2001 - day 1 - flying to Scotland

2001 - day 1 - flying to Scotland

The first big flight - seven hours from Toronto to Glasgow. My daughter was almost three years old, my son six weeks old. The flight went...
very well, actually. My main memory of this trip is the image of my husband T with his arms resting on the tray table and my son sleeping there for hours. T's arms were very stiff later!

By the time the plane landed in Glasgow, it was the next morning - but it still felt like the middle of the night to us. There was a problem with our rental car - the insurance we had prepaid for back home wasn't good in Scotland. No problem - our travel agent was a family friend and I knew she would straighten it out for us.

We had a quick driving tour of Glasgow and settled in for the drive to Edinborough. The kids fell asleep, I started to fall asleep, but the challenges of driving standard on the left side of the road kept T alert. Still, we were happy to reach Edinborough at lunch time. A good pub lunch and we were ready to explore the museums and art galleries. As our flat rental wasn't ready until later, we needed to keep ourselves occupied until then. However, dimly lit exhibition halls made tired eyes more tired. I remember standing in front of an exhibit, nursing my son and thinking that I just wanted to lie down.

So out into the fresh air and we headed off to the small town of North Berwick, our home for the week. But not before some excitement in a very discretely marked cross walk. At home, cross walk have signs and overhead lights and lots of notice. This cross walk was only marked with paint on the road and as we barrelled down the street, out popped a pedestrian to cross the street. T braked FAST and got quite the dirty look.

North Berwick is a beautiful little town on the ocean with a lovely harbour. We were meeting our landlords to get our keys and they were on the lookout for us - a couple of very obvious and tired tourists with a little girl and new baby. They had just gotten off their sailboat after a perfect afternoon on the sea - ahhh! They walked us to the flat - the top floor of a restored rowhouse. Two bedrooms, a large living room, a fully equipped kitchen - renting a flat is definitely the way to go in Europe.

A quick stock-up at the local market, a bite of dinner and we were past ready for bed at 7 p.m. - our bodies still thought it was the middle of the night. Therefore...I couldn't sleep. My daughter couldn't sleep. T could sleep through a nuclear explosion.

That night turned into one of my fondest memories of the trip - watching my daughter play with eggcups and coasters while the late evening sun slowly set over Scotland.