Scotland! Part One

This weekend was two things: hilarious and a learning experience.

Tara, Molly and I made plans at some point late last week to fly from Shannon airport to Glasgow Prestwick, where we would then take the train to St. Andrew's where two of my friends from home (Dan and Micah) are currently studying. We needed a break from the same old thing here, plus most of our friends were also travelling, so the weekend would be quiet at home.

Thursday night ended up being pretty wild, with a flip cup tournament at a local bar, care of the International Student's Society, so we didn't get in until pretty late. Thus, Friday morning (departure day) dawned rather late, and we hadn't even checked the bus schedules to Shannon. Soooo, I got up at 10:45 on Friday, showered, packed, ate, met Molly and Tara and hustled to campus. We had about 15 minutes to print out our tickets and change our euros into pounds before jumping a cab to the bus station for a 12:30pm bus to Shannon. Yep. The only bus that would get us to the airport on time was at 12:30...oops.

Error number one: Molly headed to the first floor of the library to print her ticket, while Tara and I went to the ground floor. After going through about 38 steps online to check in with Ryan Air and get our boarding passes, we realized that only citizens of the EU were allowed this priviledge. So, irritated by the waste of time, we abandoned our efforts and went to find Molly. She found us first, boarding pass in hand. How, you may ask? Well, she explained, when she couldn't find United States on the list of countries, she just clicked United Kingdom. ARE YOU KIDDING?! YOU DON'T HAVE A UK PASSPORT!, we reminded her, but we had literally no time to worry about this error, and ran to the corner to catch a cab.

It was rush hour, so the normally five minute ride to the bus station took ten minutes. We sat in heated silence, wondering if we were going to miss the bus, which would cause us to miss our flight...

Thankfully, we made it to the station with five minutes to spare. We bought tickets and got three of the last seats on the almost-full bus. Although we weren't sitting together, we were happy. We had completed step one of our mission. Thank God we didn't know then what lay ahead, or we may have just turned around.

After two hours on the bus (almost 40 minutes extra) due to some traffic and construction, we got to the nearly empty Shannon airport with an hour and a half before our flight left. Perfect. We surveyed the scene and decided we had enough time to grab lunch. After delicious burgers and drinks, we hustled through security and got on our flight, no problem.

(Thankfully, the Ryan Air people found humor in Molly's passport "error" and let her through with just a shake of their heads...)

The flight was uneventful besides our conversation about the chances of the yellow flotation devices actually saving our lives if we crashed into water - the landing was incredibly fast and bumpy, and we landed in Scotland to freezing temps and flurries of snow at around 6pm.

We were all smiles and cheers, and I called Dan to see what to do next. He instructed us to find the buses on the first floor and get on the bus that would take us to the "city centre" in 25 minutes. We wandered along a walkway with a bunch of other people, down some stairs that looked like they led to a dungeon and outside to where the trains were...and stopped. For all intents and purposes it looked like the train platform simply dropped off, despite signs for the bus stops. After wandering around looking like touristy idiots (the theme of the day...) we discovered a staircase leading underneath the platform where we waited for our approaching two-tier bus.

After asking a random bus driver which bus to get on, he studied the schedule for us (since we can't read..?) and told us we had just missed the bus. The next one would be coming along in 30 minutes. So, we bundled up in all our warm clothes and huddled together in a small bus stop cubicle until the bus arrived.