After an easy six hour British Air (that was supposed to be FinnAir) flight, we landed in Heathrow, and proceeded to find our way through the crowded Maze of security lines. My carry - ons made it through Boston security easily. Not so in London.
My backpack had what I call my medicine bag in it and the security person unpacked and separated it all; re-xrayed and machine - sniffed it before telling me I had to fit my Beta dine cream and Neosporin, etc. Into the little plastic bag he presented me or lose it. I kept all but my sunscreen.
We proceeded onto an even easier BA flight to Glasgow on which I could not keep my eyes open. Once we reclaimed our checked bags, we hit the airport Starbucks for a latte to help us wake up. Airline white coffee just could not do the job. We got our second wind soon after.
We took our coffees with us in the taxi to our hotel, Novotel Glasgow, and upon check -in we immediately met Annie, our tour director. She was a very perky middle - aged woman from Yorkshire, England whose family also owns a farm in Sligo, Ireland. A lovely woman.
After changing my clothes and brushing our teeth we headed out to walk the streets of Glasgow. The taxi driver headed us in the right direction before finding the city visitor's center and there we got a map of the city.
The walk did us good. After all that sitting in planes, the walking helped reduce some of my ankle swelling. We saw Subway, McDonald's and Burger King. Starbucks is everywhere. In fact we were surprised how many coffee shops there are in Glasgow. Yankee Scotland is the Yankee Candle store here. I chuckled at seeing it.
We were directed to an indoor mall for the closest loo, and found an O 2 phone store to buy a prepaid SIM card for international emergency calls and messenging. It worked in the store and hasn't since. Larry'll get it working.
At 6pm, we met the majority of our tour group in the hotel bar. There are fourteen of us with one other "birthday girl" today. We had a lovely getting-to-know - you chat and meeting with Annie and Paul, our driver. We have a huge tour bus that seats fifty, so we will be very comfortable.
The group is lovely. So far we have four men but haven't met three of us yet so there may be more. We are from Vancouver, Brooklyn, Long Island, Washington state, Kentucky, Wisconsin and India. We had a lot of laughs at dinner and look forward to a great day tomorrow.
We have to have our bags outside our doors at 6:45 am then head down for breakfast. The bus leaves for the Highlands at 7:45am. Stay tuned.
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