Day One

After sitting on the tarmac for 2 hours in Newark, our flight was fairly smooth, although they left the lights on for the first 3 hours while trying to sell us duty-free perfume, and after that, the TVs were left on, so, we didn’t really sleep at all on it. Since we took off so late, we had about 30 minutes when we landed in Birmingham to go through customs and run to, of course, the opposite end of the airport. We made it fine, and our second flight was just 40 minutes.

Landing in Glasgow, we of course discovered that our luggage did not make the connection. We got our car (a Vauxhall, because we got a free upgrade), and drove around downtown Glasgow, although we could never find any parking, so we left the city for Renfrewshire, just outside of town near the airport. Here’s the town hall.

We went back to airport at 3, and our luggage did make the next flight, so we gathered it up and headed towards the coast, through Trossachs National Park. It was a beautiful drive, and driving on the left is not too difficult. We stopped a few times along the way for coffee (since we hadn’t slept), and discovered that the Scottish people are just incredibly friendly! Everyone asked all about us, even in Renfrewshire, and were very helpful in every way possible.

We arrived at Traguhaine at about 7, and Fiona, our hostess, told us about a couple of restaurants in town that serve dinner (a town of 14, mind you—the red building in this view from our room is one). She said it was about a 30 minute walk, so, after showers, we started to head over. We got probably ½ a mile and seemed no closer, so I talked Amy into getting our car, for which we were grateful—it was over 2 miles to get there, and over some incredibly steep hills!

We had a lovely dinner and met the owners, who were themselves the nicest folk (2 of the 14 residents), looked at a Celtic cross there (posted by the McDougalls—ancestors of the McDowells), and came back to our room to enjoy the sunset at 10:00! In fact, it never got dark all night because of the northern latitude.