Scotland Day 2 - Greeting the Travelers

It's easy to wake up early when 7 AM feels like noon! Carrie and I dressed in blue and hopped in a cab to reach the airport (~£23). We were expecting people to arrived on three separate flights.

We discovered that there were two different areas for international arrivals....and, of course, they were on opposite ends of the airport. The airport had two hours of free wifi we used to stay connected when we split up (Only Carrie had an international plan for her cell).

We learned that we needed a bigger sign or at least a bigger logo on our sign. Not everyone knew what the "ICC group" was. I swear one couple stared me in the eye and I smiled back before they wandered past (Thankfully, they circled back!). I knew the names of the couple I was sent to fetch from the far terminal. I was able to name drop whenever I saw people checking signs and I caught them before they wandered.

We had a total of 31 people arrive. 10 people had been stranded (Grandma has a picture of a pair sleeping in Newark airport).

Theresa, in the green, was the official group leader.

The coach, at least, went off without a hitch. We'd timed things well and Craig was ready and waiting (several people had trouble understanding his name through his accent!).

I took a quick group picture when I hopped on and then we were off! The Father led everyone in a prayer.

I played faux tour-guide for Carrie on the way. "And over here we have the bowel movement & home store..."

Parking a coach in Edinburgh is challenging. I wouldn't want Craig's job. He said our group was "refreshing" after the last few he'd dealt with!

Carrie worked like a madwoman throughout the check-in process. The hotel was overwhelmed. The rooms where ready and the lobby filled with luggage and nowhere to go. Carrie helped haul things in and reminded them of "the plan" to use a meeting room.

"The plan" fell to pieces. One of the two elevators had been broken all morning. The hotel did use the other elevator to move the luggage to the meeting room, but then someone booked the room! A group came in and held a meeting surrounded and cramped by our group's luggage! When the rooms did become available it became a problem, because the hotel didn't want to interrupt the meeting.

Carrie's plan had been for people to check in, go upstairs, grab their luggage, and then continue on their merry way. The hotel's new 'plan' was to get the luggage, bring it back downstairs on the one working elevator, and then let people take it back up the elevator to their rooms when they were done.

Then the elevator broke. The average age of our group was over 60 and we were waist deep in luggage on the ground floor of a six story hotel with no working elevators. 

People were tired. Tempers were raw and patience was in short supply. Carrie had a terse exchange with one woman who upset about how intimate her room was going to be (She'd signed up to share a room with another woman she didn't know and hadn't realized how tight the room was). Carrie took the exchange hard (along with every setback even though they weren't her fault) and things were a little tense until everyone had time to nap and eat dinner (I think it was a God driven moment when we stepped out of our room after some emails and communications and bumped into the priest who helped lead the group!). 

I felt that Carrie was doing a fantastic job throughout everything. She helped one family look for leads on where to go for some genealogy research and answered another family's questions about the best way to travel to St. Andrew's. She felt frayed and wanted to get some distance between her and the hotel, though.

Which we did! I had my usual travel request: I wanted to see a library, a grocery store, and a board game store. I led us through an alley ("close") and brought us up to the 'Royal Mile.'

Yes, there was a board game store. I laughed at the little girl who photobombed my pic (Maybe that's why she made the face?).

Carrie took a picture of me to send to John. I would have loved to have bought him a souvenir, but he already owns everything. All he wanted to know was if there were "A bunch of Scots playing and talking in the accent."

So I asked the staff. "That's what we do!" he replied (Emphasis on the "do."). 

Carrie helped me by running all over the store taking pictures to entice him. She got really into it! She was ready to buy an audiobook narrated by David Tennant at one point just because it was David Tennant. 

We snuck into a sweets shop right before closing, so Carrie could get ice cream before we continued our walk. All of the dessert shops seemed to close early. We tried to go to one yesterday that closed at 5 PM. We walked up at 4:52 PM in time to see the employee shut the door, flip the sign, and skip off. We slid into this one 4 minutes before closing and the workers let us know they were wrapping up if we wanted to be quick. They were busy wrapping up as quickly as they could before anyone else stumbled in.

I played amateur photographer as we continued our walk.

To play, you have to take multiple shots of the same area with minor differences in focus, placement, and light. Then you agonize later over which shot is the best without coming to a final conclusion.

Keeps you busy in the moment!

On a Games Workshop related note, I learned that they probably don't consider much of the terrain they make as "Gothic." I bet they think of it as "homey."

There were a ton of trinket, tourist trap stores around. The market was over-saturated, but still fun to poke around in.

Carrie nearly lost it when she found a calendar of men in kilts to embarrass her friend Sonya. She thought Sonya's husband, Jeff, would "kill her."

"So buy him a kilt towel," I said.

Kilts are expensive, but kilt towels were not.

We wandered around further and found ourselves in a pub called The Castle Arms for dinner. I had a Yorkshire pudding and Carrie ordered haggis (We wanted to try as many local/traditional fares as we could).

I wish I could say the night ended quietly, but it ended with Carrie trying to sort things out with a truck dealership stateside. She was stressed and they weren't doing much to help. We didn't get to bed until after midnight....but we also discovered some local TV fare.

Mrs. Brown Boy's was funny and surprising when she started lacing in the "f***ing" without anything being bleeped out. The word doesn't have the same heavy, negative connotation it does stateside. Some of the commercials were interesting, as well, but that could just be from it being late night TV!