20K and a Year Away

I am sitting in Denton, Texas right now contemplating the future. I am desperately thinking of ways to extend my travels, but, alas, I signed the paper that says I will be at work Monday. What was I thinking?!?

Since the last entry, I have spent two weeks in Omak, been to Scotland, Iceland, and driven from Vancouver, Washington to here. It has been a whirlwind of activity!

After we got back to the US, Axel and I went to hang out with Meaghan and her family for two weeks – thanks, Meaghan! It is always great to see the boys and Axel was very happy to get to have some fun time with them. As an added bonus, one of my brothers showed up, too. The two weeks went by really fast for us. We got all our stuff packed again and headed out on May 14, which just happens to be my birthday, so happy birthday to me!

Our trip was going to be fast, so we didn’t do a lot of tour planning. We saw where we were going, decided on some things we wanted to see, and left. Axel didn’t really decide which things to see. He just assumed he would see some things. Ha! We were going to meet Lawrence in Glasgow, Scotland. He was able to go a few days earlier and was going to catch up with us.

When we got there, it was very different than when we arrived in Korea. We could read all the signs and understand everything – well, most everything – that people were saying to us. It was a breeze going through passport control and talking with the agents. We zoomed right through and the real adventure began!

We jumped on the bus to town. It was an express trip with a few stops once we got into town. It was our first experience on an actual double-decker bus! This one was purple, but we won’t quibble. Lawrence met us at the stop and we walked to our hotel. I had to stop at a phone store and get a SIM card to be able to use my phone and stopped at an ATM to get a little cash, just in case.

We got to our hotel and dropped our stuff off. It was a nice room with all the usual stuff. We did a quick look around and then headed out to town to see where we were. We stayed right downtown in Glasgow, near the Queen Station train station. We were able to walk all over the place from there, catch the train to Edinburgh, and catch the bus to the Laundry Hut (423 Gallowgate, Glasgow G40 2EA, United Kingdom). (Yes, that is a blatant plug, but she did an excellent job and it was cheap!)

Glasgow was very interesting. We only had 4 days there, so we crammed as much as we could into each one. We also spent one day in Edinburgh to see the castle and surrounding area. We walked about 7 thousand miles, I think, give or take.

The train ride back from Edinburgh is what we have all decided to refer to as the Scottish trauma. We caught the train to Edinburgh in the morning – I was able to use the “kid for a quid” discount and only paid one pound for Axel’s ticket. Great deal! Especially considering how expensive everything was when compared to Panama and South Korea. A LOT more expensive.

Anyway, back to the trauma. Our morning train ride was smooth and roomy. We had a table seat to ourselves and there were not a ton of people around us. We just chatted and looked at the scenery. It is only about 50 minutes, a quick trip.

We arrived and went straight to the castle. You have to pick a time to enter when you buy your tickets online, so we had to go there first. We made it in plenty of time and spent a while roaming around. This is not a big place. We were able to see everything pretty quickly, then spent the rest of the day wandering the city. It was very cool.

The trip back to Glasgow was a little less cool, however. We had train tickets for 5 pm. We arrived with plenty of time to spare, waited around for the platform to open, then boarded our train. We had nice seats with a table, again, and sat back to enjoy our trip back. The train people had a little something else in mind for us, though, and announced the train had been cancelled – and the next one was being cancelled, too. The only option was to go very quickly with the throng of passengers to the only train that was heading to Glasgow for the next several hours. We made it just in time and piled on like the other 500 people. There was standing room only and the three of us hovered by the door – trying not to be sardines.

There were people coughing, babies crying, and a group of people drinking beer and talking about the upcoming soccer game. It was hot and stuffy and we kept cracking Covid jokes because if we were going to catch it, it would be on that train! We opened the doors at every stop – of which there were many – to try to clear the air until the next stop. We just kept not looking at anyone and tried to understand what the drinking soccer crowd was saying. I am not sure all of that was English. We were definitely going to need to do a nose swab after this ride.

We were all traumatized. We will have flashbacks to that train ride for the rest of our lives. The waiting area was great, though.