That Time We Almost Didn't Make It To Scotland

That Time We Almost Didn't Make It To Scotland 

(Thursday, October 31st, 2013)

How can I describe our journey to Inverness, Scotland? It was equal parts hilarious, terrifying, painful, and tense. 

I have been looking forward to going to Scotland since I knew I was coming to England. Visiting The Isle of Skye has long been on my bucket list. So to almost not make it was extremely nerve wracking. Let me back up and explain myself a bit. 

As per usual I had booked my trusty express airport transfer taxi service to pick up myself, Katherine and Gabel at 6:30am. Our flight was at 9:05 and for domestic flights you only need to be at the airport an hour before. The last time I had taken the taxi service to Heathrow it had only taken an hour and 13 minutes from Southampton so I figured arriving at 7:45 was plenty of time. 

However, I had forgotten that we were actually going to Gatwick and not Heathrow so the night before, Gabel contacted our drive to inform him that we wanted to switch and go to Gatwick instead of Heathrow. She described the conversation as very painful since the man could not really speak English but it seemed everything was in place. 

Fast forward to 6:30am the day we leave. The driver calls me to tell me he is at a weird entrance to my building that I've never seen or heard of. The best way I can describe his voice is as if he was swimming underwater and talking through a snorkel with a middle eastern accent. I had to say goodbye to Steph which I was dreading because I'll miss her and it will be so weird not having her at my flat every day when I come home from teaching. Then we had to begin the process of directing our crazy taxi driver to the real entrance that we had specified in the booking. That took a few minutes. So we didn't really get going until about 6:38. Once the three of us were in the cab, the smell was overwhelming. I have literally never encountered a smellier human being than our taxi driver. It was pouring rain out but Gabel still had her wind down to air it out a bit. I just went to sleep because I felt like I needed to be knocked out to avoid the smell. When I woke up I could see we were stuck in traffic. Gabel and I spent the rest of the car ride on our phone GPS's realizing that we were absolutely not going to make it to the airport for 8:05. Not even close. After a very harrowing experience, we arrived at the airport at 8:23am. Please keep in mind that our gate for checking in luggage closed at 8:35 and we had to go through security after that and everything. The three of us run through the airport like crazy people and go to check in Katherine's bag where they notified us that the bag check was already closed for our flight. The girl behind the counter looked at us and said "well two of you can go but one has to stay because that bag can't go through." LIKE WHAT!! After pleading and begging a man came over and got on his walkie talkie and they finally let us check in Katherine's bag. After that the woman behind the desk said "Now you run to security." Which we definitely did. Security has always been a very easy process for me. I have never set off the sensors and my bag has never been searched. What happened to me the ONE time I''m in a situation where I might not make the flight? I set off the stupid alarms. So I have to step off to the side and get patted up and down by a female staff member for quite a long time and then she proceeded to wave the wand over my body. They found nothing. I wasn't even wearing metal!! I finally get turned free and think we're in the clear when I realize that Katherine's bag has been stopped because she forgot to take out her liquids and put them separately. I run out to check the board and see what time our boarding closes and see a sign super super far away advertising a hallway where gate 55 can be reached. I then also notice on the board that it said our boarding closed at 8:45. At this point it was 8:38. And the stupid security people were still searching Katherine's bag up and down and we were far away from our gate. They finally turned Katherine loose at 8:41 and we had to SPRINT like absolute insane people through the airport. Suddenly, I started ferociously gagging. And then I barfed. 

Yup. I barfed. In a tiny little bucket in the side of the hallway in the Gatwick airport. If that wasn't enough I barfed two more times in my mouth while intermittently gagging. As I approached the ticket counter at exactly 8:45, I saw the ticket guy watch me barf in my mouth and give me a strange look and let me through. 

Why did I barf? Couple of theories. 

i have been incredibly sick for about 4 weeks now. It started out as laryngitis and then the past week and a half its just been a terrible cough. No other symptoms, just a nasty cough. Sometimes the coughing is so bad it makes me gag and I almost feel like I might vomit. So I think the constant coughing contributed to my weakened state. The other thing is that I am one of those people who has to have breakfast or I am useless. If I do anything remotely strenuous on any empty stomach I am a goner. And of course I hadn't had time to have breakfast that morning and I found myself sprinting for my life in the airport. Lastly, I had messed up some regular medication I take and had already been feeling slightly nauseous on the way to the airport. Voila. Ferocious gagging and mild barfing. 

It was all worth it though because I think we were the last people on the plane and we made our flight. If we hadn't made our flight we would have been screwed. There were no other flights to Inverness that day from Gatwick. I thought that was strange until we landed in Inverness and I saw how tiny the airport was. I've been to Caribbean airports bigger than the Inverness one. 

Once we finally landed, our next issue was getting from the Inverness airport into town as it is quite a ways outside the main city. We managed to navigate the bus system and made it to the Inverness town centre and main bus depot. From there we bought tickets to do a tour called Loch Ness temptation. It included a 2 hour boat cruise of Loch Ness and an hour tour of Uruquhart Castle. The weather was insane. In the 6 hours we were in the vicinity of Loch Ness we had pouring rain 3 times and beautiful sun and clear sky 3 times. To get to our boat departure point we needed to take a city bus to a place called The Clansman Harbour Hotel. It drives all along down Loch Ness and we were obviously so excited about the views out the windows. To one side you can see the water and out the other side was crazy hills and mountains and waterfalls and trees. Suddenly we noticed that our bus went flying right past the hotel we wanted to get off at. So Katherine went running up front to tell the bus driver and he pulled over on the side of the road to let us off but it was a pretty good walk back for us along a main highway. So we stopped to take pictures along the way and climbed along a beach area of the loch. Our boat tour was really fun and it had an open deck on top to take pictures from. Uruquhart Castle has a visitors centre where we watched a 8 minute video that depicted the history of the castle. It's nuts! For almost a thousand years its been under constant attack and changed owners until finally a few hundred years ago they blew it up to stop all the fighting over it. So most of the castle today is in ruins but there still some intact pieces of it that you can climb up.  To get back to the Inverness bus depot it was kind of funny. We had to stand on the side of the highway and literally flag down a city bus. We were kind of worried about it but it worked and we made our way back no problem. At 5:15pm we caught a bus to Portree on the Isle of Skye which was a three hour journey but unfortunately all in the pitch black of night so our views were quite limited. I feel so repetitive all the time saying how beautiful and stunning everything is, but I'm serious! Loch Ness and Inverness were so beautiful. Here's some pics so you can see for yourself: 

 Loch Ness

 prisoners 

 Duck party