Scotland - Day 1

Day 18 - Scotland - Day 1 (September 16)

I woke up about 4:00 AM and had a shower before Tina got up. At 4:15 AM we got our wake up call and called Shanda to let them know it was get up time. By 4:45 AM we had all our bags downstairs and closed out our account with the hotel. At 5:00 AM our bags were put in the taxi and we left for the airport. We got to the airport and saw Shanda and Denise to their departure point. They had about a 3 hour wait before their flight.

With the girls safely squared away, Tina and I headed for the other terminal to check in with British Airways. We got to the check-in counter nd nobody was there. Fortunately there was a small café next to it so we had breakfast and coffee. After checking our travel documents, Tina noticed that our flight to London was being handled by Malev Airlines, so we walked over to their check-in counter and got our boarding passes for the two hour flight to Gatwick.

The flight was uneventful and since our bags were checked through to Glasgow we went through UK passport control, got our new boarding passes, went through security and out to our gate where we only had a half hour wait before being able to board. Gatwick to Glasgow was only about 90 minutes, so we went up and down arriving in Glasgow about 1:00 PM. We quickly went through customs retrieved our bags and found our way to the car rental desk where we got our rental.

From there we pulled our bags through the airport, across the main road through Gatwick and over to the rental car park where we got the keys to our car, a new Pugeot SUV (mini suv) with a diesel and stick shift. What fun!! So it was back to the rental desk in the airport to see if we could get an automatic as requested - no luck - so we decided to give it a whirl. Oh Yeah… Left hand shift, right hand drive on the left (wrong) side of the road, in a strange country with minimal directions and no good map… and narrow roads with lots of roundabouts. With Tina navigating we actually made it out of the airport and onto the A82 headed for Alexandria. One good thing, we were enjoying another beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the high 60’s.

Talk about a baptism by fire, we got lucky and only made one wrong turn out of a roundabout and that was easily corrected.

Eventually we made it out to Bonhill and pulled off the road to call our B&B for directions. Ooooopps - Tina’s cell phone doesn’t work. Once again we had a piece of good luck, there was another car parked a few feet away so Tina asked the driver for directions. He said, “Follow me”, and off we went! Turns out we were only about a half mile (and 5 or 6 turns) from our B&B. We thanked him for his help, parked around the corner and walked back to our lodgings to check in. The Albannach B&B is a quaint little two story house with four rooms to let, a dining room, nice backyard and very friendly hosts, Jim and Margaret. They welcomed us to their home, gave us our key, showed us around and helped get our bags upstairs to our room, a little garret bedroom with bath.

After settling in, we called Aunt Elsa on our innkeepers phone but she was out. So Tina sent me to the store for some snacks then we went for a walk around the town of West Bonhill. When we got back, Aunt Elsa had returned our call so we tried to call her back, again no answer. So we googled directions to her home and it turns out to be only about a mile away. After some more learning opportunities we made it to Elsa’s and she met us at her gate.

We got to visit for a couple of hours before returning to our lodging, I didn’t want to try and drive back in the dark. Once we got back there our hosts suggested we drive into Balloch for dinner, an easy drive, just go north on Main Street for about three miles, go straight through the first roundabout, then take the third exit at the second roundabout and you’re in Balloch. She was right, it was easy to get there and we finally found a place to have dinner, “Tulley Inn” where I had a rib eye steak with steak fries and Tina had a big cheeseburger. Everything was great, but we were definitely running on empty by the time we got back to our room where we watched a little TV then turned out the lights. Here is a link to the area we are in:

http://www.loch-lomond.net/villages/alexandria/vale_of_leven.html

To see our photos click on the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mjdolanski