Edinburgh - the travel

Howdy - I'm baaaaaack!  The week was mainly delightful, with a few snags here and there.  But I would love to go back to Edinburgh someday.  Just for fun, I thought I'd divide my week into separate posts about the travel, the food, and the sights.  We'll see how it goes...

Early in the day of departure, I got a text telling me that my flight would be delayed a few hours.  Sigh.  Already, travel agita.  But since you're supposed to be at the airport early before an international flight, I decided to just head there at the time I would've if the flight had been on time.  I'd rather wait at the gate than try to predict what time the flight will actually leave.  As I was looking for the Aer Lingus ticketing desk, I saw my beautiful office chum with whom I was traveling.  So we went to the desk together.

For some reason, the desk agent was so confused.  Apparently, Aer Lingus had rebooked our connecting flights for us (the delay out of NYC meant that we would miss our connection in Dublin), but didn't complete the transaction.  So the ticket agent could see our reservations, but couldn't print boarding passes.  We were fine with our tickets to Dublin, but the Dublin to Edinburgh leg was causing problems.  The agent told us we could go ahead to our gate, but we thought that since we had a delay anyway, we might as well straighten everything out before even leaving.

Sigh.  It took TWO AND A HALF HOURS for them to straighten things out.  We had to stand at the ticket counter for TWO AND A HALF HOURS.  Almost the entire length of our delay.  It was unfun in the extreme.  My bum foot was killing me and we hadn't even left yet.  Sigh.  At least they gave us vouchers for food - I bought a lot of M&Ms and mints before getting on the plane.  And since we'd spent so much time waiting at the ticket counter, we didn't have long to wait sitting in the gate area.

The flight itself was fine; I watched an episode of The Great British Bake-Off; I tried to sleep (I maybe got an hour or so in the middle of watching Frozen), yet I still tried to walk around a bit every couple of hours because of my DVT terrors.  The meal they provided wasn't bad, and all of the flight attendants were very pleasant and apologetic for the delays.  Once we landed in Dublin, it was pretty smooth sailing through customs and getting to the gate for our connecting flight to Edinburgh.  Once we got to the gate, my beautiful office chum realized we should check and make sure all was well, after all the nonsense at the JFK ticket counter.  Good thing she did!  The very pleasant gate agent told us that we were actually double-booked!  I mean, I guess that's better than not booked at all, but it will come into play again in a few minutes.

When we got onto the smaller commuter plane to Edinburgh, I noticed that one of our flight attendants looked like Sacha Baron Cohen, which made me worried we were going to be punked mid-air or something.  I mean, I don't think it was him, but I guess you never know.  The whole double-booking thing came into play because we couldn't take off, due to the fact that they couldn't match up the people and bags.  They kept thinking there were people who weren't on the plane yet, but their bags were.  Nope, it was just poor, double-booked us.  Crazy.  Once they finally figured that out and we started taxiing, then a child behind me started screaming and getting up out of her seat belt.  The flight attendant (NOT Borat) came over and said we couldn't take off until the child sat down, but it was screaming like a banshee.  So we just sat there for probably another fifteen minutes, waiting for that to stop.  By this time, I felt as if we'd been traveling forever.  Thankfully, the child wore itself out and sat down.  The flight from Dublin to Edinburgh is a short one and we finally made it.

this is the main house; we were in the gatehouse on the right

Our Airbnb was about a half hour outside of the Edinburgh city center, so it was a pleasant drive to get there.  There was a gorgeous rainbow outside, but I could never get a good shot of it, unfortunately.  We made it easily to our lovely little gatehouse, though the van couldn't make it up the driveway, so we had to drag all our bags up a bit of a hill.  Oh well.  The gatehouse was adorable and it was a fantastic place to call home for a week.  (OK, I didn't love the mouse that entered my room on two separate occasions, but I was so tired throughout the week, I didn't have the energy to cry and I slept through the worry.  Oh, and the bathtubs were really high and it was a bit difficult for me to get in and out of them with my bum foot, but oh well, I made it through).

necessary snacks

I'll talk about sights and food later - let me just skip right to the trip back to NY.  It'll be like a time-turner for you.  I got a text from Aer Lingus telling us to arrive at the airport about three hours before our flight to get through US pre-clearance.  So we did that, but pre-clearance wasn't in Edinburgh, it was in Dublin.  Sigh.  I have to say that it's unlikely I'll fly Aer Lingus again.  Anyway, moving on.  We were at the gate in Edinburgh plenty early and had no trouble getting to Dublin.  When we arrived, we did have to go through customs and pre-clearance, then were sent up to our gate.  My beautiful office chum was on a different flight than me, though we were at adjacent gates.  After she got up to board her plane, I decided to walk around for a bit, because I had a couple of hours to kill before my flight.  When I was in the ladies room, I heard an announcement, asking me to come to the gate.  That's never good.

I got to the gate and discovered that my flight would be delayed by about three hours, and I would have to be escorted back out, past security, and would have to do customs again when I got into NY.  It was ridiculously stupid - the gate agent walked me and about five other passengers back to the pre-clearance area and an agent took our passports.  We got them back a few minutes later, then we were walked to our new gate area.  And then we waited.  Although the pleasant gate agent said there was a voucher attached to our boarding passes, the only snack cart in our gate area couldn't accept them.  Sigh.  I read a book, called my mom, charged my phone, tried to pass the time.  By the end of the trip, my bum foot was really sore, so it wasn't pleasant to walk around, but it wasn't pleasant to sit in those uncomfortable metal chairs, either.  I got really cranky by the time the plane was finally ready to board.  They asked us to get ready, so off we went, to stand in the very long line.  And there we stood.  For about 45 minutes, until someone finally told us we had to wait while a maintenance issue was attended to.  I tell you, they are really lucky there wasn't some sort of mass revolt in the gate area.  I guess, in the scheme of things, it wasn't such an awful wait (compared to the people I read about who were stuck on their plane for seven hours), but all of the travel agita just added up to mass annoyance.  Once they finally called my row, I became one of THOSE people and just marched up to the front.  I heard people complain, but tough.  They called my row and why should I stand around and wait for other people to either get out of the way OR get on the plane anyway, even if their row wasn't called?!  I hope I didn't ruin my travel karma by marching to the front.  I was just ready to sit in a vaguely more comfortable seat.

The ride home was smooth, I watched Casablanca and a new Nancy Drew movie, finished a book, enjoyed my ravioli, and walked around the aisles every couple of hours.  It could've been worse.  When we finally landed, our whole plane was escorted into a customs area, which thankfully didn't take too long.  My bag arrived in a timely fashion.  Then the taxi line didn't take very long, either.  It was certainly better than when we got back from Italy a few years ago.  I was grateful that I could get home more quickly than I had feared - once I finally got home, there was a lot of sleeping to do.  

The trip, as an experience, was terrific.  The travel was not.  That's why I got the annoying post out of the way.  You should look forward to more fun postings in the near future...