Our last days in Scotland then home again

Monday September 19th and Tuesday the  20th

Back to Tweedbank by bus, then by train to Edinburgh, then on to Glasgow:  all smooth. [I really can't say enough great things about the train and bus systems in Scotland.]

Once in Glasgow we found road construction all around the train station. We walked uphill [of course] and eventually (despite or because of directions from various people), we found the Buchanan Bus Station.

The airport bus was there waiting. The driver said we should have had our dual return ticket stamped when we arrived, but he let us on anyway, thank goodness. We had the remains of the previous ticket but not the one to return.  

At the Glasgow airport, there was a lot of road construction and not one, but two, Holiday Inns. The easy one to reach was just across the street from the bus stop. It wasn't ours...We found this out trying to check in and finding no reservation. 

Our hotel was the Holiday Inn Express which we could see but could not get to because of the barricades and the total lack of adequate signage. It was an Alice through the Looking Glass experience. We finally gave up and cut through a parking garage.

Easy when you know how!

Nice room: red and grey, refurbished recently. 

Source: Holiday Inn Express

The bathroom had a grab bar in the shower [the only one in any of our accommodations in the whole trip]. The door to the bathroom also closed the toilet area, which I though was very clever design.

Nice not to have to grab the scalding hot water faucet ...

We went back to the airport to familiarize ourselves with its layout. We had a late lunch at a pub restaurant. I had chili and rice, which was surprisingly good as it spiced up more than usual. I also had a light beer! So far no serious bowel repercussions.

Then we went to the Tesco store and got a banana, an orange, some Babybels,"oaty" biscuits, and mixed nuts and cranberries for a dinner time snack.

Back to the hotel, checked the email:  the WiFi worked!! 

To bed at 10:23 pm, still awake at 11:30, woke up at 5:00 am, got up at 5:31. 

***

Tuesday September 20, 2017

Checked out of our hotel after a light breakfast (way too many calories yesterday). We followed the crowd back to the terminal: took a long way around, but it was apparently the intended route.

Checked in at the airport: all went smoothly. Now we are sitting in the departure lounge. We don't sit by the gate we leave by. The gate number pops up on a screen in the general lounge just before boarding time ,and then we head to where we board.

A six-hour and 13-minute flight awaits. Glad I had the banana for breakfast. The potassium may help my twitchy legs.  

It will be light out, so I will read Dr. Thorne. We have seats together at the exit seats.

***

To the best of my recollection writing today eight months later, the flight went well. I received my pre-ordered Thai chicken wrap, which was tasty. I don't know why more people don't do this.

I enjoyed my book and even more, the fact I was finally feeling better!

We were early approaching Nova Scotia. However, when we got to Halifax, there was so much fog we couldn't see anything, and landing seemed problematic. In any event, the pilot came on the loud speaker and said we would be circling the airport to try a different approach. He added that we had plenty of fuel, something I hadn't actually considered until that precise moment. We eventually landed in fog like cotton batten. I saw the runway speeding below us about three seconds before we landed on it.

Customs was no problem and the shuttle to the parking lot was waiting; we were the only ones on it. Our driver fulminated over the American election and praised Donald Trump. I wonder how he feels about him now (likely the same). We found our car exactly as we had left it and headed for the ferry at Caribou.

No reservations needed this time.

It was nice to see the Canadian flag on the mast of the ferry and truly feel we were home again.

Here are some shots  I took of the harbour at Caribou while we waited to "sail" across to PEI:

The  lobster boats are ready for the fall lobster season.

After the crossing, we headed to Montague and a comfort-food supper at Pizza Delight. It still seems amazing to me that you can eat breakfast in Glasgow and  have dinner in North America. We were glad to be home, but over the ensuing months, I feel sorry that we can't just hop in the car and go back to the Orkneys, revisit Nairn, or go on another walk around the Eildon hills.  It was in retrospect (and now with completely normally functioning innards) a wonderful trip.

Our Big Trip to Scotland: Day 1

I ventured off the North American continent for the first time a few weeks ago in September. Greg is a more seasoned traveller than I am but not by much.We both kept travel journals. I am going to post my journal entries in bold with embellishments where needed, one day at a time until finished. Yes, there will be pictures.

Anyhow, I shall begin with  the riveting account of our departure:

Day 1: September 5th, 2016

No reservation for the ferry

This was a major oversight on my part. It was the only detail of the trip I had neglected to tie down. I forgot it was Labour Day and everybody and their uncle (and aunt) would be travelling home. Also only one of the ferries was in service from Wood Islands to Caribou, so there was an unusual four-hour gap between them.

On our way through Montague, I glimpsed the father of the family of Syrian refugees recently settled in town. He was mowing his lawn. I had enjoyed tutoring his mother-in-law in English every Wednesday afternoon all summer, so we stopped to say hello, and he invited us in for coffee. We regretfully declined, thinking we had better get to the ferry.

We reached  the ferry terminal in very good time for the 1:30 crossing and there was no traffic in the lot at all. How odd, I thought. Where were the cars which were left behind for the next crossing? That question was soon answered! Everyone had a reservation and would be arriving much closer to the departure time.  The woman in the ticket booth offered to put us on stand-by; we thought that would be risky, so she directed us to a small side exit — made for clueless people like us, apparently.

So we left Wood Islands at 10:45 am and drove to the fixed link

On the way west, we discussed what we would have done had there been no bridge! Maybe fly out?  Anyhow, the day was lovely, the scenery bucolic, and the traffic light at least until we got to Truro.

A photo I took several years ago of the Confederation Bridge 

I drove from Amherst to the airport… got the shuttle… no problem … Parked in “B” at the end of the driveway near the fence.

We were the only ones on the shuttle bus, which took us the half-mile or so to the terminal. We were too early for check-in (a pattern — unusual for me — which was to repeat itself frequently during our trip), so we explored the airport, then sat on a bench and watched the same people walk back and forth in the concourse. The outfits people choose to wear while traveling are often eye-catching, to say the least. 

Ate dinner at the airport pub, not a bad meal. I had unbuttered boiled potatoes, veggies and fish from which I removed the panko coating.

I am not usually so conscious of food. I just enjoy eating it, but I had had a horrible digestive upset which began the night of July 28^th and lingered for seven weeks. At one point the diarrhea was so bad I thought we might have to cancel the trip. After four weeks or so I went to the medical clinic in Souris (again), and the doctor gave me a prescription for codeine for its off-label side effect: constipation. It proved to be my new best friend on this trip.

Our dinner venue, Maritime Ale House (Source: http://hiaa.ca/at-the-airport/food-beverage/maritime-ale-house/

Pleasant cheerful security people... I walked through the arch by mistake.

Knowing with my fake hip, I would have to go to the imaging machine, I took off for it once the security guard motioned me ahead and walked quickly through the arch most other people go through, thinking I was being very efficient. I wasn’t. I did not however get a chewing out, as I might have in other airports. That is Maritime patience and kindliness for you. I got patted down and then stroked with a wand, and soon Greg and I were sitting on a bench putting ourselves and our luggage back together.

Loooong  Flight — twitchy legs — no sleep

I was assigned a the middle seat on a Westjet Boeing 737-700, a plane  with winglets, which make it look cute and perky and helped instill nonchalance in me. It was full: 130 passengers.

My young seat-mate to the left  spent most of the trip cocooned under his hoodie. After we landed in Glasgow, he said hadn’t slept much either. Could it have been the twitchy restless seat-mate to his right? He was too polite to say. He did say he was from St. John’s, Nfld and was going to spend the next year studying medical engineering at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. (By coincidence, later that day we walked through that very campus.)

Thank goodness Greg was the seat-mate to my right (by the aisle), since I had to crawl out over him a number of times when nature didn’t just call, but hollered. I felt very badly at one point that I didn’t let a very elderly woman, leaning on her daughter’s arm,  into the bathroom ahead of me, but doing so would have been much much worse for everyone.

This is what our plane looked like. (Source: wikipedia)

Finally we landed. I am never going to take another red-eye flight ever again.

The only good things about the flight were that I was not white-knuckled, we didn’t crash, and the Thai chicken wrap I had ordered on-line a few days before leaving — because I thought I might be healthy again by the time we left — was delivered without a hitch.