UK Trip - Day One (cont)

Upon arrival at the airport in Edinburgh, we made our way to the Hertz counter. I was waiting in line, furiously digging through my file folder with all our trip info, trying to locate my Hertz reservation. The gentleman at the counter saw me pawing through my papers and motioned me up to the counter. He had a wonderful Scots accent, much like Sean Connery. He said he saw a look of panic begin to cross my face and figured he'd help erase it. All I needed was my last name and he'd get our reservation. Sure enough, in a jiffy, he had my reservation on the screen in front of him. Since I had no intention whatsoever of driving in the UK, I motioned Tom to the counter. He presented his driver's license and credit card, signed the documents, and we were handed the car keys. The man behind the counter was SO nice! He was just a foreshadow of the kind of people we would meet in the UK, especially in Scotland. He took the time to get me a map of Edinburgh and Scotland and to give us instructions for getting out of the airport and en route to Kenmore. He honestly couldn't have been nicer. Next to me at the counter was a couple who were not so nice. They apparently wanted some specific SUV (WHY????) and were upset when the only option was a Volvo XC. Gee, rough life. They were not very nice to the guy helping them, but he remained professional, polite, and helpful. Fortunately, the people didn't sound or appear to be Americans.

After we got the keys, we decided to get a latte and catch our breath before embarking upon what was sure to be an adventure in driving. As we sat drinking our lattes, two gentlemen, one with a Scots accent and one with a "down under" accent, sat near us. We ended up talking to them for a bit. They were in Scotland en route back home to New Zealand after being in Germany on business. The one guy was from Scotland but now lived in Kiwi-land. The other was a German who had lived a long time in New Zealand. They were very reassuring about how easily we would get to our destination, how easy the roundabouts were to navigate, and how easily Tom would adapt to driving on the right side of the car on the left side of the road. They did chuckle when we bid them adieu saying they would be watching from the plane for the car stuck in the roundabout. Funny.

We took the shuttle to where the car was parked, located it, checked it out, and started off. We had a Ford Mondeo Estate Wagon - basically a Ford Escort wagon. It was a very nice car! Tom practiced driving on the left a bit in the parking lot, then ventured out onto the open road. We made it through our first roundabout at the airport with no problem. We followed the directions with which we had been provided, which were to take us to the Forth Bridge, then on to Kenmore. Somewhere along the way we went east when we should have gone west, or something like that. We ended up in downtown Edinburgh. Some soccer game must have just gotten over, and the folks in Edinburgh were very happy. The streets were teeming with fans laughing, yelling, carrying flags in maroon and white, honking horns, celebrating their victory. And here are three crazy Americans, driving on the left side of the road on the right side of the car in the midst of all this madness and traffic. Welcome to Scotland! We drove all over the place with no idea where we were or where we were going, and Tom was getting really stressed. We finally asked a car in the next lane how to get to where we needed to go (the A9 north). He gave us directions, which we were able to follow, and we backtracked along the route we'd traveled into Edinburgh, finally seeing the signs for the Forth Bridge, and making our way to the A9 toward Perth. Phew! We had survived! Somewhere along the way, we came upon a toll booth. Thankfully, one of my coworkers had given me a little coin purse with some British coins before we'd left and we had enough to pay the toll or we might still be on that bridge. The Forth Bridge, and it's companion railroad bridge, are beautiful. Too bad I couldn't get a decent picture of either of them. The Forth Bridge reminds me a bit of the Golden Gate Bridge, only not red. It's pretty huge. The scenery around it is breathtaking. I wish we'd had more time to really take it in and take photos. But we were tired and wanted to get to our resort.

The "carriageways" in Scotland - in England too - are really nice. They are very well-marked and have lots of pull-outs, which they call "laybys", in case you need to stop for some reason. But they don't have much of a shoulder most of the time, so for Americans, this is a bit harrowing. The lanes seem impossibly narrow, and they drive really, really fast! We felt like we were holding up traffic whenever we were on a single carriageway, though we seemed to be going way too fast. When the road would change to a dual carriageway, we could take a breath and try to take in the exquisite scenery around us. It was all so new, so different, so beautiful, and so green! Little stone farmhouses dotted the lush hillsides while sheep grazed on the green grass that was cut into squares by ancient stone fences. There was nothing like this in the US. We definitely weren't in Kansas anymore!