Uk trip Day 0 part 2 and Day 1 continued
The limo driver came (back), started chatting on the trip up to the airport, smooth ride. He was the driver who picked us up when we got back from the wedding last year. Got into the terminal ok, mom arrived mostly uneventful, 1.5 hrs late, and was hanging out in the pres club for us. The security lines were non-existent which was totally awesome. Then we picked up mom, ate dinner at the diner which was surprisingly good (chili fries, Smoo's chicken sammich and my gyro), then back to the pres club to hang out for a couple hours. Smoo and I played Nertz, I had the DS for mom, and Smoo drank the free beer. It was nice having the pres club passes from my credit card since mom was in the airport for hours. And we stocked up on snacks for the plane.
Little did we know that we actually got a good amount of food on the flight over, and we were in the front which meant we got fed first. This flight had the personal tv screens which meant watching what we wanted! Dinner was a salad, roll, brownie and chicken or beef pasta. After dinner Smoo watched Chaos Theory, I watched Kung Fu Panda and fell asleep.
We all slept on and off, mostly off as everytime someone woke up and moved, it woke up the rest of us. The 6 hr flight went quicker than I thought mainly I was so tired I slept most of it.
Aug 31st: We were woken up with 1.5 hrs left of the flight for breakfast (a croissant and fruit). So I watched an episode of 30 Rock and CSI:NY and then it was time to land! Scotland from the air looks a lot like the midwest and it was cloudy so couldn't see much. Then we disembarked the plane to walk practically the entire length of the airport to customs. We were the first plane to land at that time and we were on the front of the plane which meant we were first in line for the non-EU passengers. So she asked how long our stay was, who we were seeing, enjoy the trip, stamp stamp stamp, have a nice day. Sweeeeeeet. We waited for mom's suitcase longer than it took to get through customs. Jennifer (mom's friend) was there waiting for us when we walked out, welcome to Scotland, yay! (finally)
Went over to pick up the car, weird sitting on the left while Smoo was driving on the right. We followed Jennifer out to her bungalow all the while chanting (stay on the left, stay on the left) and he only hit the curb a couple times trying to figure out how wide the car was on the narrow lanes. We ended up getting an automatic, and here they are the bigger cars, ok which meant less room in the driving lanes.
The GPS is fairing well, cept for the constant new roads/traffic patterns. Navigating through the round-abouts took about 20 or so for us to finally figure them out, at least the right of way is inside the circle mostly. We made it to Jennifer's, Smoo met Kenneth, I hadn't seen him in about 15 years or so? (damn I'm getting old)
Then we went over to check in at the Dunfermline Holiday Inn Express (no one else was there) and the room was bigger than I expected, the toilet closet was funny. And it only took a few tries to get the lights to stay on. To save electricity you have to use your door card in the slot on the wall to turn on the lights, and when you remove it you have a bout a minute of lights before they all get turned off. I think that's a fantastic idea!
I ended up taking a nap, couldn't hold out anymore, ended up sleeping about 2 hours, then showered and got dressed to meet up with Mom (staying with Jennifer) Jennifer and Kenneth for supper to celebrate mom's (gasp) 65th birthday and our 1st anniversary (a month early).
Continued:
Drove over a few villages to the Red Lion Inn for supper. They had homemade garlic mozz bread for an appitizer (fantastic homemade bread, ok had seeds on the crust but still good or I was just starving). I had lamb shank (practically a half a leg of lamb) which the meat just fell off the bone OMG! And the real mashed potatoes melted in my mouth, so good! Then it was time for dessert (a.k.a a sweet) and we tried treacle tart and OMG hello tons of sugar but it was awesome. Jennifer made me try Stilton cheese (a.k.a. stinky cheese) and oatcakes, which is definately not my thing but I still tried it. We then walked off supper a bit walking around the village on the coblestone streets and in the rain of course.
Got back to the hotel and crashed for the night, the bed was comfy or I was just too sleep-deprived to care.