Getting There

2003 was a good travel year for us!

After we enjoyed a trip with family and friends on our Organ Tour to Germany, Judy and I flew to Edinburgh, just for fun. We realized that while we were in Cambridge in 1985 we had missed an opportunity to go to Scotland, and just decided this was the time.

Getting there was a lot like most of our trans-Atlantic trips. We had to get to the airport two hours before departure, and just like almost every flight that leaves Birmingham, ours went first to Atlanta. There we had another long wait before we could board the plane, and that wait was followed by another one on the tarmac. Once we finally left the ground, things looked up a bit, because we had been fortunate enough to score Business Class seats. After a short nap during a short night, we got to Manchester, England, where we had a four-hour wait to board a twin-engine prop plane to Edinburgh.

After we reclaimed our luggage and found a taxi to take us our hotel. I had driven a lot in England, back in 1985, but that was in a Peugeot built for sale in the US. The steering wheel was on the left, causing a few problems with sight-lines at roundabouts, but otherwise familiar. This time I would be in a made-for-Britain right-hand drive car in only two days! I took notes about the little things I didn’t know: where is the accelerator? the clutch? The driver was very helpful and relieved my mind a lot.

The Ibis hotel on the Royal Mile wasn’t a great atmospheric old hotel, but it was what we expected from a chain in this price range. It was clean, neat, and not too expensive. Knowing we had to make the inevitable adjustment to being in a new time zone, we fairly quickly “hit the streets,” doing what we could to stay awake.

We walked up the hill to the castle, walked through a few shops, including a woolen shop with a weaving demo in progress.  We also walked into the Whiskey center but decided not to spring for the Glenfiddich bottle displayed in the window. £1,000 for a bottle was out of our price range, even if it was a forty-year old limited edition Scotch.  We stopped for a beer in a pub and stuck our heads into St. Giles, where we heard an organist practicing a transcription of the Mussorgsky “Pictures.” At least, I hope the organist was just practicing.

After a short rest back in the hotel, where we dutifully called home, we struggled back out for dinner in a nearby pub, walked a bit more, then finally hit the hay, our first day in Scotland done.