Scotland: Coming Home

At 3:15 a.m. the alarm went off, and a few minutes later Denis got up to get ready to head to the airport. I stayed in bed another 30 minutes, knowing I just had to put on my shoes. We checked out of the hotel and grabbed some breakfast in the lobby (which started being served at 4 a.m. right when we checked out). At 4:15 a.m. we walked over to the terminal only to find that the British Airways counter wouldn’t open until 5 a.m. We could have slept another hour! I was so mad! Once checked in we headed to our gate and a few hours later we were in London. Once again the London process was long and arduous. The line for checking in to the flight was easily 100 people long. Fortunately, we had a 3 hour layover, so we knew we had time, but MAN. However, we found out that we needed to pay additional taxes, so they moved us to another line. Denis paid the 40 quid (*hee*) and then the lady told us where to find our gate. She had checked us in! No waiting in the 100 person line! Overjoyed, we headed to the next obstacle: security. This time, *hundreds* of people were trying to squeeze through four of five screeners. The wait was going to be horrendous. But a few minutes after we got online, an airport security person came through and asked us to head upstairs – they were opening more screeners. We rushed up there and easily ended up about 50th in line, which was a fraction of what we’d have gone through if we had stayed in the other line. Once through we ended up having about an hour of time before we had to make our way to the gate. The London Gatwick airport is HUGE with tons of shopping and food, so we walked around, had some food (our third “breakfast” of the morning since we’d had the hotel breakfast, a snack on the plane, and now this one). We eventually headed to our gate for the long wait, made longer since the boarding process started quite late. We had the exact same seats on the exact same plane. We know this because once again Denis’ seat arm was broken and the overrheadlight wouldn’t work. However, the flight wasn’t nearly as full as the one going to Scotland the week before, so I didn’t have anyone sitting next to me on the flight home. This made it MUCH more enjoyable. Nine hours later we arrived in Charlotte. Since we were the first international flight in on Sunday, customs was a BREEZE (ten minutes?) and the longest wait was for our bags in the claim. We arrived at our house about 5:30 p.m. (or nearly 20 hours after our trip home began).

All in all, a great trip that was fun, enjoyable and restful all at the same time. Next up: Disney with the kids in 2008. Let the planning begin!!!

And to the people on The Amazing Race? Props to them for having to put with airports every other day!!!