I started the day with a walk on the treadmill. I never did figure out how to do anything more than quickstart, so I walked three miles at six kilometers an hour and went back to the room. I got ready and didn't feel like breakfast, but knew I needed something, so chugged some water and ate an apple and a protein bar. Those protein bars were lifesavers, and since I ate so many of them on the trip, my outgoing baggage was much lighter than my incoming baggage (even with a few souvenirs added). Win!
We departed the hotel at 8:30 AM in a chartered van. We could have tried to take a cab to ScotRail, ScotRail to a tram, and the tram to the airport, but that would have taken hours, and been a lot of luggage hauling. The van was expensive (I don't even know how expensive, because my father-in-law generously booked it for us), but worth it. It meant a calmer start to the morning and much less energy expenditure to start a long day.
It took us a little while to get through security and we had about 40 minutes before our flight started boarding. This flight was not too bad. We got two seats together in row 43, and we had our carry on bags this time. (I would have rather checked, or gate-checked them, but they did not give us that option, and we did not want to spend more money.) The food was not what was on the menu, but it was decent. My only complaint was pasta salad with a pasta entree. I gave my husband the pasta salad and gladly ate the three cheese tortellini with tomato creme fraiche, peas, and leeks. Thank goodness for some vegetables. I tried to see where the tiramisu came from, and I think it was from Italy. I am generally not the biggest tiramisu fan, but I figured I could use the energy, because I hoped to try to get my body back closer to US time, and would therefore need to extend time between this "lunch" and dinner.
The airline served Mediterranean pizza twist and and cookie squares dessert shortly before landing, but I saved that for later. I did drink a cup of coffee at 5 PM Scotland time/12 PM Boston time. I hoped that would keep me awake for the afternoon and evening so I could try to sleep when we finally got back home to Arizona.
My cellphone SIM card turned back on once we touched down on US soil, and my phone blew up with something like 64 text messages. I had been getting iMessages on WiFi, but not text messages. In the future, I think it was worth the $20 or something we paid for my husband to have a e-SIM. We were trying to save money, but that is pocket change compared to what we spent on the trip as a whole, and would have been worth it to keep up with our group, text, etc.
We walked a long ways to get to passport check at Boston airport. They asked if I had agricultural products. I honestly admitted that I had one apple. I offered to throw it away, but they said, "No." Instead, they directed me to the next man, who wrote, "apple" on a sticky and sent both my husband and I to another checkpoint. Again, I offered to throw away the apple, but they gave me the, "You can't bring this in," lecture, told us we had to scan our bags again, and then finally took it from me. Sorry. But...I was honest. If I had forgotten the apple or lied about it, would they have caught it?
After that debacle, we had to recheck our bags to Phoenix, and then get from the A to the E terminal. After getting turned around, we finally got there, after walking 0.75 miles. I know because the auto-track on my watch turned on. At least this walk was above ground so that we could occasionally see Boston sights out the windows.
We got to our A gate about three hours before boarding, and I once again sat in the Boston airport and worked on writing vacation blog posts. I did this in 2024, but this time hoped our flight would not be delayed. We would have been traveling over 17 hours if the flight departed as planned. But alas, we faced delays, two hours to be exact. Two hours too long. I was drowsy and tried to sleep before drink service, woke up and couldn't sleep, so started listening to my audiobook, only to fall asleep and need to rewind the next day to catch what I missed.
Thankfully, our luggage came quickly, as did our Waymo. We arrived home shortly before midnight UK time. We unpacked. (All of our breakables survived. Thank you Lord!) We showered off the 20 hours of travel and tried to sleep. I got a little less than four hours, and my husband a little less than six. I felt very thankful we came back with a few days to readjust before heading back into the work week.
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