Scotland Day 1: The Arrival

My first day in the UK began at about 3am Halifax Time, when Alej woke me up to tell me they were serving breakfast on the plane. We took an overnight from Halifax to London. That's good, because you can sleep away the long plane ride, but bad because they serve you breakfast about 2 hours before you land, so you really only get - at most - 3 hours sleep before you start in on UK Time. But whatever - it was my first flight across the Atlantic and it's not like I couldn't buy coffee in the UK, right?

We got off the flight at Heathrow and took a bus to the next terminal. I had been expecting to go through customs right away, but we were well into the next terminal before anyone asked to see our passports or asked why we were in the country. I think we both wrote "marine biologist" as the profession on our customs slips, causing the customs agent to say that we had "real" jobs, unlike him. It's fun telling people you're a marine biologist. The whole process of getting from one terminal to the next and getting through customs was so easy. Finding our gate a little less so, since the electronic boards don't tell you the gate for your flight until about 20 minutes before boarding.

Heathrow, at least the terminals that I saw, is basically a mall with airplanes (of course, the only picture I took was of an empty waiting area). Someone told me later that we weren't in the newer, more impressive terminals. I suppose those terminals would be like a really, big, impressive mall. With airplanes. And maybe better lighting. Anyway, the picture above is a book vending machine.

The flight to Glasgow from London was short. I barely had time to fall asleep and we were landing. It took a long time (it felt like a long time, at least) to get our luggage. But at least we got it, so I really shouldn't be complaining. The friend we were staying with, C (I can't remember if she said I could use her real name, and she really doesn't have a nickname, so I'm going with "C"), picked us up. By this time is was about 2:30pm. We went back to C's flat (I had shotgun - so much fun driving on the wrong side!). We were meeting her boyfriend and some of his co-workers at a pub on campus before dinner, so we just hung out at her place and caught up. Fun Fact: They don't have Tostitos over there, so Doritos has filled in that niche and makes Lime Doritos. It's not the same.

We went to the pub and I had the single most internatioal drink I am likely to ever have with people from Canada, Ireland, Germany, Scotland, England and Greece. The lack of sleep combined with the IPA made it pretty hard to understand some of the accents. It also messed up my memory formation, so I'm not realy sure what we talked about. I do remember getting curry take-away after the pub. The curry was very, very good. 

We went to bed early.