Outnumbered & Abroad; Getting to Edinburgh (Part 22)
Scotland (Wednesday, October 3, 2018 - Day #9) - Waking, I could feel every ache everywhere. It’s these extra fir beds, I swear! I feel that no one else slept well either and we were all being retty grumpy as a result. The Johnson’s were taking extra long to get going so I left the room with Nicole to turn in our key and get the car ready. The hostel was super small so I figured the extra room would help them get packed.
Waiting int he car, braving the horde of mosquitos waiting to attack us, I used my nifty mosquito repellant bracelets to come at them like Wonder Woman trying to save the world from the bad guys. At about the same time that I decided to up and get them, the Johnson’s showed up.
The first thing that I noticed was that Warren Clayton was aggravated and aggravated with me. He came up to me and thrust a white plastic bag into my hands.
“Pump-kin Patch Theor-ry,” he said, quoting me and enunciating every syllable.
“Huh?” I asked, genuinely confused.
He thrust the plastic bag at me again, I glanced at it.
“That’s not mine,” I said with a smile, looking up at him as I realized what happened.
“It’s not?” He asked, taken aback, and very confused.
I cautiously peeped into the full bag to see the strangest conglomerate of used groceries Then it hit me - the bag the little old lady had put outside her door!
“It was in the room,” Warren Clayton said, even more confused.
I couldn’t help but shudder. Had we kept a ghosts STUFF in our room all night? I hadn’t seen it in the hallway now that I came to think about it when I went to use the restroom in the morning. Ugh. Well, ghost or poltergeist, ther was nothing that we could do about it now. Points to them!
“Well just throw it away,” Nicole snapped, now annoyed at me for holding everything up.
Looking around, I saw some dumpsters just a ways down the road. Leaving the rest to get packed, I hurried over.
“DON’T TOUCH MY BIN!” A voice snapped in a harsh male Scottish accent at me from parked construction van.
“Sorry, “I muttered, turning away as I tried to get my heart beat under control. I had not idea where to put this bag of trash. Getting back to the car, I was even more annoyed because they were all packed in, staring at me with big linking eyes, just like baby mice when you flip off the grain lid and catch them by surprise.
I explained that I was going to have to take it back up to the hostel, a few flight of stairs and across the road. I felt like the were all trying to keep a straight face so that I wouldn’t make one of them do it. It wasn’t my trash for Pete’s sake but now it was my problem. I didn’t even bring it down to the car! Pumpkin patch theory my are!
I couldn’t even find one of the “bins” at the hostel and I ended up leaving it next to the trash can in the first floor bathroom of all places. That was definitely an adventure I could have passed on!
We then spent a good amount of time in the car on our way tot he next stop. A big fan, I requested that we stop at Loch Ness because I wanted something Nessie related. I was absolutely let down because there was nothing in the two gift shops that we stopped at. The one item I really wanted was a Jurassic Park themed Loch Ness tee that was only in infant sizes. True to UK hospitality, when I asked the lady, she had no idea if there was other sizes and made a big ordeal out of going to look without actually looking. I wonder what British people think when they have US customer service - we are absolutely on another level.
We stopped at the busy town of Inverness for lunch and a chance to stretch our legs. I surprised myself by ordering a pizza at the Moroccan restaurant that we ghpapend up on first. It was, hands down, the worst pizza i have ever eaten and I legitimately thought I was going to gag and throw up WHILE I was eating it, which I don’t think has ever happened to me before. Nicole got pasta and it was just as bad. Warren Clayton and Randi had similar complaints but I didn’t have the stomach to even try their food I felt so sick from mine. Everyone is definitely feeling under the weather so we should probably lay off sharing anyway. All of us were convinced that the food was intentionally that bad. The owner and server had asked us when we had seated what part of the US we were from. When we responded, “Oregon” they looked at us blankly. “Above California,” Nicole offered.
“Oh, I hate Americans,” he said emphatically, “especially Californians. They come here a lot.”
I am not sure how one could intentionally make their food taste so bad, but man, oh man, it was awful.
A few minutes left on the parking meter and all of us feeling just sick enough that we weren’t quite inclined to be confined in the car for a few more hours of windy roads, we decided to walk the streets for fresh air. I am so thankful that we did because guess what I found?! The Loch Ness Monster x Jurassic Park graphic in the form of a sweatshirt! I, of course, had to buy one and so did Nicole. Unfortunately, there was only one black, so Nicole took the larger sized green one.
It was over one hundred miles to ur next checkpoint. Throughout the course of that one hundred miles, ther was zero to no radio reception. Randi and I took turns reading Scottish fairy tales to each other from my book to pass the miles away. I absolutely loved listening to Randi because, as an accomplished cowboy poet, she speaks so elegantly and tells a story so well! Our very own version of audible seemed so fitting as we drove our way through the cold, blustery, and rainy countryside of Scotland.
Random, but one of the things hat that been nothing me the most is my nails. They weren’t old enough to be done before I left and I had no way of “saving” them. I am so self-conscious about them and I can’t even point. I can’t believe how absolutely vain I have gotten!
Nearing civilization, I thought we would for sure be close to some radio service.A news channel labeled “Heartland” popped up and, excited, I turned the volume up assuming it could be our first country music channel. The Johnson’s were slumbering in the back seat and didn’t get to witness my excitement to stumble upon a Scottish talk show! When they woke up a half hour later, Randi’s first comment was, “Oh radio.”
“I know, “I said, reaching for the dial. “I saw this new ‘Heartland’ Channel and thought for sure it would be country.. at the same time Kid Rocks Sweet Home Albama poured over the speakers.” Nicole and I couldn’t help but bust a quick gut laughing before joining in on car karaoke. And we rocked out to a twist on an American classic as we drove past the location of the Highland games that had wrapped up just a week before we had gotten there. It’s such a bummer that we missed it!
After what felt like forever, we finally made it to Edinburgh. Our hotel was a little harder to find, but not as hard as the parking, which we were more than accustomed too. Nicole was in a mood, but I really liked chatting with the hotel front staff having worked in that position before, I found it fu to hear some of their stories. More than that, I think the social part of me was hungering for social interaction outside of the group. These were the first customer service representatives we have met that will actually talk to us!
In chatting with them, we had to laugh about how the Johnson’s lucked out with the best room every time. Then they had an upgrade on their room where we did not. “No, I’m not paying for that,” Nicole said sulkily.
Once we got the rooms checked into, we went back to the Johnson’s who were watching the car that we had parked in a permit spot to get it moved. Since we were going to be in this location for two nights, Nicole and I decided to empty all of our stuff to see if, when we repacked, if we needed another bag. Saying goodbye to the Johnson’s on the elevator, I couldn’t help but laugh when we opened to the door to our hotel room … to see that it most definitely was being lived in. Talk about the tradition of the Johnson’s getting the good rooms!
Remembering their room number, I had us drop our extra bags off with them before heading back down to the lobby.
“We talked about this,” Nicole said, slapping the key down. I know that she had been trying to be funny and she would have been, if it wasn’t for the fact that she looked like she was going to straight murder someone.
We got our room changed no problem and went to the small corner coffee place for a late dinner. IN some sort of street food/fast food place, little min pizzas and handheld pies with chips (aka fries) we were on our way. Nicole was still being grumpy, blaming it on driving the whole tim which I felt was an adequate excuse. I was more than willing to drive, in fact semi-chomping at the bit to get behind the wheel of our sweet little BMW. The Johnson’s got “brown sauce” with their chips which as actually, surprisingly, pretty good.
Probably the most comical part of it was when they asked them if they wanted brown sauce, Warren Clayton asked them what it was. They, of course, couldn’t describe it. He then asked what it tasted like and they were even more at a loss. For those of you at home, brown sauce is like Red Robin campfire sauce; a smoky ketchup meets BBQ sauce.