It has been impossible to accomplish anything before noon since we began traveling. It doesn't matter how early we get up, something will happen to prevent us from getting a single thing done before noon.
I blame most of it on the Lonely Planet city maps and the lack of proper street signs. For example, pretend you need to get to a highway from the center of town. You first need to confirm which street you are on so you can refer to your map. Sounds easy enough to accomplish except the street names are on the sides of buildings and never in the same position on the buildings. So as you're driving by a corner at 30 mph, you must locate where the street name is posted, then read the name which is mostly a blur at that speed. Forget it if it is dark. The names are not reflective nor are they lit up. Once you've established where you are on the map (and hopefully it's not a Lonely Planet map!) you can get yourself out of the city center where you then must rely on street signs to lead you to the highway. The problem with that is there are no heads up when you are approaching a turn. If you come to a sign telling you to turn for your destination, it means turn that very instant! And that's IF you understood the sign in the first place. They're basically little diagrams of the roundabout itself with little arms branching off the circle representing the exits/streets. The branches point to the names of the places/highways which sometimes mesh together making an already bad situation worse! If you miss that turn, you'll most likely end up circling the roundabout a few times while you argue with your passengers which exit along the roundabout is the proper direction! Oh, and if you weren't in the proper turn lane when you saw the sign, you will also end up circling the roundabout in an unintended car carousel. Once you've made that turn, there are no highway markers reassuring you are headed in the right direction. In fact, you are unlikely to see another sign at all until another turn approaches (if another turn approaches!) and if you miss that, you're S.O.L.!
AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED on how outrageously insane British drivers are. I was driving 95 mph on the interstate with people on my ass flashing their high beams at me! Before you reprimand me for driving at that speed, there were no posted speed limits and I was going the speed of traffic if not slower! We usually spend a good hour circling the cities and towns before we find the right highway towards our next destination. Nevermind the fact that we also usually spend the night before circling the town trying to find our hostel! Oh well. We see a lot of the city we normally wouldn't have that way, usually cobbled dark alleys which are better left traveling via car rather than foot anyway! Don't worry mom and dad, we keep the car doors locked! hehe.
After the Lake District, we made our way into Scotland with our first destination being Edinburgh. This is where the 'oh how we love to shop' comes in. For the life of us, we can't seem to get in and out of a grocery store in decent time. I don't know what it is about us. A lot of it has to do with searching the aisles for each other, trying to satisfy the taste buds of three different people, and drooling at all the food we really can't afford. Cheese and baguette anyone? This shopping adventure usually continues in the parking lot where we proceed to spend the next 20 minutes eating in our car. I feel really sorry for the person who has to clean the rental which we've aptly named, Fuchus as it is a crappy Ford Focus. The next day, Sunday 1/29, was more foot tours of the city. Stacey and I committed our first born child to get into the Edinburgh Castle where we learned a lot of Scotish history.
We didn't tour Inverness other than the local grocery store and headed south towards the west coast along the infamous Loch Ness. No, we didn't see Lochy, but we can see why she's made her home there. Scotland's lakes are beautiful!!! With no particular destination in mind, we made a last minute decision at a fork in the road to head to the Isle of Skye. This is where we've had one of the most interesting experiences yet.
On our way to Skye, we saw a hand painted sign on the road that advertised beds at 7.50 quid, a bargain compared to the 12 we'd been paying since leaving London. After a quick visit to the island, we turned back to take advantage of the deal. We turned onto this little one lane road and after about a mile, saw another sign saying the hostel was 11km further!!! Yikes! It was sort of too late to turn back. Skye was already a good 20 minutes behind us. So, we continued down the road. It wound along a mountainside through golden and frost bitten hills. There was a stream connecting several small lakes which were perfect and plenty for a fisherman's holiday.
We spent the evening lounging on couches and playing fluxx (a hard to find card game I learned how to play in college) and watching 'Big Trouble in Little China.' I knew there was a reason I hadn't seen that movie before!!! We awoke to a valley of white the next morning. It looked like a dusting of light snow, but it was only frost. According to the owner of the guesthouse, Willie, the side of the valley we were on never gets out of shadow between November and the end of January because the sun never peaks higher than the hill. Brrr!!! It had reached -10C that night. Something else caught my eye as i peered out of our window. Something about the tilt of Fuchus seemed unnatural. A flat tire! Eek!
Ken and I spent a good hour trying to take off the bloody wheel in the freezing cold alternating turns running inside to warm our hands. We had the car jacked and the lug nuts off, but the tire wouldn't budge! We thought maybe it was frozen, so we poured warm water on it with no luck. We finally decided it would be best to call Hertz. Willie insisted he would have a go at it before making the call. He probably thought we had no idea what we were doing when we explained the tire wouldn't pull off. The tire took a toll on him and we could tell he was frustrated and determined to get it off himself. He broke out an iron hammer, chisel, and wedge thingamajiggy and started pounding and prodding away at the thing. Ken and I exchanged worried glances before Willie said he'd try phoning the local (as in 40 minutes away!) garage for advice. There was a brief sigh of relief until he came back saying the garage instructed him to take a fence post to the tire. None of us were assertive enough to convince him we should just phone Hertz and we reluctantly let him bang away with the fence post. Who would have guessed a fence post would aid in the removal of a flat. Turns out Ford uses aluminum for their tire frames and steel for the brakes. Common sense is that the two will fuse together with a little heat, once again proving Ford has little or no insight!
With donut successfully on, we crawled into town and paid the ridiculously outrageous price of 15 quid/$30 to have a flat repaired!!! Yeah, I know. Any tire place in the states would have done it for free or would have sold us a brand new tire for the same price. Oh well, it made for a good laugh and new memory.
With little time to spare, we drove off to Glasgow only making one stop for the potty and a fill up stop with only 3 miles left til empty! Glasgow is where I currently sit rehashing all of this for you, that is if you're still with me! We fly out to France tomorrow where we plan to spend a few days before taking a train into northern Italy for the Winter Olympics! Hooray!
I blame most of it on the Lonely Planet city maps and the lack of proper street signs. For example, pretend you need to get to a highway from the center of town. You first need to confirm which street you are on so you can refer to your map. Sounds easy enough to accomplish except the street names are on the sides of buildings and never in the same position on the buildings. So as you're driving by a corner at 30 mph, you must locate where the street name is posted, then read the name which is mostly a blur at that speed. Forget it if it is dark. The names are not reflective nor are they lit up. Once you've established where you are on the map (and hopefully it's not a Lonely Planet map!) you can get yourself out of the city center where you then must rely on street signs to lead you to the highway. The problem with that is there are no heads up when you are approaching a turn. If you come to a sign telling you to turn for your destination, it means turn that very instant! And that's IF you understood the sign in the first place. They're basically little diagrams of the roundabout itself with little arms branching off the circle representing the exits/streets. The branches point to the names of the places/highways which sometimes mesh together making an already bad situation worse! If you miss that turn, you'll most likely end up circling the roundabout a few times while you argue with your passengers which exit along the roundabout is the proper direction! Oh, and if you weren't in the proper turn lane when you saw the sign, you will also end up circling the roundabout in an unintended car carousel. Once you've made that turn, there are no highway markers reassuring you are headed in the right direction. In fact, you are unlikely to see another sign at all until another turn approaches (if another turn approaches!) and if you miss that, you're S.O.L.!
AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED on how outrageously insane British drivers are. I was driving 95 mph on the interstate with people on my ass flashing their high beams at me! Before you reprimand me for driving at that speed, there were no posted speed limits and I was going the speed of traffic if not slower! We usually spend a good hour circling the cities and towns before we find the right highway towards our next destination. Nevermind the fact that we also usually spend the night before circling the town trying to find our hostel! Oh well. We see a lot of the city we normally wouldn't have that way, usually cobbled dark alleys which are better left traveling via car rather than foot anyway! Don't worry mom and dad, we keep the car doors locked! hehe.
After the Lake District, we made our way into Scotland with our first destination being Edinburgh. This is where the 'oh how we love to shop' comes in. For the life of us, we can't seem to get in and out of a grocery store in decent time. I don't know what it is about us. A lot of it has to do with searching the aisles for each other, trying to satisfy the taste buds of three different people, and drooling at all the food we really can't afford. Cheese and baguette anyone? This shopping adventure usually continues in the parking lot where we proceed to spend the next 20 minutes eating in our car. I feel really sorry for the person who has to clean the rental which we've aptly named, Fuchus as it is a crappy Ford Focus. The next day, Sunday 1/29, was more foot tours of the city. Stacey and I committed our first born child to get into the Edinburgh Castle where we learned a lot of Scotish history.
We didn't tour Inverness other than the local grocery store and headed south towards the west coast along the infamous Loch Ness. No, we didn't see Lochy, but we can see why she's made her home there. Scotland's lakes are beautiful!!! With no particular destination in mind, we made a last minute decision at a fork in the road to head to the Isle of Skye. This is where we've had one of the most interesting experiences yet.
On our way to Skye, we saw a hand painted sign on the road that advertised beds at 7.50 quid, a bargain compared to the 12 we'd been paying since leaving London. After a quick visit to the island, we turned back to take advantage of the deal. We turned onto this little one lane road and after about a mile, saw another sign saying the hostel was 11km further!!! Yikes! It was sort of too late to turn back. Skye was already a good 20 minutes behind us. So, we continued down the road. It wound along a mountainside through golden and frost bitten hills. There was a stream connecting several small lakes which were perfect and plenty for a fisherman's holiday.
We spent the evening lounging on couches and playing fluxx (a hard to find card game I learned how to play in college) and watching 'Big Trouble in Little China.' I knew there was a reason I hadn't seen that movie before!!! We awoke to a valley of white the next morning. It looked like a dusting of light snow, but it was only frost. According to the owner of the guesthouse, Willie, the side of the valley we were on never gets out of shadow between November and the end of January because the sun never peaks higher than the hill. Brrr!!! It had reached -10C that night. Something else caught my eye as i peered out of our window. Something about the tilt of Fuchus seemed unnatural. A flat tire! Eek!
Ken and I spent a good hour trying to take off the bloody wheel in the freezing cold alternating turns running inside to warm our hands. We had the car jacked and the lug nuts off, but the tire wouldn't budge! We thought maybe it was frozen, so we poured warm water on it with no luck. We finally decided it would be best to call Hertz. Willie insisted he would have a go at it before making the call. He probably thought we had no idea what we were doing when we explained the tire wouldn't pull off. The tire took a toll on him and we could tell he was frustrated and determined to get it off himself. He broke out an iron hammer, chisel, and wedge thingamajiggy and started pounding and prodding away at the thing. Ken and I exchanged worried glances before Willie said he'd try phoning the local (as in 40 minutes away!) garage for advice. There was a brief sigh of relief until he came back saying the garage instructed him to take a fence post to the tire. None of us were assertive enough to convince him we should just phone Hertz and we reluctantly let him bang away with the fence post. Who would have guessed a fence post would aid in the removal of a flat. Turns out Ford uses aluminum for their tire frames and steel for the brakes. Common sense is that the two will fuse together with a little heat, once again proving Ford has little or no insight!
With donut successfully on, we crawled into town and paid the ridiculously outrageous price of 15 quid/$30 to have a flat repaired!!! Yeah, I know. Any tire place in the states would have done it for free or would have sold us a brand new tire for the same price. Oh well, it made for a good laugh and new memory.
With little time to spare, we drove off to Glasgow only making one stop for the potty and a fill up stop with only 3 miles left til empty! Glasgow is where I currently sit rehashing all of this for you, that is if you're still with me! We fly out to France tomorrow where we plan to spend a few days before taking a train into northern Italy for the Winter Olympics! Hooray!
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