Day 1: Scotland vacation 2007

Day 1 was actually quite short. The drive to the airport actually took longer than the flight itself (Frankfurt-Hahn airport is a bit of a misnomer, since it is as close to Frankfurt as Austin is to San Antonio). We ended up eating some crappy pizza from a stand in front of the airport because the weenie cart was unmanned; John had been to this airport once before and didn’t remember there being any places to eat inside, but there was a small cafe inside security, so that could have been an option if we had known about it.

Anyhoo, we flew on a small, cheap airline, so our boarding passes didn’t even have our names printed on them; they wrote them in by hand at the check-in desk. There also wasn’t any assigned seating, so Hannah ran out ahead of us onto the tarmac and managed to find us a row of seats before the plane filled up. We sat behind an American family from our town, and Hannah spent part of the trip chatting up the little girl, who was close to her age, in the seat in front of her.

I was made a bit nervous by the emergency instructions glued to the back of the seat—was the airline trying to tell us something? Constant vigilance! John pointed out that since it is an economy airline, gluing them down would be cheaper than replacing loose ones that go missing out of the seat pocket.

John spent part of the trip speculating on the proper pronunciations of our future destinations, Edinburgh and Penicuik: Pen-Quick? Pen-Kook? Wigglesworth?

Our flight arrived at 8:40 pm (and since Scotland is only an hour behind us, no jet lag!), and we were in our room at the Beechwood Guest House in Ayr by 9:35. See?



After a good night’s sleep, we were able to get up early, eat a hot breakfast, and get on the road to Edinburgh via Glasgow.