Saturday Feb. 25, 2012

So..I apologize that it has taken me an entire week to post but we did not have the most reliable internet throughout the first part of our journey.  I am going to break the days down for everyone.

February 25, 2012
We arrived at London Heathrow airport at approximately 11:30am on Saturday Feb. 25, 2012 after a fairly uneventful flight over the pond from Chicago.  Mom struggled to sleep but in true travelers fashion, I had no problem contorting myself into a little ball and sleeping for the majority of the 7 hour flight.  After we landed we headed down to customs where Mom (being super excited!!!) got her passport stamped for the very first time!!  I remember getting my passport stamped for the first time 8 years ago when traveling to Italy to study abroad (thank you Mom & Dad!!).  It is an exhilarating feeling to leave the country you are from and start exploring places you, up until that point, have only read about.  After completing our trip through customs, we headed down to the baggage claim and collected our backpacks, which have loving become our extra travelers (more on this to come).  From baggage claim we headed down to catch the Heathrow Express, a high speed train that took us from Heathrow to Paddington in 15 min. (much easier that attempting to navigate the tube with our backpacks).  This was another first for Mom, her first train ride!!!

After arriving at Paddington station, we headed down the stairs to the tube station to attempt to figure out what train we needed to take to get to Kings Cross Station.  After staring at the map for about 10 minutes, we decided that we would just take a taxi (which proved to be a great choice).  We then huffed our backpacks back up the stairs about out to the taxi stand and hailed a taxi.  Our cabbie was fabulous, but English through and through.  He wondered why we were leaving England so quickly after arriving and began playfully badgering us about going up to Scotland when there was nothing to see up there but Scots.  We reassured him that we would be back to London in week and that we would be sure to enjoy England as well as Scotland.

We arrived at Kings Cross and promptly headed to the ticket counter to get our Rail Passes validated.  We then wondered off, found some chairs and began our 2 hour wait until the 3pm train to Edinburgh.  We grabbed some coffees and waited.  Mom and I determined that the reason Europeans are in so much better shape than Americans is because the walk everywhere and are constantly running to catch the train.  After about 1.5 hours we wandered back inside the terminal to watch the board to see what platform we would be leaving from.  Man, that was crazy!!!  They announce the platform you will be leaving from approximately 10 minutes before your train is scheduled to leave, if you are not ready you will be left behind!!!  Hence, why everyone was running to their trains!!!

When we made it down to our platform we attempted to get on the train but soon realized that all of the seats in the car that we had gotten on were reserved, forcing us to attempt to get all of luggage back off the train and find a car that had seats available.  Unfortunately, that took precious time that we apparently did not have.  Luckily, we found a car with seats available, we ditched our bags in the luggage compartment and took our seats. Whew!!!

Shortly after pulling away from the station, the rowdiness on the train began.  Unknown by us, the train was full of Frenchmen heading up to Edinburgh for the 6 Nations Rugby match against Scotland.  The Frenchmen that had filled our car opened bottle after bottle of wine (and did not share with us, might I add) and played cards for the entire 4.5 hours.

Our train arrived to Edinburgh Waverly station ontime but by this point I had already been traveling for 36 hours (Miami-Chicago-London-Edinburgh).  Both Mom and I were exhausted but we managed to grab our backpacks and walk down the road to the Old Waverly Hotel (our Edinburgh home).  We got ourselves checked in, headed up to the room, dropped our bags and stepped out to Rose St. to find a pub to grab some food before passing out from exhaustion.  We wandered up and down Rose St. only to find that the pub we chose had already stopped serving food.  We got up to leave and Mom was promptly grabbed by a Scotsman (in a kilt no less) and started dancing.  She danced for only a few minutes (until the song was done) and out we headed to find some food.  We ended up at The Filling Station (the UK equivalent to Applebees).  We got seated, ordered our drinks and food and then promptly received a shower (not the kind we needed or liked).  The waiter came over with the drinks and spilled them all over the table, breaking glasses and dousing Mom in strawberry cider (thus eliminating one pair of jeans for Mom on the first day of our 2 week trip).  After enjoying our food, we received the check (which we were a little disappointed in, the waiter that dropped the drinks on us was the manager and did not comp us the one that he spilled on Mom).  From there we headed back to hotel and called a night.