We woke up this morning in Glasgow and headed out for breakfast. We went to one of the cute, little restaurants that resides just below street level on one of the side streets. It was a space that had been servants’ quarters in its previous life, and now, serves as a cute, little cafe. We got there early enough that we had time to walk to the River Clyde, which is the main aquatic thoroughfare through Glasgow. It was a nice spot to stand and look out to the peaceful water. We got a good view of the bridges in the distance and the city. It was a good way to wind up our Scottish adventure. Since our hotel was pretty much in the train station we were leaving from, we went back to grab our things out of the room and take a quick, final bathroom break before heading to the train. And we hit the same snag for the second time in the Scottish part of this adventure. Both hotels we’ve stayed at in the UK so far were very nice, and we got late check out in both of them. What both hotels failed to do with that information was to make our room keys aware of the alteration in time. In both hotels, we tried to get back into the room after breakfast, but before our later time, and in both of them, we had to head back to the front desk to get the room keys reset. Let that be today’s life hack- if you ever get late checkout and you’re trying to re-enter the room after the normal checkout time, swing by the front desk to have your key reset first. It’s apparently a problem. But after we got back in the room and retrieved our luggage, it was a pretty easy trip from the hotel to the train. We had reserved seats, and we started to settle in to our role as the old, married dorks who do crossword puzzles together on journeys.
Right across the aisle from us, a woman looked to the empty seats that faced, two by two around a table. She asked the woman seated across from where she was trying to sit if she could move there. It wasn’t her reserved seat or anything, but apparently, thats totally normal, and the obliging, seated woman said yes, then continued quietly working on her laptop. The interloper started to listen to music on her headphones. How do I know she was listening to music and not a podcast or something? Because I am certain everyone in train car D could hear her music. Wonderful. That’s pretty rude, and just as I was sitting in my own, little assigned chair, wondering if the tunes would stop, a terrible man arrived and sat next to her. I quickly surmised that they had met at the train station, they were interested in one another romantically and they were the worst two people in the entire United Kingdom.
They were loud, rude, every other word started with F. Yes. That F. They were vaping, drinking, and very obviously falling in love. What a meet-cute this will be that they can tell their future cellmates.
Between me and Cas, I was the one deployed to the bar car for wine. The first time I went, I returned with two mini-bottles of red. The second time I went, Cas texted me from Car D and said that the loud, rude, aggressive man had left. I brought back prosecco. That called for bubbles. Let’s celebrate the quieting down of our train car. His seat was taken by an older woman who sat quietly with her crochet project. Hallelujah! Give me a quiet lady with her crochet any day! After that change of personnel, the rest of the train trip was a breeze. The tricky part came when we had to navigate from the city-to-city train to the hotel via two London Underground trains. With luggage. During rush hour. Oof. I’m glad we pack light. We did pretty well. Of course- because Cas is a genius. Other life hack I could give you today is to travel with Cas, but I’m not really willing to hand him over, so good luck with that.
We’re here in London, now. We’ve checked into our hotel where we’ll be for a week. We’re right by the Thames, and we walked along the water before having a bite to eat and heading back to the hotel. Today was a little bit of a long day, made longer by our bearing witness to a love story we had no interest in watching, but we stood by the water of two rivers in the UK today. We had dinner riverside at a Brazilian place, of all things. Cas is going to keep tabs of all the different international restaurants we visit. Someone told us before we left Dallas that the best food in England is the food from other places. I guess we shall see. For now, that’s all she wrote. It’s bed time. We’re up and about tomorrow, doing a walking tour of Westminster, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. It’s supposed to be in the 80s tomorrow. So we may actually bust out shorts for the first time on this trip. We shall see. Good night from jolly old England, and may you never meet our friends from the train today.
Photo album:
tinyurl.com/dunlap-pl
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