Brian and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Christmas Eve

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You remember the part of the movie Home Alone where the mom is trying to get back home to her son on Christmas Eve and it's next to impossible because transportation is booked or unavailable? Well her journey sounds nice to my fiasco yesterday.

I got to Dublin Airport well before my flight, cleared security with no problem, and was sitting at the gate waiting. The flight was to board at 9:45. Well, it was delayed. We finally boarded near noon. Apparently, Ireland and the UK were on the edge of a storm and very high winds were making for difficult flying. The plane on which I was to fly was pretty small: two propellors and maybe capacity for 50 passengers. Our takeoff was successful, albeit unnerving. The wind would batter the plane, causing it to bank hard to one side or go up or down suddenly. Once it reached cruising altitude, everything was smooth.

During our attempted landing was when the real adventure began. The plane descended, through strong winds, roughly toward the runway, briefly touched down, and quickly climbed back into air - the pilot felt it was unsafe to land at the moment due to the winds. He circled around and 15 miinutes later, attempted another landing. This time, the winds were even worse. When the plane was probably less than 50 feet off of the ground, a strong gust caused the plane to bank hard to the left. I looked out my window and could see the entirety of the runway - meaning that the descending plane was now flying above grass. Needless to say, the piilot aborted this attempt and the plane climbed back into the air.

Once the pilot sorted things out with air traffic control, it was anounced that we would be landing in Birmingham, England. Birmingham, interestingly, is not very close to Edunburgh, Scotland - our intended destination. We did make it safely to Birmingham and landed, to the relief of everyone on board.

We were met by an Aer Lingus (the airline on which I was flying) representative at the ariport who ushered us through the airport to our next destination, which was unknown to us passengers at the time. The time was now about 2:30 pm. We were supposed to land in Edinburgh at 11:25 am. During our rush through the airport, a lady walking past slipped and fell. Myself and another person went to help her up, which was a much more time consuming endeavor than we had anticipated. By the time she was standing, we had completely lost our caravan of fellow passngers. After wandering around a while, we eventually found them.

Aer Lingus told us that they would be busing us to Edinburgh and that the bus should arrive at 4:10. The bus arrive just before 6:00 pm. During the interim, I became quite familiar with a small part of Birmingham Airport.

The bus drove us to Edinburgh. It's a mere 6 hour drive from Birmingham to Edinburgh, with a mandatory 30 minute stop, courtesy of the bus company. During this time, I was dependent on WiFi in order to communicate with my brother in Edinburgh and try to arrange travel plans. He doesn't have a car and we weren't sure if buses would be running by the time I got to Edinburgh Airport.

The bus finally made it to Edinburgh at 12:30 am on Christmas morning. The other passengers were flying home for Christmas and had family members waiting to pick them up. I waited at a bus stop where the bus is supposed to come every half hour until 3:30 am. Guess how many buses there were. That's right, zero.There were no taxis either. There were no people. The airport was completely dead. I was only able to connect to WiFi for about 3 minutes, before that too died.

Having no other plans or methods of transportation, I started walking. I followed signs toward Edinburgh city centre and walked over an hour total, carrying my backpack with all of my luggage. The highway along which I walked had a nice sidewalk and was well lit, at least. Oh yes, and during the first 30 minutes of my trek, it was pouring down rain, which was nicely complemented by the 30+ mph winds. The lights from downtown did not seem to be getting any closer. There was also hardly any traffic on the roads: I was passed by one car every five minutes or so. Wanting to speed up my approach of the city (it was 2:30 am by this point), I took to hitch hiking. Why not. The first car I tried hailing drove right by. It was a police officer. Merry Christmas to you, too. The second car I tried hailing actually pulled off. I talked to the driver and told him I needed to go to Waverly train station. Conveniently, this car was a taxi. The driver was even kind enough to drive me about 3 miles for full fare - 23.90 pounds - about $39.00 USD. I was severely missing the Irish hospitality at this point.

The taxi dropped me off at Waverly train station. I asked the only guy I could find the direction to Morningside Rd, where David's apartment is. He was obviously very drunk, which made his directions, laden with the F-word, questionable to me. I asked another guy who was watching a video on his iPhone if I could borrow his phone to call my brother. Oviously, who would let a wet, tired, stranger trying to get home at 3:00 am on Christmas morning use their fancy phone? Not this guy. Merry Christmas to you too, kind sir.

I had used Google Maps on my tablet earlier to find David's apartment. The map was still loaded, though no directions were available without WiFi. I searched the map and finally found Morningside Rd. Using the GPS on my tablet, I started walking toward Morningside. After about 45 minutes, I made it to David's apartment. The only Christmas miracle was that the outside door, which is always locked, was unlocked. After climbing 3 flight of stairs, I made it to his apartment, just before 4:00 am, only 15 hours after I was scheduled to. And then I slept for 9 hours until 1:00 pm on Christmas "morning".

From this time, Christmas could only go uphill. David made a traditional Scottish breakfast of pudding (see previous blog entry), fried tomatoes, sausage, eggs, beans, "bacon", and haggis (look that up on Wikipedia). We then walked about the surrounding city for a little while before coming back and exchanging a few small gifts.

So, all in all, not my best Christmas ever. But hey, at least I'm in Scotland. I hope you all had a warm and Merry Christmas!

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