Day 2-Flight and Arrival

5:50am-Iceland time. After the flight from hell, which lasted 6 hours and 40 minutes and took us through several time zones, we have arrived at Klefavlik Airport in Reykjavik, Iceland. The flight was packed solid with passengers and, of course, behind me was a crying, screaming infant. The seats themselves are fine for passengers who are 5' 8" or shorter and weigh less than 160 pounds. Anything taller or heavier than that and the discomfort level increases exponentially. Thus you can imagine how wonderfully uncomfortable they were to a 6'4", 260 pound person such as myself. Adding to the fun was the fact that my seat was an aisle seat, which at first I was happy about since it would give me a little more breathing room than a window or middle seat would. That happiness was erased after the first ten times I was bumped, mashed and pushed up against by passengers walking the aisle, or had my shoulder and/or leg run into by service carts wielded by the beautiful Nordic flight attendants. This made sleep on the nighttime flight impossible. Since I only slept 2 hours Friday night, I am now officially a walking dead zombie and if you could see how mangled the spelling of this entry is before I spell-check it, you would laugh until your teeth fell out of your mouth.

The best part of the flight (apart from the end of it) was the meal of beef with noodles and vegetables in a cream sauce and a nice whole grain roll.

Unfortunately there is no wireless Internet access here in the Klefavik terminal at all, so posting this will have to wait until Glasgow or Oban.

7:45am-Iceland time. We're now on board the flight for the last leg of our journey to Glasgow. The plane, though the same make (Boeing 757-300) as the plane we took from Orlando to Reykjavik, is configured differently with a smaller First Class area and seats that seem to be slightly wider and with more leg room. Add to that the fact that the plane is only half full and that this part of the flight is only two hours in length and you can see why we feel like we are flying in luxury for this leg. I actually may get to sleep on this flight.

10:50am-Glasgow time. We've touched down (very hard; who's flying this thing, the flight attendant on the pilot's lap?) in Glasgow. I slept very well except for a few moments to eat a breakfast of eggs, ham and potatoes with an orange juice chaser.

12:20pm-All times for the next 13 days will be Glasgow time. After retrieving our baggage, clearing customs and finally finding the rental car area of the airport, we had a little bit of confusion to clear up with the credit card company regarding insurance coverage. We are in a Ford Mondeo, which I don't believe I've seen in the states. Cindy's dad is going to start driving so I can get a feel for how it's done when you drive on the opposite side of the car and the opposite side of the road.

3:00pm-We've arrived in Oban, our base for the next 13 days, after a drive that seemed more like Mr Toad's Wild Ride combined with Space Mountain than anything else. The roads are narrow, winding (I'm talking hairpin curves here), and not well-maintained with shear mountain walls on the side of the road I was driving on, which was to my way of thinking the "wrong" side. It took some getting used to (and I'm still adjusting) but after a while it wasn't bad. I discovered that while I'm actually driving I am ok, but if I pull off the road for a reason and then get back on, I automatically pull into the right-hand lane, which is of course over here the oncoming traffic lane.

We found our castle-cottage and met the caretakers, Charlie and Joanne along with their beautiful Border Collie, Ginny. They gave us the tour of the 2-story cottage (which used to be the servant's quarters in this 17th century castle), directions to a restaurant and grocery store in town (we're 3 miles out from Oban). After we unloaded our luggage we took off for town since the grocery store will close at 6pm.

We had a wonderful dinner at The Oban Inn. One of their menu choices was Roast Beef with broiled potatoes and Yorkshire Pudding, a dish my late grandmother used to make for my late grandfather every Sunday, and later for me whenever I would visit home. All four of us ordered that. The Oban Inn is one of those wonderful little places where you order your food from the bar and then a server brings it out to you at your table.

We met a nice gentleman from Wales who was sitting next to us. I was asking the rest of my group about how much I should tip the server (20 percent like we do in the U.S.(?), which would have been about 5 pounds) because I know in Orlando I have always heard complaints from service industry workers about how poorly (or even not at all) visitors from the UK tip them because it's not something they normally do in their own country. Our neighbor from Wales sort of reinforced that by offering that if I tipped them more than 2 pounds they'd think I was daft, lol. He was right, the young lady was genuinely surprised when I handed her the 2 pounds he recommended, like she wondered what I was putting in her hand and why.

After that filling meal (which, while very good, was not as good as my grandmother's) in such a classically British atmosphere, we hurried to get to the Tesco's grocery store before it closed at 6pm. Despite directions, we got lost and finally found it at 5:50pm. Cindy and her mom ran in and quickly purchased some breakfast items and we returned back to the cottage. I took a hot shower more to ease the kinks and sore muscles than because I needed one. Boy, did it feel good after all the cramped airline seats and tension of learning to drive on the opposite side of the road and car. Cindy made us cups of hot chocolate, and that was the nail in the "coffin" for all of us.

By 7pm we were all sound asleep. I woke up around 12:30am because my bladder insisted on it, then slept through until 7:10am. Our cottage is out in the country away from every kind of light source there is, with the exception of the moon and stars and they were blocked by clouds. When I woke up at 12:30am it was pitch black throughout the place. I didn't want to wake anyone so I felt my way along the wall to the door, then opened it and felt my way along the hall in the direction of the bathroom then closed that door and turned on the light. When I was done I turned off the light and retraced my steps carefully (it wouldn't have been fun to fall down the nearby stairs) and crawled back into bed. I was just getting snuggled back under the covers when Cindy's voice came through the darkness asking me what time it was. I told her and then she said, "I have to go to the bathroom, can you turn on your lamp?", lol. I turned it on and she used its light to get from our bedroom to the bathroom and back. Other than that brief interruption, we slept the sleep of the dead, which was appropriate because we felt like we were.

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