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Scotland Vacation

This is a true tale of our vacation in Scotland with Rachel in May 2007.
Pictures are here.

May 1-2 :: Getting there

Today is May 1 or 2 - we are not sure when May 1st ended.

In the morning we cleaned the house and I worried a lot about the dog/kitten...
Then I ate all kinds of leftovers from the fridge (sour cream, hot pepperoni with mayo, boiled eggs) and drank some milk and some beer. Jen and Vish picked us up and drove us to the airport where I drank a cup of bad tasting French vanilla capuccino and ate minestrone soup at Timmis for the first time. It tasted horrible. By the time we were lining up to get on the plane I had a bad stomach ache with all this junk in my belly. We were seated next to a woman who was totally

. The flight attendants said she had too much to drink but I think she also popped a few funny pills as well. When they sent her to the back of the plane I wasn't too happy because by then my stomach ache has become terrible and I didn't want anybody to talk to me, touch me or even look my way. I got mad diarrhea just when the fasten seat belt signs were lit. It sounds funny now but it was hell then. The stupid plane was rolling on the runway forever to take off position. I told one of the stewardess that I

- he said i have to wait until we're in the air but he will tell the crew about me in case they see me running during take off. Sure enough, after about 3 minutes (15 secs after take off) I was on my way to the back of the plane in a hurry. They told me to sit down but I ignored them and closed the door behind me. RELIEF! :) Well, i don't want to go into details but i spent the first half of the flight in the bathroom and for the rest of the flight i was just sitting miserably in my seat, weak and pale and sweaty. I felt shitty - literally:)

We landed on time. I slept through landing. I got to go in the fast lane with my Hungarian (EU) passport and they questioned Rachel who carries a Canadian passport. How does this make sense? Dunno. Their queen is Canada's queen, no? Anyhow, we got out, security personnel not present, in fact, there was not a soul after the passport check.

We didn't find the car rental company's desk. Called them a million times but got the answering machine. Each call cost a £ each cos we didn't have change and the public phones don't give change. Finally we got a hold of them and it turned out that they don't have a desk but there was a guy with a sign looking for us. He was gone by then. He came back in an hour and we got the car. Well, driving on the left (wrong) side of the road is definitely scary for the first little while. Rachel was scared. Zoltan was also scared. We got lost a bit, almost ran out of fuel because the tank was empty when we got the car.

We found the hostel but check in wasn't until 2pm (it was 11 am then) so we sat down in a pub. It was full of local businessmen in nice suits on lunch break drinking their pint and reading the paper. They took their sweet time that's for sure.
We were put into two separate rooms (male/female only) first but after about half an hour Rachel got us a more private four bedroom room. I was in lalaland by then (in the far corner) so she had to drag me into the new room. We slept. Had supper at a local pub. There aren't really any tourist pubs in Glasgow, we didn't see any tourists, no gift shops. It's no wonder Glasgow and Edinburgh hate each other. ("The only good thing about Edinburgh is a train back to Glasgow" - said the tour guide.)
I had Magner's Cider (Irish). £2.5. Aha, I didn't mention that petrol is £1/L (CAD $2.3). As a result all cars are small, stickshifts. (Just for the record, gas in Hungary is about CAD $2.0/L The difference is that while the average Joe in the UK makes roughly $65,000 CAD a year, the average annual salary in Hungary is about $10,000. It means that in Canada (based on an average $40,000 annual salary) gas is 1.4x cheaper than for a UK person and 8x cheaper than for Hungarians!!)

May 3 :: Glasgow Sightseeing

We are now at a cafe by the hostel checking email and sipping a glass of hot chocholate.

We are feeling worn out. It's the end of the day.

We woke up at 11:20am because Rachel closed the curtains at 4am because it was getting too bright. Yup, sun rises at 4am up there in May. We drove downtown hoping to find free/cheap parking. Nope. No free parking in Glasgow. So we paid for the super expensive parking and walked in the city. Saw people in parks sitting there like pigeons and reading the paper at lunch brake (the rest are in the pubs). Then we took a sightseeing bus which was pretty good. After the tour we drove around almost the exact same path but at least we knew where the hell we were going. Driving was getting a little better, emphasis on

.

We walked to the people's palace and had lunch at a micro brewery. There was a park there which was "built" around 1400 - it used to be the place for public executions. Now it's full of people playing football. (the soccer kind but you get a smack if you call it soccer over there).Where football is prohibited they have a sign saying so:)
At the end of the day we saw the cathedral and the Necropolis behind it - The City of The Dead. It's a huge cemetery on the top of a hill with tombstones from the 1700s and 1800s. It was quite an experience to be there.

So far two things are for sure. There are pubs and pubs and pubs and pubs and pubs and pubs everywhere and they have cute looking taxi cabs.

May 4 :: Glasgow Sightseeing Day 2

The plan was that today we get up early and do another day of crazy sightseeing. But we didn't get up early enough to get to the car by 8am so we got a £60 ticket (£30 if payed within 14 days - so i quickly paid it...) The parking enforcment unit is not kidding. £60 first notice. If they tow the car (they don't actually tow it, they lift it up on top of a flatbad truck) it's something like £120.

We had breakfast at the cafe downstairs - capuccino and sausages/bacon in a bun. The bacon wasn't those long thin strips rather it was a thicker slice of slightly smoked bacon - the one we eat at Easter in Hungary. Then we drove to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery but it was closed. Another £2 for parking wasted. We drove down to the Armadillo. The Armadillo is a large auditorium/concert hall near the science center and the tall ship by the river Clyde. It's a dome like building with an overlapping top and it got the nickname "The Armadillo".

I read that the subway system here is really interesting - they call it the Clockwork Orange - and i wanted to ride the subway around the city so we got a return ticket to Central Station. It's only two stops and it wasn't very interesting at all. It was different. (of course). The subway cars are very very clean and the seats are super confortable. We didn't get to see the more interesting stations - maybe next time. I like subway trains what can I do? They are pretty cool.

There is a ship here docked at the port called the Tall Ship. Her official name is Glenlee and it is a Clyde Build ship that sailed around the world 3 or four times. We toured it. Most of it was restored so it looked pretty much like it did a century ago when it was in service. We got to read the log books and look into the kitchen and the living quarters.

After the ship tour we crossed the river and walked around the science center. Didn't go in because it was expensive. Hmm...what happened next? Rachel had a Subway sandwich. There are lots of Subways in the city - not so many McDonalds and other junk food places. We drove back to the city where Rachel got a few new earrings because her old one kept falling out the we went to a pub called the Athol Ale House. It was pint time and I had a Tennent's Lager which was a pretty characterless beer, didn't taste like anything. Pretty much like Coors Light...

Then we saw a museum which was cool - they had funny noses for us to try.

Back to the hostel - this time we didn't get lost and now we are downstairs at the cafe and i'm blogging away.

I did some research about how much money ppl make here because i can't believe how anybody can get by here - well, not from Canadian wages. It turned out that wages start at about £12,000 / year. Minimum hourly wage is about £5.50

A little about driving: well, the left hand side driving totally threw me off on the first day and yesterday but today i felt a lot more confident but Rachel keeps making chicken like noises:) (paaaaaaaaak!) whenever i go close to the curb or lamp posts on the left so i guess there is room for improvement. The weirdest is that the oncoming traffic passes about 1 ft on the right. Lanes are super narrow - narrower than in Hungary! but the double deckers seems to have absolutely no problem driving an inch close (left and right) to other cars or the sidewalk - where people stand on the very edge waiting for the light to turn red so they can confortably zig-zag their way through traffic. Seriously, nobody cares about pedestrian lights, people stop off the street first, then look, then step back, step off again, step back and finally run to the other side. Drivers don't care, they honk if the people are really in their way but otherwise they are very very patient. I stalled a couple of times due to "left hand side stick shift uphill starting" but nobody honked, not once. I have made some pretty weird turns into various lanes but nobody got impatient. They let me merge and drive nice and slow. Speed limits btw are: 30mph in the city and 70mph on the motorway

May 5 :: Glasgow to Skye

Woke up at 6:15 and checked out of the hostel. Everything is still closed in the city so we didn't have breakfast. On the way out of the city i got a coffee at a Shell station. There were no cupholders in the car so i held it in my hand and ran a red because i couldn't put it down and shift gears back quickly enough. That's why there are no cupholders. They don't want you to drink coffee and drive. (I could have put the coffee into the cupholder and stopped...) Anyways, a police car appeared out of nowhere and we got pulled over. They made me sit in the back seat of the police car. The boss cop was pretty pissed. When he found out i was from Canada he lectured me how a red light in Scotland means cars must stop and i'm lucky they don't have the facilities there to take my car away like in Canada (?) and i'm free to go, no ticket, but i should drive more carefully. I don't know what he knows about Canadian laws and i didn't like his comments about Canada but i liked how we didn't get a ticket.

We stopped at Oban (which, according to a Scottish guy i had met in Hungary, is an "interesting town"). Had breakfast at a café and saw some locals wearing kilts. Bought whiskey and continued driving North.

I got an allergic reaction in Glasgow and my hands and feet were covered with weird looking red spots. They didn't itch but it wasn't very pleasant either. So we got some pills at a pharmacy - pills that didn't work at all. We got other pills from a hospital later (free) but they didn't work either. Later, in Stirling we got a cream that worked a little bit but i think the spots went away on their own just a day before we got home - weird...)

In the highlands all signs are bilingual: Gaelic first then English. Gaelic looks like a very nice language - a bit like like elvish (and many towns very called like they were from the LOTR).
There are sheep everywhere. , On the road , on the fieldleft and right- .everywhere They are spray painted green or orange - the colour indicates which medication they got already.
There are also a bunch of highland cows which are cows with long hair (rocker cows).

We checked in to the B&B, drove to Portree where had dinner (Belhaven's Best ale & fish and chips).

Then it started to rain and got windy. Very, very, very windy.

May 6 :: Isle of Skye Tour

The sun rose around 4am. In the summer there is no darkness at all at night and no light in the winter. We were truly up north.

All day we were driving around the island. Drove to Skyeskyns Tannery and got a small sheepskin for the cat. Saw Dunveagan castle and a bunch of nice mountains and cliffs like the Old Man of Storr and Kilt Rock.
There isn't much else to say about this place, it's simply beautiful. (And this is the second last day that i'm blogging about because i'm not going in order and i just want to finish the damn thing now.)
Oh, there is one more thing: the roads. The roads here are one land with passing places every 200yards or so. There isn't any traffic (there are more sheep on the road than cars) so it works just fine. And if a car comes they are eager to stop and let you go so there are no problems.

May 7 :: Lock Ness

Had super big breakfast with super yummy black pudding. Then we went to see Nessie.

Loch Ness is about 3 hrs from Skye so we drove all morning. The loch is nice (it's deep: 812m !!) but we didn't any monsters just seagulls. Saw a short movie about the history of the monster, went on a bout tour, had lunch, drove back another way, had dinner at the Old School Restaurant (which turned out to be a $90+ bill on Rachel's cc for a pretty simple meal.)

The people at the B&B are very talkative. Well, more like the woman. She keeps going forever...huh. But they had a dog which made up for the hour long wait in the hallway listening to her. By this time we missed Daisy like hell so it felt good to give a puppy a belly rub.

May 8 :: From Skye to Edinburgh

We have checked into the hostel here in Edinburgh about 2 hrs ago. The receptionist used to live in Mississauga - small world. We also met Canadians on the way here in Stirling at a restaurant/pub, they were from Toronto/Mississauga. Stirling is a nice town (what else is new) with a castle (no city is real here w/out a castle). It's where William Wallace fought a famous battle against the English to free Scotland from the English reign.
We are parket at an overnight parking, which is £15.90 (!!). I'm pretty much out of money by now; my cc got rejected at the hostel so we used Rachels.
We took a walk in the area close to the hostel - which is btw about 2 mins walk from the Edinburgh Castle. This hostel is much more fun than the one in Glasgow. It is not a franchise after all, it's about drinking and having fun in general.

What else happened earlier today?

Well, we checked out of the B&B place after a last (huge) breakfast. Said goodbye to the hosts, paid the bill and pet the doggie for the last time.
The drive was not too bad, we didn't get lost once. I am so used to driving on the left by now (only on the countryside anyways) that it was like pretty much like rally driving on the roads. Driving in the city is a little scary still, especially in the 2-3 land roundabouts that move really fast but it takes a bit of getting used to which way to signal and when and what lane to get into. But they are pretty easy going about it and don't honk you off the road for a silly mistake.
Just past the Skye brige coming from Skye there is a five star bathroom - an Award Winning Loo. It costs 20p to get in and it is different from other bathrooms around. It is full of posters of Scotland and there are nice whisky bottles everywhere inside and mini statues and nicely painted ceilings, etc. The flush was a success!:)

Email checked, time to go back to our room and get some sleep. We miss Daisy & Scraps!

May 9 :: Edinburgh - Day 2

Got up around 8 and had breakfast at the hostel. It was a breakfast buffet for £2 - a LOT cheaper than anywhere else.

First we went to see the famous Edinburgh Castle. The tour was free - not like in England where they make you pay for everything, said the guide and he kept making fun of the English throughout the tour.

We had lunch at a pub near the hostel. I tried the Scottish national food: Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. It was awesome! It's basically bloodwurst with mashed turnips and potatoes. Very tasty!

We drove to the Deep Sea World across the Forth Bridge. They has many interesting fish, seals and an underground shark tunnel where a bunch of rays, sharks, eels and odd ocean creatures swam all around us.

Back to hostel.
Walked walked down the Royal Mile
(High Street) later which is a street from the castle to the parliament and it is full of gift shops. (oddly enough there were no gift shops in Glasgow...) We saw a cool Bagpipe shop at the low end of the Royal Mile and an all kinds of other interesting shops including a christmas shop where Santa Claus plays the bagpipe.

Went online in the hostel, checked emails, etc, then later we found out the one of the guys in our room just got hired by Google. Yay, we talked to a real Google guy:)
Then we bought a cheap ass alarm clock from a pound shop because we didn't want to miss the flight in the morning on Friday.

May 10 :: Edinburgh - Day 3

Woke up at 9, had breakfast at hostel, confirmed flight info (Marcel will pick us up from the airport which is a blessing because i am not ready to pay for a cab in T.O. after this holiday).

We visited the Royal Scottish Museum where they had a Pixar exhibit of all kinds of sketches for many famous Pixar movies (Monsters Inc., Cars, A Bug's Life).
It was pretty good but the rest of the museum was interesting as well wich all the regular museum stuff on display. We even drove a formula one car simulator!

After the museum we went back to the hostel for a few minutes (or not, can't remember now) and headed for the Walk of Leith. Leith is probably because we went to Scotland in the first place. It is where the characters of Trainspotting lived. That book made me want to see Edinburgh and the places where Mark Renton, Spud, Begbie, Tommy, Dianne lived.
I tried to hitch hike my way there from Hungary before (see hitch hiking pics but didn't quite make it because my money got stolen in Mansfield, UK).

On the way there we walked past Princess Street which is an expensive shopping area and looked at Waverly Station and the Princess Mall as well.It started to rain so we had a drink at a nice pub. An extra cold Guiness for a change. Rachel got drunk drinking cola. (not coke, cola) Here she is smiling happily in the pub.

This is the beginning of leith street sigh which is a busy street leading to the Leith Docks.

On the way back we took a local bus (1 pound for a single ticket) then moved the car from the parking garage to the street because parking's free after 6:30pm.

I took a walk to see the Meadows - only because it's also mentioned in the book (Chapter: Strolling through The Meadows).

May 11 :: Coming Home

Didn't get much sleep because i didn't trust the cheap alarm clock we bought and our roommates very a bit noisy when they got home from the pub. Ended up getting up at 7, got breakfast tickets, had breakfast and checked out of the hostel.

We made it to Glasgow airport by 10:30 (didn't get lost too much). We dropped off the car, called them so they don't charge an extra day and got in the check in line. The security people checked out passports and - of course - started to ask me a bunch of questions because i didn't have a Canadian passport yet (just became a citizen 2 weeks ago). It turned out that the only two valid travel documents are a Canadian passport or a permanent resident card (or a visa). I had my citizenship card on me which does NOT entitle me to enter Canada. The security people called the Canadian High Commission in London and they confirmed that I cannot board the plane because i don't have any of the documents mentioned above. In a few more minutes the security people concluded that the only way i can get back to Canada is if I go down to London and get a temporary visa in person and get on anther plane. The ticked we had was not refundable and cannot be re-booked so it looked like it was lost and Rachel would fly home and I would have to go to London, etc. When we were waiting for the ticket agent to give us some more info the guys from London called back the security manager - they talked to me, asked a bunch of questions and in the end the officer said that he authorizes check in for me because after all it is a very silly law that a permanent resident has more rights than a citizen. Yes, it is a very silly law indeed. I was a lot more frustrated there but i'm just tired of blogging now so i didn't go into details.

Anyhow, we got home, the flight was ok - we even saw our house from the air and took some cool pictures of highways and the airport. Marcel picked us up and we all came home then I drove him home.

Daisy was sleeping when we got home and she was very surprised and super happy to see us. The cat was rather mad. Daisy was checking every half hour overnight to see if were are in the bedroom and even woke me up a couple of times to make sure that we're not just a few pillows stuffed under the blanket.

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