Between Christmas and New Years, Russ and I decided to attend a teachers’ conference hosted by the travel company we use when we take groups to Europe. We have gone on three of these in the past, once to Dublin, Ireland; once to London, England; and once, over Martin Luther King weekend, to Puerto Rico. The conferences are held each year in a different city (the one we hated to miss would have taken us to see Machu Picchu in Peru, but that year we just couldn’t get away). Our favorite of the three trips was the one to Puerto Rico, where, in addition to sight seeing, we spent lots of time on the beach enjoying the warm weather while our family up here was dealing with snow! Dublin and London were not quite as nice, since, while the British Isles enjoy somewhat milder weather in the winter because of the ocean currents, winter is still winter and in Dublin especially is was decidedly cold.
But this year’s conference was being held in Edinburgh, (pronounce correctly as Edinboro) Scotland, and while we knew it would be cold, we had been in Edinburgh years ago with friends of ours and quite liked it. Besides, with my knee replacement surgery and Russ’ cochlear implant and then his torn meniscus, we hadn’t had a vacation at all in 2018. It seemed like a good idea. Instead, it turned into a serious of minor disasters that happened one after another with annoying regularity.
We were scheduled to fly out of Indianapolis on December 26 and fly home on December 30. I made lists of what we needed to pack since we always seem to forget a belt or a toothbrush, and we checked things off. We made sure we had everything for Russ’ cochlear implant: plenty of batteries, battery charger, current convertor, and cords for his iPad, my Kindle and our phones. I phoned to arrange for a short international phone plan. I was sure I had thought of everything. But of course, I hadn’t.
It was Christmas and in the flurry of getting ready for special music at church, buying gifts, mailing gifts to those we wouldn’t see because of our trip, celebrating after our Christmas Eve service with one of the boys and his family, and then having a quiet Christmas dinner the next day, I never remembered to call the bank or our credit card companies to tell them we were going overseas.
Generally, this would not be a problem. This year, it was.
Things began to go wrong almost at once. On Christmas Eve, one of our older cats had to be put to sleep, putting all of us in a rather sad mood. Then, after our Christmas Eve service at church, Russ took Stacy into the bedroom to show him something and managed to drop a heavy safe. As it fell, the cover, which had not been locked, popped open catching Russ’ left index finger and digging a trough in it. The cut was about half an inch long and a quarter inch wide. I bandaged it, but within minutes it had bled through and I had to bandage it again. It still bled through. Russ ended up eating supper and exchanging gifts with a paper towel wrapped around his finger to try to stem the flow of blood. When everyone left for the night, it was still bleeding so we went to the emergency room where they had to cauterize it. They put a fancy gauze bandage on it, but when Russ took off his coat, the bandage flew off as well, so back to the hospital we went. We finally got to bed about midnight.
On the day after Christmas, we headed for Indianapolis to leave our car at the Hilton and take a shuttle to the airport. Only after we had arrived did we realize that Russ had left his leather gloves in the car at the Hilton hotel, and we had to buy new ones at Brooks Brothers in the airport. A 25% off sale made them cost only a leg instead of an arm and a leg, but although they were cheaper than anything we could have gotten in London (the next place we would have had time to shop), they cost considerably more than the ones we buy from Wilson’s at the Outlet Mall in Tuscola! We joke they are gold lined and sewed with silver thread!
At the airport, they could only print boarding passes for our Delta flight to JFK, not our Virgin Atlantic flight to Heathrow in London or our Flybe flight to Edinburgh. What? You’ve never heard of Flybe? We hadn’t either, so Russ googled them and found out that they have been in business for twenty years, recently bought a number of new jets, and were named the top regional airline in Europe. We were relieved! Not a 20 seat prop plane!
Then, Russ’ boarding pass didn’t say “Pre-check” so he had to go to the other line where, once they scanned his passport they told him he had pre-check and sent him back to my line! I warned them I had had both knees replaced with doctor-signed cards to prove it and would probably set off the buzzer, but they didn’t want to see my cards and made me go through anyway. And then, when it buzzed, I had to go through the full body scanner, then be patted down, wanded, and have my hands swabbed for explosive residue. “But I have Global Entry, pre-check. I’m a trusted traveler! You can see the red lines across my knees indicating the metal!” I wanted to shout. But one does not tick off a TSA officer if one is smart, so I smiled and submitted.
At JFK we had only an hour to make our next flight so we raced through the halls (as quickly as one can race at our ages) and made it finally to the bus that would take us from the domestic to the international terminals. We reached the gate as the last few passengers were being boarded, then had to wait while they printed our missing boarding passes.
Russ claims Virgin Atlantic has the best looking flight attendants of any airline he has ridden on, but that didn’t make up for the normal, horrible food. We had bulkhead seats with plenty of leg room and a good view through the gap in the curtain of the wonderful looking dinner that was being served to business class just a few feet ahead of us. I wanted to wrestle one little boy for his dinner, but Russ held me back.
Like all transatlantic flights, this six-hour flight was punctuated with snacks, drinks, dinner, and breakfast. There was little time for sleeping. Bleary-eyed and groggy we disembarked at 2 A.M. Illinois time, and swept up in the crowd of hurrying passengers, were carried along at a fast clip through corridor after corridor towards the immigration desks. I had chosen to wear some comfortable slip on shoes that are made in southern Austria. They are wool and have a nice-looking tread on the sole, but the material that the sole is made from tends to be a little on the slick side. You can, of course, see what is coming. We rushed around some metal posts and made a hard right turn in order to get on an escalator. I’m not sure if my carry-on got caught on one of the poles or if the sole of my shoe just slid on the polished floor, but suddenly I was sitting on the floor on my butt facing a group of astonished and concerned tourists. As soon as I had assured them that I was okay, a dozen hands lifted me to my feet. Russ had been ahead of me and hadn’t realize I had slipped until I was back on my feet. Embarrassed I thanked them and hurried on to the escalator and stepped up with my right foot, immediately catching the tread of my slip-on shoe on the saw-toothed edge of a step. Stunned, I watched as my right foot slid right out of the shoe, sending me sliding back into space. With my purse, coat and carry-on bag, I couldn’t get a good enough grip on the escalator to pull myself upright. “Look out, there she goes again!” woman behind me cried out, and the man behind me gently pushed me upright. “I’ll stay behind you the rest of the way up,” he said. I thanked him, too mortified to tell him I wasn’t dizzy, it was just my dumb shoes!
But our Heathrow airport excitement wasn’t over. Despite never having lost a thing on 22 trips abroad, I managed unbelievably to lose my purse in the airport. Our gate wouldn’t be announced until an hour before the flight, so we chose to sit near one of the screens that gave gate information so it would be easy to check. But then we decided to charge some of our electronics and we had to move to hunt for an empty charging station. We discovered Russ’ iPad wouldn’t charge there, so we moved to yet another spot, back by a screen at which point I realized that I had everything except my purse. A kindly British woman had seen it abandoned, however, and alerted security who had taken charge of it. I soon had it back with nothing missing. The only thing of value in it was my insured cell phone, but I was happy to have it back.
Then we got to the gate for Flybe. And walked out onto the tarmac — because Flybe might have just purchased a fleet of new jets, but they weren’t flying them between London and Edinburgh! So we got on a small prop jet, where I, sitting by the window, kept bumping my head getting in and out. It was the first prop jet I had ridden in probably 40 years and the first one Russ had ridden ever! The flight was smooth, but drinks and snacks cost extra (I was too stingy to buy anything!) and the roar of the propellers gave me a headache. Still, we landed safely, although they shut off one engine to slow the plane down before landing and Russ thankfully didn’t tell me until we had landed! (We’ve watched all the air disaster movies, so a non-working engine is somewhat concerning!)
Our hotel in Edinburgh was lovely, the reception that evening was nice, and breakfasts were buffet spreads with lots to choose from, although why anyone thinks that canned Campbell’s Pork and Beans is a good breakfast choice is beyond me! We went on a tour of Edinburgh Castle that morning and shopped in a couple of gift shops afterwards. Then we had an interesting city tour that showed off the Georgian architecture of the town and ended, remarkably, in the country at three bridges over the Firth of Forth! Why a suspension bridge, a railroad bridge, and an older iron bridge were tourist sites, we couldn’t guess, but they were obviously proud of them! I was happy enough, because just down the street was the pub where Robert Louis Stevenson had written most of Kidnapped, and I was excited to get a picture of it.
Then trouble struck again back at the hotel. Russ’ iPad is new and doesn’t have a USB port on its charging cord. We plugged it in to our converter, but although the cell phones and my curling iron and Kindle all charged through the converter, the iPad would not. This left Russ with no reading material, either for before going to sleep, or on the planes back to the U.S. So we asked instructions to the nearest Apple Store. There was one, of course, just at the bottom of the street, around the corner, and a couple of stores down. The instructions were accurate, but “at the bottom of the street” was several blocks length away by American standards. When we finally got there, they told us they didn’t have anything that would work, but that “Boots” would. And Boots was only a 3 or 4 minute walk down the street. So we started out for Boots. After about twenty minutes of walking, we started asking where Boots was, thinking we had missed it. Oh, no, it was just down the street. So we walked on. One lady told us that a drug store we had just passed would have what we needed, so we turned around. Remember I said we had made lists so we wouldn’t forget anything? Well, the Old Spice I had purchased at Walmart thinking it was deodorant for Russ turned out to be body wash! So he had been using my Dove for two days. So we picked up some deodorant for him. What we didn’t pick up was a connector for the iPad. They didn’t have one. Nor did we remember that Russ also had no razor. Shaving cream, yes. Razor, no.
After a few more minutes of fruitless walking in our hunt for Boots, we gave up and took a cab back to the hotel.
We hadn’t had lunch, so we stopped off at a French pastry shop that also served salads and sandwiches, actually good food (a rarity in Great Britain in our experience!). While we were there, we got a phone call from our housesitter in the States. The wind had blown down the pole that held up our DirectTV dish and when she called them, even though she explained that we were in Scotland, they wouldn’t do anything without first hearing our password. So, I explained how to use the DVD player and where to find movies, and when we went back to the hotel, I had to call DirectTV from Scotland to make an appointment to have our dish put back up. As it happens, it still took over a week!
That night we had reservations in a restaurant that our concierge had recommended to us. But the only thing on the menu that really looked good was the fish, so we ordered that and for a starter, something called Cheddar something or the other with buttered bread pudding. Cheddar = cheese, right? Nope. Cheddar in this case was some black stuff, topped with sliced mushrooms, on top of a soggy quarter slice of bread. The fish was not bad, luckily. The price was!
The next day, we went to see Rosslyn Chapel where the last part of the Da Vinci Code had been filmed and enjoyed it very much. They have a resident cat, William, who was sleeping on the pew next to where I sat to listen to the tour guide. Of course, I petted him, and of course, he climbed into my lap. But when the guide’s spiel was done, William returned to a pew to snooze while we explored the chapel and a young boy took over the petting for me. Then we were on to the Glenkinchie distillery to see how Scotch whisky is made. The stuff tasted wretched, but the tour was interesting and we found some nice things to pick up in both gift shops. Russ used his credit card to pay for them since we were running low on the cash I had picked up in the Indianapolis airport.
When we got back to Edinburgh, we went to an ATM machine to get some more cash from our travel account. It refused our debit cards! So we went back to the hotel and I called the bank. It seems there is a lot of fraudulent use of cards that comes from Great Britain so the bank accepts no charges from there. They agreed to unblock Russ’ card only, so we dutifully trekked back to the ATM on the way to our favorite pastry shop for lunch, but the card still wouldn’t work. After lunch, suddenly Russ’ credit card, which he had used all morning, wouldn’t work, either. We didn’t have enough cash left to pay for the meal, but I did have an American Express Card which some places won’t take because AmEx charges them so much. But this little pastry shop took it and it worked. Back in the hotel room, Russ called the credit card company. No, there was very little that had been charged on the card. Yes, he had plenty of credit. No, there was no reason it shouldn’t have worked. The problem must have been with the restaurant’s card reader, they assured us.
The evening went well with a farewell dinner for the teachers and the next day we boarded the prop jet again and again I bumped my head getting into my seat. And again in Heathrow airport, Russ tried to buy us food and drinks with his credit card and again it was turned down. So we came home with 11 Euros in coins, all left from the money I had gotten in Indianapolis. I shudder to think what would have happened had I only gotten the $20 in Euros I had intended to get. There certainly would have been no cabs, not even coming back from the restaurant late at night!
But that was the end of our string of bad luck. The flights home were good. We had a comfortable night, though a short one, at the Hilton and drove safely home in our car which had rested in their lot waiting for us. But all in all, this was a trip we perhaps should not have taken. With all the little things that had gone wrong, it was indeed, the trip from hell!