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Published: March 6th 2008
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Day 1 - Cindy
DC to Edinburgh: Had no problem with the first two legs of my flight. Planes were flying on time and the 777 I flew in from Raleigh to London was barely 1/3 full so we all had plenty of room to stretch out. We even got a meal! I haven’t had that on a plane for a while. Each seat had individual video on demand so there was quite a selection of movies to choose from. It was a new system and the attendants were just learning to use it so, more than halfway through watching the movie “August Rush”, the attendant went to reset one passenger’s movie and ended up resetting the entire plane. We all had to start watching our movies from the beginning. Oh well, if that’s the worst thing that happens on this flight then I’m a lucky woman.
So several hours later I’m landing at London-Gatwick airport. As we start walking towards baggage claim and outgoing flights, I wonder…”Just how far away is this place?” I only have an hour between flights and we keep walking and walking. When we do hit the area where foreigners are supposed to ‘land’ themselves
and go through customs, there is a line a mile long. I'm not too worried because the plane attendant had told me that if we were continuing on to another destination in the UK, we don't have to go through this area. Wrong! Now not only do I have to stand in this horrendous line but I don’t have my paperwork prepared so I have to step out of line and do that. I figure I’m going to miss my next flight since it leaves in 10 minutes. Once through the landing process, it is apparent that I’ve missed my flight. I grab the first person I see with an American Airlines employee badge. Somehow it makes me feel much better when he says, “Don’t worry love, we’ll see that you’re taken care of.” They rebook me out in 4 hours and now I have to figure out how to let Brooke and my ride in Edinburgh know that I’ll be late. I have a rental cell phone and they both have the number but I left the instructions on how to use it in my bag. Another Oops! in a long line of Oops!. I paid for 24 hours
of wireless access from AT&T while in Raleigh but evidently AT&T UK is different. I either have to repay or find an alternative. There is an internet café where prices are a little cheaper and for 2 GBP, I get 20 minutes of surfing; that’s about $4 American. I get online to see if I can find instructions on how to retrieve voice mail because I see that I have a message waiting and, since I only gave the number out for emergencies, I start to worry. My time at the London airport is spent worrying about what to do and thinking that the trip is heading quickly down the toilet. Finally the phone rings and it is Andrea, my chauffeur in Edinburgh asking me where I am. I tell her what happened and she says that she has already collected Brooke so not to worry, they’ll be waiting when I arrive. Yay!
Landing in Edinburgh was uneventful until we waited and waited and no luggage arrived. Par for the course, I thought. What else could make this a perfect first day? Standing in a long line of people who also did not receive their luggage, I hear Brooke
shouting that my luggage has arrived on a different belt with the international luggage. Jumping into Andrea’s Jeep, we’re off to Kirk Yetholm (pronounced Yetam). Well, kind of off to Kirk Yetholm. Andrea misses a turn coming out of the airport and we end up driving through Edinburgh for the next hour and a half before finding our way back to the bypass and on to the Borders area of Scotland. I land in Edinburgh at 1:30, leave the airport about 2:15, and arrive at our cottage (the ‘Gypsy Palace’) only 60 miles away at 5:30 pm.
Russ and Lisa show up just as we are eating a quick pizza and cup of hot tea. We make plans to meet at 9:00 am to become official tourists and we head for bed determined that tomorrow will be better.
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Nizelky
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Hey Cindy... Can't wait for you to get back... We need to balance the testosterone in the section...LOL!!! It looks like brooke and you really enjoyed the first days of your trip. Can't wait to hear more about it when you get back.