Travel to Edinburgh
Stay 2 nights

Sat-May-3
Fly out of Edinburgh & into Dublin
Stay 1 night

Sun-May-4
Fly out of Dublin & into Los Angeles

Mon-May-5
Arrive home!

Maybe for the best?

I called Aer Lingus and apparently they've scheduled their flights in such a way that the Glasgow to Dublin flight just misses the Dublin to Los Angeles flight. Our new strategy? Fly in and out of Dublin and then travel to Scotland. It knocks about $300 off our my original budget so in essance we could spend $300 on getting to and from Scotland & Dublin and still be where I thought we'd be money wise.

Now, just to figure out how...

On a completely related rant: How the HELL is it the same price to fly ROUND TRIP between LAX & GLA as it is to fly one way?! You guys think I kid - I DO NOT! Go onto Travelocity.com and price out the difference between a one-way flight to Glasgow from LAX and a round trip flight.

It'll blow your socks off.

This is likely the sign

Since Aer Lingus told me to call back in two weeks in order for them to get their LAX schedule together, I've been checking pretty much every day. This afternoon I logged on and the search took a little longer than usual which I felt was a good sign.

Well it was a sign. They have a flight available TO Glasgow but not from - as all of their returning flights are completely booked. I pushed my return date in and out a good week (not even possible - but I just wanted to check) and nothing.

I'm so upset. Its not fair. How can it be all filled up already?! I think this is the sign that Paul & I shouldn't go. If we have to spend an additional $400 on the flights - we can't stay any more than a week - if that. I don't think I even want to go if I can only go for a week. I'll be able to see next to nothing and that would just disappoint me.

Tester book: Ordered

I decided to give Blurb a try anyhow - and so proceeded to fight with their program to create a mock up of what my book would look like so I could get a feel of how the quality of the pictures and the pages were. I published only the posts I had currently created - but that only equaled to ten out of the minimum of twenty pages - so I added in another ten of nothingness. Three chapter pages, seven maps of our stops, and one page full of clouds - just because :) Those twenty pages cost me approx $25 so averaging about $1.25 per page when ordering soft cover. I can't remember how much the hard cover was. I'm thinking that I'm going to be keeping the blog for about 8 months, 3-5 posts a week, one post per page so that equals to...160 pages at $1.25 per page...so about $200. That's definitely expensive - but if it's a book about 8 great months of my life then I don't mind :) I'm a story teller - what can I say?

It should be here within two weeks, and I have to admit I'm excited. The more and more I used the program the easier it became (not better, just easier) and I learned to adapt and edit my posts where it was needed. I'm excited because if this prints out as nicely as I'm hoping it does then I'm going to be even more encouraged to keep the blog up as we're planning the trip. If it doesn't work out... well I'll be very active right before the trip and right after.

Money, money, money

Yesterday I had a very depressing and discouraging day in regards to the Scotland trip.

The fact of the matter is that we don't have $1,600 to spend all at once on the plane tickets - so I decided to open a Discover card. The card's limit wasn't enough for us to put the entire cost of the plane tickets on it - and that started a lot of my woes. I'm so disappointed in myself in regards to my credit right now. I keep trying to make it better but I know that one $60 Verizon bill is going to haunt me for a very long time. I also know that I have too many credit cards and I need to just combine them and get rid of half. I feel I manage my balances pretty well though, so it frustrates me to know that me having too many - even if they aren't in trouble - is backfiring.

Moving on. So I decided I would just put as much as I could on the Discover card and then the rest we'll pay out of our savings. Then I go to the Aer Lingus site and I see that they - like many - do not accept Discover cards. Argh! So I called and canceled that card and tried to open an America Express card. I don't know what I was thinking with that move. American Express has some pretty high standards - so of course I was declined for that. Instantly I regretted closing the Discover card and also applying for the American Express card. I'm not stupid and yet I did a very stupid thing. I had been making too many inquires within a 12 month period on top of credit that is not perfect to begin with. It's a never ending circle and that frustrates me so much!

So last night was pretty hard and I became very discouraged about the whole trip. I thought to myself maybe we shouldn't do this at all if we can't do it the way I want to. Maybe we shouldn't do it because of the cost. Maybe we shouldn't do it because of the stress!

This morning I'm in a much more optimistic mood. I've realized that I'll just reopen the Discover card (they said I had a period of seven days to reopen it), transfer some of my balances from my other cards onto the Discover (enjoy the 0% APR for the first year!), use the space on the other cards that are accepted by Aer Lingus and then use our savings as I had already planned.

This is going to work out. We're going to Scotland, even if its only for a week rather than two. I'm not going to ruin my credit anymore than it already it is with this trip. I'm going to pay off the Discover card long before my one year of 0% APR is up and I'm going to make it work for me!

I feel so defeated!

The whole reason I started this blog was so I could dedicate a space to my Scotland trip but also so I could eventually use Blurb to publish the blog into a book. I thought, "What a great idea! Two birds with one stone!" Well I have news for anyone who has been considering doing this: Blurb sucks. Sure, the idea was nice but the execution of the idea was so half-fulfilled. A blog is supposed to be full of writing, right? But it's also supposed to have photographs, right? Well how the hell do you expect me, a long-winded, picture posting self to fit onto one page when you have margins the size of NEW YORK?!

Seriously?!

To top it off, all of my pictures are either too big or too small for their template so I either get a message that says "this photo will print poorly at this resolution" or a get an image the size of a postage stamp.

Who is this blog-to-book supposed to be for anyhow? People who just write? People who just post images? Where is the happy medium?! And why can't I move the text boxes or make the bigger?! I HATE WASTED SPACE COMMONLY WRITTEN OFF AS MARGINS!

Stoer Point

I've done some very fancy investigation (all right, I simply read the caption on the photo I used as my banner) and have found out that the picture was taken at Stoer Point. I now want to go there desperately. I've found that it's 2 hours away from Inverness & 3 hours away from Portree - so very obviously we'll likely go there from Inverness. That actually works out perfectly because we'll be in Inverness the longest (aside from Edinburgh) so we'll be able to take the time and go out there.

clipped from www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk One of the best walks in the area begins at the lighthouse car park and heads north above the cliffs for two miles to the remote Point of Stoer. The coastal scenery is spectacular, and the views still better if you head a few hundred yards inland to the summit of the 141m high Sidhean Mor. But the highlight is the Old Man of Stoer, a 200ft high rock stack just offshore, a little south of the Point of Stoer. You might even see climbers swimming across the 30ft wide channel to the platform at the foot of the stack or scaling the stack itself.

When do they shear the sheep in Scotland I wonder? Will I even be able to see any fluffy ones? Are sheep nice? If I see one will the Scots let me pet it? Paul always says I should just open a petting zoo or live on a farm.

Finally, a bit of color on this blog

I got bored with my blog and changed a lot of the layout. I wanted the blog portion wider as I'm a very long-winded writer, so in order to do that I basically had to change everything. But it looks good now, so I'm pretty satisfied :)

Realizing that I could a photo behind the title made me go hunting for pictures of Scotland. I thought I had decided on one and had edited with the blog title and whatnot until I realized I didn't take down the photographers name in order to give credit. Giving credit has been a hot button recently on a lot of the photography based sites I go to so I couldn't very well be a hypocrite and not credit even if I didn't know who to credit. So I had to reopen my search and I went looking for the picture again. Then I ran across a different one.

Lazy Day, originally uploaded by valsworld98.

The photograph above (and my new banner!) is the epitome of what Scotland has always been for me. That is what I want to see when I go. That is what I'm spending all this money on. I just hope I'm not disappointed. I'm so worried that I'm going to miss my opportunity to see what I want to see in the quest to try and see everything. I'll only have this one chance - I better not screw it up.

Photograph taken by Valsworld98 of Flickr

Kumquats!

Now that we've decided we're going with myguideBritain for the travel reservations and we decided to fly Aer Lingus - I called Aer Lingus today to get a final quote on the flights so I knew how much we need to save before we could make the flight reservations and therefore make the travel reservations. Well apparently Aer Lingus has not "loaded" their LAX times yet and so I'm to call back in two weeks.

ARGH! I just want to make the plans so I know what's going on and I know we're getting the best deal we can by booking as soon as possible. Now we've got to wait another two weeks - and hopefully then Aer Lingus will have their LAX times in order. I suppose I should just stop my bitching. Beggers can't be choosers - now can we? I did go onto Aer Lingus' site and put in some dates for March - and have estimated our final price for the flights to be around $1,600. Wow that's a lot. It also sucks monkey butt that we'll be paying over $400 for the fuel surcharge & taxes. I thought that's what the tickets were paying for - fuel. Why are we now paying a surcharge?!

I've also decided, without speaking to Paul, not to get that British Heritage Pass (the pass that allowed us free access into individual sites). I've realized there is a lot of stuff we can't see that's on their list and a lot of stuff we WANT to see that's NOT on their list. Not worth the $15 a day when we wont be doing stuff every day. I promised Paul that if we went for two weeks we'd relax and do some non-site-seeing days too. I figure we'll be resting in Glasgow, Portree, Inverness, Aberdeen & Edinburgh because we'll be there for more than one day. Our other two stops will be purely for site-seeing enjoyment!

I've chosen some stuff I want to see, I'll post it soon!