Friday, June 8, 2012

Day 932: Edinburgh via Colombo, Dubai and Glasgow!

After a looooong journey, we got to Edinburg today, our first proper stop this holiday.

I usually love long flights because you can eat, relax and watch a ton of movies. But because of the pregnancy this time around, I was a bit apprehensive, but flight was comfortable enough and the two of us managed to get three seats throughout, so I could rest out pretty well too!

The long journey involved an hour's stop in Colombo, during which we could stay on in the flight and watch it getting cleaned and ready for the passengers from there.

Then we had a 2 hour transit at Dubai. Several people had raved about Dubai airport before and many had commented that it was as good as the Singapore one but I respectfully disagree. To me, Dubai was overwhelmingly crowded, there was really nothing much to rave about in terms of the architecture or the services and the washrooms especially left much to be desired. It doesn't match up to the Singapore airport by a long way! But we did see the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, from the flight and that was fascinating!
After another flight from Dubai, we finally got to Glasgow. Glasgow was just meant to be a short stop for us and we had planned to stay at Edinburgh for the night. At the airport, there was some confusion because the Europcar lady refused to let us take the reserved car on the hubby's Indian driver's license! Apparently it wasn't ample proof enough that the man could drive! It was really the silliest thing because he has driven all over Europe, US and ANZ on that license.

As he was figuring that mess out, I stood outside the terminal and enjoyed the beautiful weather in Glasgow. It was about 12 degrees, cloudy and with a gentle breeze. Perfect, really!

Once the hubby managed to rent a car from Enterprise (he gave up on Europcar), we first refreshed ourselves with a Starbucks chai latte (yay) and then set off for Edinburgh. Most of what we saw of Glasgow was only enroute to Edinburgh, but whatever I saw, I liked!

In little more than an hour later, we arrived at Edinburgh, accompanied by the mother of all rains. In that pouring rain, we drove up and down a super busy street in search of our bed & breakfast for the night. It was rather hard to find, and we ended up taking quite a few detours, but was rewarded with sights of the cutest residential colonies and even a hospital that seemed right to be out of a fictitious, super lovable high school set from a Bollywood film!

After a while, we did manage to find the B&B we were in search of, only to realize there was some confusion in the bookings and our actual reservation is in some other part of the town! Cold, wet, sleep deprived and the possibility of a warm, cosy bed looking further out of reach.

The trip wasn't beginning on a high note for sure.

Anyway, we set out in search of the correct B&B and thankfully, this one was much easier to find! Called Acelyn's B&B, it was a beautiful house on the much quieter Queensferry Road and our room was so cosy and comfortable! As soon as I got in there I declared that I have no energy to get out of the room anymore and that dinner will have to come to me. So the hubby went out again and bought us some McDonalds, while I took a hot shower and felt sufficiently refreshed and cheered up.

Post dinner, we hit the bed early for that much needed sleep even as the daylight outside continued to be strong until about 10pm.

The holiday begins!

68 more to go.

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