Scotland: Getting There...

We awoke early this morning and spent a couple of hours doing some last-minute cleaning.  But we weren’t in a hurry. Packing was done last night and I have spent the last week double and triple-checking that we have extra copies of all our reservations, identification cards, and other documents deemed necessary in the event of muggles mugging, kidnap, etc.

The drive through Memphis went better than it did for a trip to New Orleans last year (wherein I narrowly escaped a fiery death by school-bus-attack). At the long-term parking lot everything began smoothly. As soon as we found a convenient parking spot, a shuttle pulled up next to our car to promptly take us to the airport. We locked the car, hefted our bags into the luggage rack, and sat down, reveling in the easy start to our vacation. As I looked at Hans with an encouraging smile, his eyes froze, a look of horror spreading across his face. His right hand was locked in his pants pocket, searching for something that was not there.

“My wallet.”

As he began the inevitable frantic dance of checking every pocket and digging into his backpack, I shot to my feet and exclaimed to the driver that we had to go back to the car. She turned the bus around and dropped us off and said that she’d return after picking up a couple other people. Hans found his wallet between the passenger-side seat and door, as it had fallen out of his pocket. I was very glad he realized it was missing before we got to the airport. After that little hiccup we checked our bags and went through security (with the friendliest TSA people I’ve ever encountered). I bought $20 worth of travel magazines for our transatlantic flight, one with an article bearing the comforting title: “This year; 500 people have died in airline accidents. Here’s how to avoid being the next.”

Our flight to London took off about an hour late but it made the layover before our flight to Edinburgh shorter. As we made our approach to the British Isles we saw another passenger jet somewhat below ours, leaving a bright contrail in the morning sunlight.

Over the next couple of weeks we are going to cover a lot of Scotland.  Stay tuned!