Crossing the Pond

On August 31, I had everything packed and ready to go. I had my suitcases packed with everything I own (except for my record player that my parents said I couldn't bring) and we headed for the airport. We checked in and actually upgraded to first class and didn't have to carry any of our luggage except for a backpack and a laptop bag each. My mom and I got to the gate in plenty of time and everything seemed to be going pretty well until we heard that our plane was going to be about 30 minutes late because of a storm in Philly. We only had a two and a half hour layover, so we knew we'd have to rush when we got to Philly. It turns out the plane also hit a bird, so the mechanics needed to come inspect the plane, but since it was Labor Day weekend, they had to be called in. Eventually we did take off, but when we got close to Philly, the storm kept us from landing and we had to circle the city for a while. When we finally landed, we had 10 minutes before our plane was supposed to take off. We sat on the tarmac until past our take-off time, but the flight attendant said we should run to see if the plane had been delayed. It was allegedly not too far of a walk, so we ran out of the gate across 2 terminals to the other end of the airport. It turns out it's at least half a mile between the two gates. We found airport staff with a golf cart who drove us half way there after we couldn't run anymore. When we got to the gate, the plane had already left. We went to the Special Services desk to try to get on the flight to Dublin we heard about. We had 10 minutes again until it left. We got last minute tickets, but by the time I ran to the gate, the plane was gone. We went back to Special Services, but the line was 30 people long, so we went to the gate where a flight to London was taking off to see if we could get on. No luck, it was a full flight. That was the last flight to Europe for the night.

It turned out, however, that a man working at the desk was able to book us a flight for the next afternoon through Frankfurt, get us a room in a hotel that US Airways was paying for, and get us a small toiletries kit (because our carry-ons had gotten checked in North Carolina). We made it to the hotel without any food since lunch that day. When we woke up, there was not continental breakfast, so we just stayed in the room making arrangements to move our airbnb reservations and all other plans over one day. We did end up having lunch with some family friends in Philadelphia, which was so nice. We hadn't had a meal since lunch the day before, so it was a particularly amazing meal.

After lunch, we went back to the airport and checked  in. We waited at the gate and of course the flight was delayed for some unknown reason. We did finally board and we took off about 5 pm. After the drink and dinner service, I tried to sleep. I got an hour or two of sleep, but just listened to music the rest of the flight.

We landed in Frankfurt at 6 am local time (1 am on my body clock). Then we had a 5-hour layover. We sat with a couple who had also been trapped in Philly the night before on their way to Edinburgh. After the seemingly endless layover, we did get on the plane, which was late. I got another 30 minutes to an hour of sleep, but then we landed in Edinburgh. Finally!

A friend of my grandfather's picked us up from the airport and took us to St. Cuthbert's, where he works. He showed us around a bit and let us store all my huge suitcases in his office so we could just travel with our carry-ons. He then took us to the train station. We quickly bought a UK phone, picked up dinner from the refrigerated section in a Mark & Spencer's, and then got on a train to Inverness. It was a relief to finally be on our way to doing something fun, though it was still 4 more hours of traveling. We finally made it to the airbnb place at about 8:30 pm. We Skyped my dad and sister, but went to bed as soon as we could. A day and a half late, we had finally made it to Scotland!