Ireland to Scotland Transfer Adventure: Day 7

Well, this day did not get off the best start. I did get some movement in (PT, strength, and treadmill walking since this was the start of my skeletal reset week). We thought we could get breakfast at 6:45 AM, but no, they opened at 7:00 AM. I shoveled food in, ran upstairs to brush my teeth and zip my bags, and back downstairs we went. 

We thought we had time to catch the 7:38 AM AirBus to the airport, and we did, but when we got across the street (in the rain) at 7:31 AM, we saw it leaving. We attempted to wait for the 7:56 AM bus, but it never came, forcing us to take a taxi to the airport. Well, that was expensive!

Getting to security was pretty easy. Ireland no longer requires removal of items from bags, or dumping liquid. Cool! Well, not so cool. Both my husband and I had our bags run through the scanner twice. They swabbed my husband's playing cards. They did not like my crochet hook, cactus squishy, or half-filled Nalgene bottle. (They also put that through a special screening machine.) Thankfully, they let me keep everything. 

I tried to pray instead of grumbling. I tried to tell myself that this did not mean our Scotland leg of the trip was off to a bad start. It took some work to exercise this perspective, though.

And the troubles continued, not at the airport, but at the hotel. Our reservations were all messed up, something probably due to the amount of middle men between our travel agent and the hotel. Thankfully the welcome desk lady was very professional and helpful. The rooms left something to be desired, though.

The door had to be slammed to get it actually closed. There was no central air and heat, only a room heater/radiator thing, so the room was either cold or a little warm. Noise filtered through the window quite readily. We had no refrigerator. We did have a warm water kettle, though. That was nice! 

Uber did not work in our area, so that nixed our ideas of going to a local church service in the evening. We were actually quite far from any real towns, but rather in a business park. Maybe this worked for some tourists, but not very well for us. Hotel availability in both Ireland and Scotland was limited because we timed our visit right around the WestLife tour. That might have been part of the problem.

We decided to get a very late lunch/early dinner at the hotel at 4 PM. When we went downstairs, however, we found out that they did not open until 5 PM. At this point, I decided to cobble together snacks for dinner and call it a night. I just couldn't do it anymore.

As I sat in the cold hotel room, at the sparse hotel desk, munching my protein bars, the sun did burst through the window of an otherwise gloomy day. We caught our church's morning service via livestream (thank you, technology!), and then really turned in. Thus far, Scotland was a bust! I also was starting to not feel well.