New Beginnings

My dad and I set forth on our journey from Santa Barbara at around 3:00 in the afternoon on Wednesday, September 5th. Check-in went smoothly, and the man at the counter even waived the fee for one of our bags. It was very difficult to say goodbye to my mom and Bridget, we stood for a long time in the courtyard near the The Good Time Clock IV talking and crying tears of joy and sorrow.

Our first flight from Santa Barbara to LA went smoothly and had pretty views of the Pacific. In LA, we waited four hours, which actually passed rather quickly, and then took off on our long flight to London. The flight was luckily uneventful. I spent my time watching Dark Shadows and the Office, reading, doing crosswords in my handy-dandy Sherlock Holmes pocket puzzle book, and playing old gameboy games. I only got about two-and-a-half hours of sleep (I can't sleep on airplanes, and sleeping pills make me nauseous). My dad got a bit more sleep than I did, but still not very much.

When we landed in London, we had just a short wait for our flight to Edinburgh. We had separate seating on that flight- I sat near an elderly Scottish couple who told me they lived near St. Andrews. The landing was a bit bumpy, as it was raining when we arrived. A few locals on the plane joked that it was a perfect welcome to Scotland.

Me with all our baggage in the Edinburgh airport

We were able to find all our baggage on the carousel, and were thrilled it made it the whole way. My dad and I were very "spun" by that point, so couldn't wait to be almost at our final destination. We rented a car, loaded in all the luggage, and drove off. I was proud of my dad for adapting to driving on the left when he was so sleepy.

We drove for an hour, across the Firth of Forth bridge and into Fife. I was really excited to see the peaceful rolling hills, hay bales, and scattered castle ruins of the countryside. We arrived just in time for sunset and the clearing of the rain storm. The town looked magnificent from far away and even better up close. We found our apartment very easily, and soon settled in to take showers and change clothes to go out to dinner.

We walked around for a little while, then decided on eating at the Mitchell Deli for a fun first meal in Scotland. I had some excellent chips with parmesan and my dad had soup with seeded bread. After that we went back to our apartment to sleep.

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