A few hiccups, but what's new?

The flight to Dublin was long, very, very long. But was on the whole enjoyable. I wasn't able to sleep more than a half hour or so, and there was this set of little girls that I really wanted to drug, but other than that it was good. We got a full dinner of beef ravioli and a good light breakfast that really refreshed me - maybe I'm just not picky but I liked it a lot! Take off was actually very fun and landing was a breeze, I like to fly!

When we landed we went through the airport and bought our bus tour passes. We were told to meet our luggage in Glasgow - which I didn't even think about but I'm so glad that how it was going to work because having to tug that luggage on the tour would have been a nightmare! The tour was very nice - fast paced! I was shocked by how the traffic worked in Dublin. Pedestrians were not God like - but acted like it. The cars passed so close together sometimes I thought we'd crash! Whenever the doors shut the driver took off like a shot and you just prayed you were in your seat. When we went on the transit bus (different from the tour bus) all the locals looked to take it in stride so I assume personal injury lawsuits aren't nearly as out of control as in the States.

By 2pm local time, I was exhausted and actually began to feel nauseated - so we cut the tour short and headed back to the airport. There I found the one and only bunch of seats that didn't have permanent armrests and slept a teeny bit. We jumped onto the flight and almost directly after takeoff we were landing again as it was only a 45 minute flight. We landed and I was barely able to stand on my feet as we waited for our luggage. Then the hiccup came - our luggage never showed. Apparently it was held back in Dublin for no apparent reason and we'd get it the next day. I'm going to down play it here - but I was pretty broken up about it. I needed sleep, a shower, and I was getting hardly either of both. But I was nice and didn't get mad - only sad - and left with my one carry on that only had my contact case & glasses and Linnet.

Then came the second hiccup. Driving. I don't know what I was thinking - I didn't do nearly enough research. I stupidly thought that it would be the same - other than the driving on the left side of the road thing. It's not. They don't have stop signs as far as I can tell - but rather yield symbols on the road and do not enter signs. Glasgow is so busy - the area we're staying in has a ton of one-way streets which made getting lost easy and getting found very UNeasy. We drove in circles for what seemed like hours but what was in reality only an hour and a half for a supposed ten minute trip. Early on I broke down from no sleep, hunger, a full bladder and then accidentally driving on the right side for a second and Paul had to take over. He's wonderful at taking direction that I'm good at giving and just getting us there. It might have taken awhile but it was so less stressful than me trying to drive.

To top off the hiccups - our phones actually DO NOT work here... at all. I'd be fine with this - but both of our parents were looking to make sure we'd landed all right and since I told them our phones would work I knew that they'd panic. Plus, with us having no idea where we're going - being unable to call our hotel for help was a big inconvenience - to put it mildly. I cant call T-Mobile as they only have a 800 number and 800 numbers are not accepted here. I've tried emailing them but it's been over 24 hours and no matter the time difference that is still surprising. We went to a T-Mobile store over here but they were not very helpful other than telling us to get a phone card. We bought one for £5 that gave us a lot of minutes and so we're just going to use that and buy another later. The pay phones are gross here (the booth I was in smelled like urine and the one next had vomit dripping down the window on the inside - eeeewww!) - I don' t like using them - but I'm doing what I have to.

We got our luggage this morning and tried out the power converter. It works! However it took us awhile to get the laptop working with it. Wouldn't be a big deal if our phones worked but they don't. Tonight I'm going to get DETAILED directions for the rest of our stops and saved them offline to our laptop since we can't print. That way I can just pull out the laptop if we get lost. Oh! And the car is nice, so teeny but nice - and hybrid apparently so I hope that it saves up on gas. We've had to spend a bit more money already in getting some phone cards in order to contact our families - so I hope to make that up on the gas.

Hiccups aside: We're doing great. I'm excited to get out of Glasgow and the busy city though and continue on! We leave tomorrow morning for Fort William and this will likely be my last post until Edinburgh because I'm assuming we wont have internet connection at any of the B&Bs and my phone is unusable. I've uploaded some pictures - but not many - more later I promise!!!

Day 1: LAX

We woke early on Monday to start packing in the hopes that having the whole process fresh in our minds would keep us from forgetting anything. I was also hoping that by waking early we'd be exhausted for the plane ride - I was still skeptical that I'd sleep even though everyone said that's what would happen. We had plans to leave around 11am because our flight was scheduled for 4:15pm and we knew it would take us about an hour and half to two hours to get to the airport. We also built in plenty of time to get through security as I had no idea what to expect. I'd never flown and we were also traveling internationally.

Paul's parents had volunteered to take us to the airport and they showed up close to 10:30am. I was running around at that point because I'd forgotten to print out our paperwork (not tickets, just planning paperwork) and also get all these last minute things done. His mom started building this list of things that Paul needed and of course he hadn't packed any of them. I really wanted to make sure the house was clean too, and I was worried we'd forget to take out the trash and run the dishes and whatnot and come back to a rancid smelling apartment. That wasn't the welcome home I wanted! My own parents showed close to eleven and together we still got out of the house just fine, and on the road easily. Saying goodbye to my parents was hard. I've never really "traveled" and all I remember is when I was a little girl and went to a Christian camp for a week. I don't remember being home sick while at the camp but I remember running frantically to my brother once they came to pick me up. My mother did surprisingly well in the goodbyes to me - though she broke down a bit when saying goodbye to Paul and telling him to keep me safe. I have to admit that if she didn't show a little bit of concern I'd be concerned :)

Once we were in the car, I felt I could sit back but at the same time I was anxious for the two hour drive to pass. Paul pulled out the video camera we'd borrowed from his parents and started filming, which I hated. I hate myself on camera and I wish I didn't. I wish I could have the entire trip on camera - but my self-consciousness kept me from being myself when the camera was on. Besides, traffic was boring and there wasn't much to talk about on the way there. It was on the way there that I realized I'd forgotten my toothbrush - but I knew I could just buy one there. We actually had wonderful luck with traffic, and we were there within an hour and a half. We stopped in a loading zone and popped out quickly and grabbed our luggage. There wasn't any long goodbyes here - as traffic was building behind us - and we started into the airport pretty clueless. We knew which terminal we needed to be in, and we saw our airline listed on the signs outside, however that's where our knowledge stopped. I'd never been to this airport before, and it was confusing. Our airline was listed at one end of the terminal but international departures was listed at the other. Plus, there was a second story that was for security checks - so we didn't know where we needed to go.

After a lot of walking around we found that we needed to check in with our airline desk where we'd also check our non-carry on bags, head up to the security checks for ourselves & our carry on bags and then to the other side of the terminal for our departure gate. Everything went pretty smoothly, though it grossed me out that when we did our security check we were forced to take off our shoes and walk around in our socks or barefeet. I could smell the odor on the ground - which completely disgusted me - but I wasn't about to cause a scene so I just did it. Frustratingly, you could tell who had done this before and who hadn't and no one was there to direct you. I just tried to follow what everyone else was doing - and at one point this man grew so impatient that he just cut in front of us and a bunch of others. Whatever, we got there with plenty of time. It was a mad dash to throw everything into these trays that would be scanned as they were pushed down this path of rollers, then a mad dash through the metal detectors, and then again a mad dash to grab your things before they were pushed off the path by all the others being pushed through. It seemed very unstructured, like they needed someone there to meter how many people were being checked at a time.

After everything, we sat down outside our gate with about a half hour to spare before they would begin boarding. We took this chance to munch on some snacks, drink some soda and generally catch our breaths. It was exciting to be sitting there, knowing that soon I'd be on my first plane :) I was a bit nervous, but I just kept remembering that I'd done a lot of other things that were much scarier - like when I went on the roller coaster at Wild Bills in Nevada. This would be tame in comparison.

Give me SOMETHING!

We got our myguideBritain travel package today, and I was disappointed to find that they still have not provided us with street addresses for 4 out of our 7 accommodations. Some of the directions are pretty straight forward - but most are not. One place simply says Bruce Gardens - but that place has more than one B&B in it so how are we to know which one it is?

I emailed the person I'm working with at myguideBritain and told them that if they can't give me street numbers - that's fine. But I need some longitude & latitude coordinates or something. I'm not going to go tramping across half of Scotland looking for one B&B. Sure, that'd be a story to tell and I'd see some cool stuff but in the process I'll be wasting time I could be spending seeing places I've been dreaming about for ages.

The woes of petrol prices

Okay.

So if they sell gas by the liter in the UK, and it's currently 105.9p (I'm assuming that means pence?) per liter and there are 3.7854118 liters in each gallon then that means that each gallon of gas is going to cost 4.01GBP (or, $8.12). If the average compact car has a gas tank of about 14 gallons - and the average compact car gets 25 miles to the gallon than that means we'll get 350 miles to the tank. If we're traveling approximately 1,000 miles that means we'll have to fill up approximately three times. If each fill up costs us approximately $113.68 - than that means we'll be spending about $341.04 in gas alone.

This is all just approximations of course. This is if we don't get lost and drive in circles. This is also with mapping to the center of each postcode rather than door to door because hardly any of the locations we're visiting give complete addresses. Most are, "we're ten miles southwest of the A90" (<--- um, I don't know if there is an A90 or what is ten miles southeast, so no jokes). This is also with the current gas prices - it will more than likely rise dramatically (if it's anything like here) within the next five months.

Yikes. Oh well. We'll figure it out. We're going to SCOTLAND!!!

Aer Lingus & other questions answered

After much investigation (their website kept "redirecting" me) I've found that Aer Lingus will be a perfect way to save some money - though I'm going to have to change our plans a bit. First off, during the season we're going - they only fly three days out of the week. Second, we will have a stop off in Dublin - but I've made sure it's only a stop off - we'll be flying into Scotland the same day in a matter of a couple of hours (kind of excited about flying into Dublin!). Third, I still haven't priced out the difference between flying in and out of the same location (such as Glasgow) but I was a bit excited about seeing two airports so I had planned it that way for a reason.

I've never flown - have I mentioned that yet? I suppose a part of me is simply excited and anxious to see as many airports as I possibly can in one trip :)

As for the driver's license - I haven't confirmed it yet - though from the sounds of everyone comments it seems as though because I'll only be there for a week I wont need to get a license. That'll make it all the easier and cheaper though I'll certainly have my head buried in the Highway Code that Lithian was kind enough to link for me. I'm actually a big "driver" here - and I love to know the rules of the road and shout at people who don't follow them :) Though no worries! I won't be brave enough to shout at the Scots - even if they shout at me.

Sadly, as both Lithian and Princesskasren have pointed out, out 8 days wont be nearly enough time to see everything. We're making a circle but at the same time we're planning on going inside and outside of the circle as well. I wish we could stay longer but on top of my work allowing me only so much time for vacation (We haven't even fathomed Paul's work as they haven't offered him any kind of "paid vacation" and he's been there for six months) there is also the cost! We're bursting our budget as it is - I can tell you that much. Though, if we save as much as it looks like we'll be saving on the airfare, we may be able to stay a day or two more.

On another note, I'm slightly considering bumping our trip forward a month. Most of the books we're looking at say the weather turns at April and we're planning March. My only concern is the price. The reason I chose March was because they said that the prices begin to turn at April. I'm so conflicted! This may be my one and only chance to A) see any place that's not in the US and B) see Scotland - a place I've dreamt about going for quite some time. I've already promised Paul that this trip wouldn't bankrupt us - but all I want to do if stay for as long as I can in some weather that allows me to see all that beauty I've dreamt about.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

While We're Young, Scotland 2008

I think this is it! I found this site called myguideBritain where you tell them where you want to go and they plan it for you - and as far as I can tell - for free! So, I emailed them and told them Paul & I were going to Scotland and that we wanted to go see the castles & stuff (meaning, no golfing and more than just whiskey tours) and then someone sent me a plan and told me how much it would cost! I went onto Yahoo! Maps and mapped our suggested hotels/B&B locations and the above is what you get. We'll basically be circling the island. I know that some of you out there might think it's silly that I needed someone to say, "make a circle" - but it was very daunting and now I feel like I have a starting point. The plan/cost they gave us was just for hotels/B&B and a car for the trip - but that kind of makes me happy because now Paul & I can just see what is around each area and plan that way.

If anyone is interested or maybe want to make some suggestions or anything - I've opened a "Trip Planner" from Yahoo! - here's the link to our trip so far: While We're Young, Scotland 2008. It shows where and what days we'll be there and also what places we're planning on staying. Most of the hotels/B&B we are thinking about weren't registered with Yahoo! so I have yet to put in addresses for them.

Some questions I'm going to throw out there though, anyone who can answer please do so!

1. Has anyone heard of a airline called Aer Lingus? Airfare was not included in the quote that the travel planners gave us, so I was price hunting for one way tickets (because we're starting in Glasgow & ending in Edinburgh - I thought to just use two separate airports) and they quoted me less than half of every other airline! I don't know what to think because apparently they ONLY fly to and from Ireland/UK so I think that's maybe why they're so cheap but then I'm still concerned.
2. Is it hard to drive on the left side of the road? Do they park on the left side too or do they cross the street to park? 'Cause I'm a bit scared and we'll be driving for the whole trip. The plus side is that they've quoted us for a VW Golf which I'm actually pretty familiar with. They've also included insurance in the price of the rental - thank the good Lord.
3. I know I can find out this kind of stuff from a tourist book (which Paul & I will likely be picking up tonight!) but - do they have different electrical plugs in Scotland? Will I know how to pump gas? Do I need a special license to drive? Is everything I want to see going to be closed because its close to the off season? Will they get angry at me for being so happy with their accents?