Farewell to the United Kingdom

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Sunday 22nd June

Today we were leaving Britain and Europe all together and heading for Estonia. This meant we finally returned the car to the rogues who rented it to us.

During the past days while using the cramped parking bays outside Eileen's, some one had had difficulty either getting into tor out of their parking space and had scratched the bumper region of the car. (Why don't modern cars have bumper bars?) This had left some minor scratching on the duco so Marion went out to the car, armed with a toothbrush and did a little clean-up. When Owen and I arrived with the first delivery of luggage most of the marks were gone and the one that remained was nearly invisible.

We farewelled Eileen, thanked her for all her "luggage-sitting" and set off looking for a laundrette. Driving around Edinburgh on a Sunday morning was like steeping into a time machine and heading back to the days of my youth; everything was closed. It was like Melbourne from the 60's or 70's. Owen had never seen anything like it. All the shops (except for about 1 in 5 milk bars) were shut and barred. There were also very few people on the streets, even though the rain had blown over and it was quite pleasant out of doors.

We headed to the first of two laundrettes for which we had addresses, to find it locked tight. The second laundrette was likewise closed, similarly to the rest of Edinburgh. Giving up, we decided to head out towards the airport, only to almost immediately spot an open and functioning laundry, perhaps the only retail outlet open in the whole city.

Laundry finished, we headed down the ubiquitous A8 to the airport, in plenty of time for our 4.15pm flight. We unloaded the luggage from the hire car and I baby-sat it while Marion and Owen drove off to the hire car office at the airport to return the vehicle. I was entertained by watching a gentleman and his lady friend trying to get their luggage out of the boot of his convertible (I'm not sure if it was a Merc or a BMW, but it was a very swish looking vehicle). His problem is that the car was in sports car mode and the top refused to deploy which stopped the boot from being opened. He tried to raise the roof a couple of times, then got his lady friend to pull the lever in the driver's seat while he fiddled at the back of the car trying to encourage the folded down roof to open; without success.

There were three bored policeman wandering backwards and forwards along the footpath (I supposed to check that no-one over-stayed their allotted time in the drop-off/pick-up zone.) One policeman came over and had a chat with the gentlemen and offered some "helpful?" hints. He joined in trying to help in the task of raising the roof. By the time Marion and Owen arrived by a bus a few minutes later, all three policemen were "helping". I rather thought that the car owner would've been better served ringing the local version of RACV, whatever the Scots version is, rather than assembling a police squad. Unfortunately, we had to enter the terminal at this stage, so I didn't get to see the drama played out.

This time we couldn't have been looking suspicious as none of us were subjected to anything other than the standard security measures; even my pump was only subjected to X-ray scanning and nothing else. (Rather anti-climatic after our experience departing for the Orkneys.)

To get to Tallinn (Estonia's capital) we had to fly to Copenhagen and change planes there. The flight to Copenhagen was uneventful, and sadly we couldn't gain any impressions about the city as it was already dark when we arrived.

We filed aboard the Estonian Airways flight bound for Tallinn, which was in a respectable sized (and quite full) jet. (I had expected to be a pretty pokey plane like the one that had taken us from Venice and Zurich.) Once aboard we sat, and sat, and sat. Then there was an announcement that a connecting flight from Heathrow had been delayed and we were waiting for some passengers who had seats on out plane. So we sat some more.

We were close to the front of the plane and could see the doorway attached to the corridor from the airport gate lounge, but nobody boarded. After 45-50 minutes of sitting on the tarmac in the plane (which was by this time getting both humid and somewhat aromatic) we finally started to move. The air conditioning (thankfully) kicked in. It seemed to take quite a long time for the plane to get into position for take-off, but eventually we were airborne. Estonian airways was quite old-fashioned in that they handed out menus for snacks and drinks you could purchase, with prices quoted both in Euros and the local currency the Eesti Kroon.

We landed at Tallinn just before midnight and it was about 12.10 by the time were processed and out of arrivals. Our bleary-eyed guide, whose name was Maal pronounced Mal), was still waiting for us. Maal was a tall, statuesque lady with white hair but unfortunately her English was quite broken and, although it was certainly better than our Estonian, we often had trouble making sense of her ungrammatical sentences. The taxi-van provided took us to the hotel which provided a very spacious suite for us.

For about the fourth time on the trip the hotel provided a quite uncomfortable camp-bed for Owen when the lounge area had a perfectly good sofa-bed that could be converted in to a superior, far more comfortable bed.

Having re-positioned Owen we all enjoyed a quite short sleep before our 10.00am walking tour tomorrow which Marion had particularly been looking forward to.

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