Yes, I wrote up Edinburgh Castle last November, and yes, that was the end of the tours to the Celtic Isles. But we still had to get home; and I found some notes about that trip in my travel diary that I’ve decided to share. First, I didn’t realize I had noted my pedometer reading for the day in Edinburgh – I walked 3.84 miles that day, over 10,000 steps! And did my feet feel it!
I also noted that we were scheduled to head for the airport very early – my initial notes say we had to get up at 4:30 AM to get our luggage ready for pickup! My notes after we got home said it wasn’t quite that bad – our bags had to be ready to go by 6 AM, and our bus left maybe 40 minutes later, giving us just time to gulp down some breakfast. And Jim thought we’d have to go through customs at Amsterdam; I note that he was wrong but I don’t have any other indication. I don’t really remember going through customs in Edinburgh but I guess we must have.
Our flight from Edinburgh to Amsterdam left at 9:10 AM and took 1 hour 35 minutes, about what it takes to fly from Oakland to Las Vegas; Amsterdam is a little closer to Edinburgh than Las Vegas to Oakland. But there’s a time change in there – British summer time is 1 hour behind the continent! We thought we’d arrive at 10:45, we landed at 11:45, and our flight to SFO was scheduled at 12:35! Fortunately, the Edinburgh flight came in early, at 11:25. Unfortunately, we landed to find that Amsterdam hadn’t assigned the SFO flight a gate yet, and didn’t announce it for some time! When they did announce a gate, it was a long brisk walk away.
We made the SFO plane. Business class makes long non-stop flights much more endurable but I still can’t sleep on planes. I figure the whole day ran to 22 hours. And then, when we went to get our checked luggage in SFO, it wasn’t there! The baggage desk said it was “delayed.” It was delivered to the house in a day or so, I recall, I didn’t write that down; but I was very glad I had a carry-on with all my meds in it.
