this trip's overview San Francisco to Glasgow Babbity Bowster, Glasgow Babbity theme Glasgow George Square, Glasgow Glasgow shopping Glasgow for kids Culzean Castle Aberfoyle, Trossachs Doune Castle Sterling Castle Ballachulish Corpach, Ft. Williams Loch Ness Glenfinnan Pink Guest House, Isle of Skye Brae Ness, Inverness Urquhart Castle The Summer Isles Ibis, Edinburgh Omi in Edinburgh Edinburgh Castle The Witchery Craigmuller Castle back to Glasgow Edinburgh to Düsseldorf restaurant recommendations
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2003 Scotland: San Francisco (SFO) to Glasgow (GDI)
01 July 2003
San Francisco International (SFO)
My Treo rings the first alarm at 0500, the second at 0515. Gads. I roll out of bed, get dressed, double-check the to-do list, and bring the piles of kids clothes to the family bed. Rose is awake, going through her last-minute waltz. I hear the refrigerator door open and close. Isaac bounds out of bed, all smiles. "Scotland", he says. I dress him in a moment; he dissapears into the kitchen. I'm able to dress Lila whilst she sleeps. But she rouses to complain loudly about the pink sweatshirt we've picked out for her. Unacceptable.
The shuttle arrived promptly at 0600. Too early for me, but that's how it goes for free. This trip'll be paid for with all the points I've 'earned' from our credit card. We buy what we need and pay it off at the end of each month. And keep the points. And go to Scotland and Germany. Yeah!
Traffic is light, and I'm looking forward to some caffé latte in the airport. Sadly, that's not to be.
American Airlines has bumped us onto a flight which leave an hour earlier than we were scheduled, and so the scene resembles nothing more than a drill sargeant yelling at raw recruits to bustle, bustle, bustle! Sweating and frazzled from the goings-on, including two seemingly clueless security screenings by the new TSA folks, we clamber onto the new plane. It's a short stint. We land with an incredibly loud thud.
Dallas / Ft. Worth (DFW)
At DFW we have a four-hour layover, the better to run the kids ragged and not to miss our international leg of the trip. The people next to whom we sat had less than half an hour to run across the airport with their kids. Not for me. Because we've landed an hour earlier than anticipated, we now have five hours at DFW. We take two separate trips on their people mover (which both Isaac and Lila love), and eat our lunch snacks (including Frank's Honey Mustard Turkey Sandwich brought from our neighborhood Harvest organic store). Mmmmmm. A latte is obtained and savored.
The flight from DFW to London Gatwick is longer - eight hours or so - and includes a night-time segment. Hopefully the kids will sleep through much of the flight. (Doesn't happen.) After two hours of so, they're both awake. Isaac is watching Nickelodeon Jr. on the in-flight television. Lila is enjoying the extra space in the bulkhead area we got. She's saying sentences like "I don't need any help with my water, Mama".
She's actually begun toilet-training herself, from watching Isaac, so we're also carrying a tiny portable potty (since we'll be spending so much time on or near our rental car).
How will these pages make it up onto the 'net? Well, just as in previous years, I'll write these pages and download and format the pictures from our still and video cameras. I'll write as though I'll be uploading them in a few hours. In some cases, that's what'll happen. We'll find some Internet café (or Wi-Fi wireless access point in an airport) and I can upload. In other cases it'll be days (or even weeks) before I find some way to connect. So it goes. Sometime in the near future someone will read this and shake their head at the very idea of being 'off the net' for even a moment. We must have lived like barbarians :-)
On to The Babbity Bowster, Glasgow!
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