The Trip Home!

We woke up on Thursday morning and headed out, driving back to the castle in plenty of time to visit and then catch the ferry back to Oban.

Highland Coos with Dave's castle in the background ... heaven!

That TINY white dot to the right of the black ticket box is Bella,
the Westie, that got underfoot throughout the tour- she was filthy but sweet!

The castle gift shop was actually closed when we got there, but the worker was nice enough to open it up for us, and we got a guidebook and a few other small things. Back at the ferry, we parked the car in the queue and got some sodas before getting on the ferry. The ride was fine, and I took some pictures and video of the castle from the sea. Once we were on the mainland, we headed for Glasgow!

Our Hotel from the Ferry

Duart as the Ferry went around both sides

The drive was nice, as it went right past Loch Lomond on the way to the city. Once there, we decided to do some shopping, as we still had most of the day. Driving in Glasgow was, to say the least, an adventure. Our map was poor, often failing to indicate one-way and bus-only streets, as well as dead-ends. It took us about an hour and a half of wandering around the city in heavy traffic before we finally made it to our destination. Once there, we had a pretty good time. I lucked out and found a sporting goods store with a bunch of rugby gear on clearance. I made out like a bandit! New boots, two new pairs of shorts, a world cup jersey, a tee, and armor, all for much, much less than it would have cost back in the states. The guy actually said I was lucky, because they were supposed to get rid of all of it the last week but he hadn't bothered doing it yet!

After that we grabbed some food, then crossed the street to the mall. Incredibly, the mall was closing when we got there. At 6pm! On a weeknight! We were flabbergasted. This is one of the largest shopping centers in the largest city in the country. Crazy. The Scottish version of Walmart (ASDA) was still open, so we popped in there to kill some time, then headed back to the hotel. Unfortunately, in the parking lot at the shopping center, I managed to pole the mirror of the rental car. Sigh. So there's £500 down the drain. Hopefully we'll get some of it back after they get it repaired, but I tend to doubt the generosity of companies like that. Supposedly they'll refund the difference between the 500 and the actual cost of repair.

Then we got lost driving back from the shopping center. We followed signs for the road we needed, the M8, which directed us to the middle of the city then abruptly stopped. So we spent forever guessing our way across Glasgow, as we were off the map at that point.

Once back on the M8, and having taken the right exit, it took us FOREVER to find the hotel. It was in a crazy built up area, with gigantic theaters, sports centers, an IKEA, and malls. We wandered around looking for it forever, and finally found someone who could give us directions. Once there, we paid for WiFi service because of the general crappiness of the day, then it wouldn't work. We ended up getting it refunded, but it was really frustrating to have decided to just pay the £9 and check email, update the blog, etc., only to have it not work. We repacked all of our stuff, using a new sports bag we bought along with the rugby gear to bring back all of the stuff we purchased along the way. After that was finally done, we went to bed.

I wish we could have spent more than 5 hours sleeping
because it was nice and big and comfy!

Thank goodness the room was so big so we could explode all of our stuff and re-pack!

We woke up at 5:45am, showered and such, then headed for the airport. I returned the car while Becky waited at the terminal with the bags, and then when I went back and met up with her, I discovered that our flight was delayed. The line at the ticket counter was terrible, but we finally made it through and then through security. We had £25 in cash left to burn, so we grabbed one last bottle of single malt, a 10 year Jura. Waiting in the terminal was boring, of course. Fortunately, the plane ride itself was nice. The middle seat was vacant, so we got a lot of room to move around. I watched a couple of movies, Iron Man and Prince Caspian, and Becky passed out for much of the flight.

The trip through customs was uneventful. They scanned our bags but didn't search anything, and we got through quickly and on to the terminal to wait on our second flight. It was delayed as well, and so at that point we were pretty tired and frustrated. Once we were in the plane and on the tarmac, we got delayed AGAIN, as they had shut down our flight route. Finally we were cleared to take off, and were actually one of the last planes out of Newark before they shut down all the routes. Once in Boston at 6:30pm, after 17 hours of travel, we collected our bags and got a ride home from our friend Maelyn (God.Bless.Her - I would have killed someone if I'd had to get in a cab at that point!)

So that's about it! Hope you guy enjoyed the blog.