Home at last!

Well, after a trip that can only be described as eventful, we’re finally home! We left our rental house in St. Andrews yesterday at 8:30 in the morning, local time in Scotland. I had gone for one last run on the Lade Braes at six in the morning while David finished backing the last bags, and though we got up quite early, we still ran out of time at the end. As the taxi pulled up at the front of the house, I was hanging towels out on the line and David was stuffing stuffed animals into one last carry-on bag and prioritizing the contents of the refrigerator to decide what items were worthy of an attempt to get through security (does Nutella count as a “gel”?). I mopped 800 square feet of tile in about 29 seconds, which must be some kind of record somewhere, and we got out of the house only fifteen minutes later than we had planned. Our hour ride to the Edinburgh airport was uneventful—the sun was out and the kids were completely silent in the back seat, just looking out the window at all the little villages we passed through so many times in our semester in Scotland for one last time.

When we arrived at the airport, we learned that our flight to Newark was delayed, and there was a long, long queue of people waiting to check in. Most of them were golfers returning to the States from St. Andrews, and they had one big hard case of golf clubs and one small carry on suitcase. David and I, on the other hand, looked like two tinkers pushing our enormous carts piled high with duffels and suitcases and warm coats and pillows and more stuffed animals towards the check-in counter. When we arrived, the airline representative behind the counter eyed us warily and said, “You know you can only have one bag each, then?” We ended up checking eight bags, all of which came at least 2 kg under the weight limit (and since David had used the scale in the house to check the weight of the bags by holding them while he stepped on the scale, I could see him do some quick mental calculations with the hope that the scale in the house was a bit off and he hadn’t gained as much weight as he thought on this trip!). We were left with six very heavy carry-ons plus the kids backpacks (filled mostly with stuffed animals, of course) to get through security. That was no problem in the end, though two of our bags were flagged for a search because they had the kids’ metal water bottles (which were empty) in them. I set off the metal detector for some reason and was treated to a full arms-up-legs-apart body pat-down while David and the kids chuckled, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I emerged feeling as if I had just been treated to a free massage!

The flight itself was fabulous…it was light outside the whole time and we each had one of those in-flight entertainment systems in front of us loaded with movies and TV shows. They served us two meals and lots of drinks while the kids watched “The Tooth Fairy” and David and I cycled through movies with titles too embarrassing to name—movies we would never choose to watch on our own, but which ended up being quite good. We landed in Newark at almost 3:00 pm, and quickly went through security, and then customs. I was worried that the sheer volume of our luggage would warrant an immediate search through all of them at customs, in the hopes by a customs official of finding an undisclosed can of haggis or boxes of shortbread that totaled more than $800 in total value in our bags, but they basically just waved us through in the end. So I was feeling quite good that we had made it back to the States in the end with no problems! And then the fun began…

I’ll back up one quick step to explain that our travel arrangements were a bit odd to begin with, because in the fall, as we were booking our trip, the university’s travel agency “forgot” to book the last leg of the return trip, which would return us all the way to Syracuse for an hour drive back to Hamilton. There was a bit of back and forth between us and the travel agency and Colgate’s off-campus study office to decide who had made the mistake, and what to do about it. In the end, it was decided that we would just collect all of our bags in Newark and be met by a limo service for the four hour drive back to Hamilton, since it would probably take as much time in the end for us to recheck our bags onto a domestic flight, wait for the connection, fly to Syracuse, collect our bags and drive home. So, when we emerged from baggage claim with our two trolleys, our limo driver took one look at us and said, “You know, your travel agency sent a sedan, right?” A sedan. As in a car with four to five seats and a trunk big enough for two good-size duffels and no more. I stared at him blankly for what felt like an eternity, wondering how on earth a travel agency could send a sedan to pick up four people from an international flight, especially when they had booked the airplane tickets for us in the first place, and knew that we would have been in the UK for five months and therefore likely had more luggage with us than just two duffels! So, we stood in baggage claim for well over an hour, running through all the options (hiring a second cab to take the luggage to Hamilton was going to be over $600, asking our limo company to send a car for the luggage the next day would be $500, after we paid to have the luggage stored for a day, shipping the luggage was going to be $700, etc…). In the end, we decided that our only option was to send all of our luggage in the sedan with the driver (and I might add that it barely fit by itself…with the trunk, the back seat and the passenger seat fully loaded) and then for us to rent a car at Newark and drive home. The idea of this wasn’t appealing, as it was now about 11:00 pm Scotland time and we were just ready to sleep, not to drive four hours. We also didn’t have a map with us, and we don’t know the drive well enough to do it without directions. So, we rented a GPS system as well, loaded into a car, and started inching through Friday-evening interstate rush hour traffic.

The drive wasn’t easy. David did all the driving while I tried to keep him awake by saying, “What are you thinking about now?” repeatedly. I figured it was better to have him awake and annoyed than falling asleep at the wheel. An hour in, we pulled off the interstate when we saw a sign for a Wendy’s, but we never could find the Wendy’s in the end, and just ended up getting rerouted through an hour of 30 mile-per-hour roads near Parsippany, NJ. After we finally got onto another interstate (I-84) our GPS went out, so we were on our own from there (though were more familiar with that part of the drive, fortunately). We still hadn’t had dinner and the kids were alternating between sleeping in the back seat and moaning about how uncomfortable they were. In Clarks Summit, we finally pulled off for some dinner, and I switched seats with John and put him in the front with the seat all the way back so he could sleep without his head banging into the door all the time. Emma was propped up on my shoulder and John’s reclined seat was in my lap with my right leg trapped between it and the door. At about that point, as we got off I-81 and onto the two-lane highways for the last 90 minutes of the drive, a police officer pulled us over. She must have been quite shocked to see the seating arrangement we had fashioned for ourselves, and I craned my head around David’s shoulder to explain the whole thing (“You see, we live in Hamilton but we’ve been in the UK for five months? So we flew into Newark and rented this car? And we’re not really used to the time here yet, which is why they’re asleep like this? And I normally wouldn’t let him sit up there, but his head was banging against the window because he’s so tired?”). She ignored me, and turned to David instead and asked, “Do you know how fast you were going, sir?” He shrugged sheepishly, and muttered something about not being used to the speedometer on the rental car, and she let him go without a ticket, so we drove off, while I was still calling out to the officer through the opened window, “So in the UK the car speedometers are marked in kilometers, you see, but the road signs are in miles? So it can be kind of confusing? And this car is a Chrysler, which neither of us have ever driven before?...”

We finally made it home at about 10:00 pm U.S. time (really, really late Scotland time) and met the limo driver at our house (he was sleeping in his sedan in the driveway when we finally arrived, probably an hour and a half behind him). I put the kids to bed while David carried in all of our luggage and we went right to sleep, with just enough energy left over to peel my contact lenses off of my eyeballs and to exclaim how incredibly, ridiculously comfortable our own bed was after sleeping on not much more than a box spring for the last five months!

One last dinner on the beach...

We're nearing the end of our trip: the suitcases are (mostly) packed, the boxes of books are (almost) taped and ready to be taken to the mail room, and the refrigerator is (nearly) clean. The kids are at school for their last day today, while David and I are finishing all the cleaning and packing and errand-running. It has gone smoothly so far, though since we're only about 75% of the way finished, I probably shouldn't say that yet, and should instead expect things to get quite hairy later tonight. We did have one close call earlier today, when I was in the midst of cleaning the gas stovetop and we needed to leave briefly to meet next year's study group leader to hand over some books and binders. We were gone for about 15 minutes, and upon our return, were quite appalled to note that the house smelled like the inside of an LP gas canister. Apparently, I bumped the gas knob with a rag just before we left, and nearly blew the house away! I suppose that would have negated our deposit...

Barring any additional near-explosions, we are planning to finish with the errands and the packing late this afternoon, and then to walk into town after dropping off our rental car for some dinner on the beach. With an empty house and no books or toys for the kids to play with, we figured it was best to just get out and about, one last time. I'm sure there will be much cleaning left to do after dinner, but our taxi doesn't come to pick us up for the Edinburgh airport until 8:00 am tomorrow morning, so that should leave plenty of time for scrubbing John's fingerprints off the walls, blotting the stains off the suntrap carpeting, and reglueing the tiki bird sculpture on the fireplace that we broke in February!

Isle of Iona and Isle of Mull

We’re just back from a last weekend of travelling in Scotland, and we chose to visit the Isle of Iona, which is just about as different a place as can be from Paris, where we were last week. On Friday, we drove across the country to the western port city of Oban. We had a quick lunch at the pier (David and I had a plate of mussels and some scallops, but since the fisherman at the stand was bringing in crabs and lobster as fast as they could cook them behind the counter, the kids were enthralled and disgusted, and neither of them would eat a thing. We drove our car onto the ferry for the crossing to the Isle of Mull, which took about 45 minutes. Mull is one of the bigger islands in the Hebrides on the western side of Scotland, and a popular tourist destination, especially in the summer. The whole island has a population of only about 2,500 people, but tourists probably outnumber residents 3 to 1 in some months of the year. When we arrived on the island, though, we drove straight across the southern part, towards the very small port city of Fionnphort, to take another ferry to the even smaller Isle of Iona. The drive across took over an hour and was mostly on single-track road with various passing places marked along the way with tall black and white striped posts. It was a lovely drive, after David sorted out the proper protocol of wait-or-go-for-it when we met an oncoming car on the single-track road! In Fionnphort, we gathered a small collection of some of our suitcases and left our car, then boarded an even smaller ferry to Iona. At this point, the sun was just starting to disappear, and a proper Scottish fog was coming in off the ocean, so our view of the blue ocean and the mountainous islands in the distance was just beginning to disappear.

Iona is a very, very small island (population 125!) that is most well-known as the spot where St. Columba landed from Ireland in 563 to start a monastery, which later became the center of the British monastic system and played a role in the conversion to Christianity of the Picts and the Anglo-Saxons. It’s also one of the spots where Celtic crosses (the tall stone crosses with a ring around the intersection to hold up the heavy arms) were first sculpted, and the island still contains several of them today, including St. Martin’s Cross from the ninth century. The Iona Abbey is still standing as well, which was built in 1204, though it has undergone lots of restoration through the years. There’s also a convent, in ruins, that was built in 1208 for Benedictine nuns. Other than that, the island has two hotels, one road, one tavern, a one-room primary school, and the smallest post office I have ever seen. Since it’s Scotland, there’s also a golf course on the island, though it’s really just a huge plateau of machair with some tin cans sunk into flat patches every few hundred yards, and the grounds crew consists entirely of sheep. To say that the island is peaceful is a gross understatement…and that’s even after we had arrived!

When we walked off the ferry, the fog was quite thick, so even though the island is small it took us a while to get our bearings. We were staying at a hostel on the very northern end of the island, and though the only decision we had to make upon arrival to figure out how to get to the hostel was to turn either left or right on the only road, we were still a little worried that we were headed in the wrong direction since we couldn’t see anything. We walked along the road (really a gravel path the width of a golf cart path) for about a mile, watched intently by a flock of sheep and a few cows who probably hadn’t seen that much traffic in quite some time. When the road ended, we still weren’t sure we were in the right place, until Emma saw a small outbuilding behind the only croft around and pointed us in the right direction. As we walked towards the building, a man came to meet us and confirmed that we were in the right place after all, which was a great relief after almost an entire day of travel. He showed us around and we settled

in and made dinner. The hostel was also home for the night to two Americans, each travelling as singles, and an English couple. The two Americans were quite chatty and were trying to engage the English couple in a conversation with little luck. One of them was completing a masters’ degree online, so their conversation centered on the benefits of an online education (no boring professor yammering at you from the front of the room for hours!). The other one was from Upstate New York (I overheard…) so I was hoping to avoid a conversation with either of them, but wasn’t that fortunate. I got away with only answering their rapid-fire questions for about five minutes (the Upstater asked, when we told him that we had brought a group of American college students over to St. Andrews for the term, if it was, “like, a Montessori-type program?” and the online-degreer asked John what the hardest thing about playing football was…so that gives you a sense of how that went). After we ate, the fog had lifted a bit, so David took the kids to the beach (our hostel was on a tip of land on the northernmost part of the island, so surrounded by gorgeous sandy beaches!) while I went back to the room with a glass of wine and a book to calm my nerves!

The following morning, the fog was gone and the sun was out, so we got to appreciate the beauty of Iona to its fullest. We ate a quick breakfast then we back to the beach, and the kids set up a “jewelry-making shop” on a flat rock—they would pound pointy shells with a small rock until the very tip of the shell wore away, then would string them all together on a piece of black seaweed to make necklaces and bracelets. When they tired of that, they started climbing the huge sand dunes, then launching themselves off the very top to fall into the sand below. They actually convinced me to try it a few times, and though I realized when I got up to the top that it was WAY too high for them to have been doing that kind of thing, I admit that it was also really fun, so I reluctantly told them that we couldn’t jump from that high any longer (but only after jumping four or five times myself…) We walked back down the “road” around lunchtime and had something to eat at the bar in town (fish and chips for David and a ploughman’s lunch for me), which has a big concrete terrace overlooking the pier and Mull in the distance. Then we continued down the road to the southern part of the island. We wanted to make it to Columba’s Bay to see where he landed from Ireland, but once the “road” stopped it looked pretty difficult to navigate our way across the rocks, so we turned around and headed back. We stopped at the Iona community gift shop and a few art galleries on the way, and got the kids a book about St. Columba and another about the Highland clearances. Then we went back to the beach and let the kids play for a few more hours while we read. The previous guests of the hostel had checked out and a new party arrived—this one a large group who were celebrating the completion, earlier that day, of one of their party’s having climbed the Ben More on the Isle of Mull, which is a munro (a hill over 3,000 feet), and marked his having climbed all 283 munros in Scotland—a feat that was five years in the making. They arrived with a case of wine and two cases of Foster’s, so we decided to give them their space and stay on the beach until the sun went down (which is at about 10:00 pm these days!).

On Sunday, we checked out of the hostel and visited the Iona Abbey. We arrived just after a service began, so wandered around the grounds and the cloisters until it was over. I think David would have liked to attend the service, but the kids would have found that (or made that, actually!) difficult, so we settled for touring the abbey ourselves. Then we caught the ferry back to Fionnphort and reloaded our stuff back into our car, then began the drive to the northern part of Mull, where we planned to stay for two nights in the fishing village of Tobermory. We stopped just outside Fionnphort at a tavern for some lunch (the kids had nachos, David had the roast lamb dinner, and I had a collection of tomatoes and beans that was called “chili” on the menu but which had not yet met up with any kind of spice…) then continued our drive up the western coast of the island. The distance between Fionnphort and Tobermory was about 50 miles, but the roads are so narrow and windy, and one has to pull over repeatedly onto the tiny passing places jutting out over the cliffs for oncoming traffic, so it took us about 3 hours to get there. While we drove, I was amazed at the size of the island and how much of it was vast, undeveloped land. I suppose that the low population density of the islands is still related to the Highland Clearances following the Jacobite uprising in the 18^th century, combined with the lack of infrastructure (no electricity lines or sewer systems here…), but it’s still surprising to see that much dramatic, gorgeous coastline with nary a soul around!

By the time we arrived in Tobermory, the clouds had returned and it was starting to drizzle. We were a bit early to check into the hostel (one of the many brightly colored buildings along the often-photographed port of Tobermory) so we wandered a bit among the shops, and stopped in at the co-operative grocery store for some dinner. When we finally arrived at the hostel, we learned that there was a bit of a misunderstanding with our reservation (long, long story here, from which I will spare you…) which was to result in our staying together in a private room for the first night, but in single-sex dormitories the second night. We actually had to fight for the private room for the first night, and David had to sort of “steal” it back for us from a large group of French tourists who arrived just a hair behind us. None of us were too happy at this, so we glumly dropped our bags and headed to the kitchen to make dinner. The French tourists were

there as well, and I did manage to engage in a five-minute conversation with them in French (causing John to whisper to me at one point, “Where are we again?”). After we ate, we had only enough energy to make it up the three flights of stairs to our rooms, where we all read until we fell asleep. I had trouble sleeping—worrying about the hostel situation the next night, theworsening rain, the laundry I would have to do upon my return, unanswered Colgate emails, packing to return to the States, the card I needed to write to the head teacher at Greyfriars, where my charm bracelet was, did John have enough socks for the rest of the trip…you know how that goes! At about four in the morning, I gave up and turned on a light to read, and by the time morning came around, I had decided to call it quits on the last part of the trip. We had planned a trip to the beach, a castle and a hike up Ben More the next day, but I just didn’t have any of it in me, and wanted to go back to St. Andrews instead to enjoy one more day together in the house before heading home to New York. When everyone else woke up, they agreed with me, so I called the ferry company to move

our trip up by one day and we got out of the hostel as soon as possible. We did drive to Calgary Bay on the way to the ferry, and took a very short walk around the sandy beach, and were still in Craignure where the ferry arrived with an hour or so to spare…time for yet another tavern lunch (venison burger for me and filled rolls for everyone else) before the ferry left. We arrived back on the mainland in Oban at four, and after a quick stop at a Waterstone’s and the bathroom, we began the three hour trip back to St. Andrews, with one planned stop in Dundee for a last meal at Emma’s favorite Indian restaurant. Needless to say, we were all thrilled to be back to the St. Andrews house that night, instead of dormitory rooms in rainy Mull!

One Week to Go...

Though we haven't yet finished unpacking from Paris, we have started the long and arduous process of sorting through all of our things here in the house, figuring out what belongs to us and what belongs to the house, in preparation for packing it all up and sending it back to the States. We learned yesterday that, while checking one bag in excess of our baggage allowance on Continental Airlines will run us $200 PER BAG (after paying for the bags we are "allowed" of course!), we can actually ship some things of our own much more cheaply. We already have to pay to ship David's boxes of books back, and so if we add two more boxes to the shipment (especially light boxes) it only adds about 20 pounds to the overall fee. So now I'm trying to figure out what we'll bring back with us, and what we can afford to live without for a few weeks as they take a slow shipping boat across the Atlantic.

We're also packing suitcases again for one last weekend trip. We'll take a ferry to the Isle of Mull on the western coast of Scotland, then will drive across Mull and leave our car, then take another ferry to the Isle of Iona, where we'll stay for a few days. I have seriously questioned the wisdom of taking yet another weekend away when we have so much to do here, but I also see the value in getting out of this disaster of a house, and just leaving it all for the last 48 hours, when I'll just stay up as late as I need to in order to get it all into bags and boxes in time for our departure next Friday morning.

As our last few days in St. Andrews wind down, we're taking advantage of being here as much as possible. Yesterday we took the kids to the beach so they could play on the rocks they love, which overlook the town and the first tee of the Old Course. It's a lovely spot, and they were content to stay for over an hour just scrambling up and down the rocks, and poking the various organisms in the rock pools with sticks, while David and I sat on benches and read. It's certainly high on my list of places I will miss greatly when we leave, along with the Lade Braes, South Street in town, the sea wall along the harbour, St. Rule's tower...

But I have decided that I'm not going to think about what I'm going to miss about St. Andrews in the next few days. Instead, I'll make myself feel better by starting a list of things I will be more than happy to leave! First on the list is the necessity of talking on the phone to people who speak with a thick Scottish accent. I really, really struggle to understand them without seeing them and using their gestures or expressions or surroundings as context. Every time the phone rings, I hope it's just a telemarketer, and not the school secretary or the woman from the car rental company or someone else who will begin by asking, as they always do here to start a phone call, "Is that Mrs. Dudrick then?" I am also greatly looking forward to never, never seeing again the menacing face of the next door neighbor, "Miss Manners," glaring out her window at us to make sure that our feet don't brush against any blades of grass on her lawn. David jokes that, as we drive away for the last time, he's going to drive right across her lawn and burn out a huge patch of her grass by spinning the tires, then shouting, "Oh, so sorry! We didn't want to walk on the lawn!" And I certainly won't miss the fact that the sun comes up at about 3:15 in the morning here, and yet every morning what wakes me up is not that, but the sound of gunshot coming from the sheep farm down the road. And that's all I'll say about that!

Au Revoir to a Fabulous Trip

Our last day in Paris started with a bit of rain outside, and a bit of last-minute flurry inside our lovely little apartment as we tried to pack up a week’s worth of clothing, toys and food into two suitcases and to have them weigh no more than 20kg each. Most of this was up to David, who is in possession of an impressive ability to pack into one suitcase what most people would barely be able to put into two and a half suitcases, while I was charged with cleaning the kitchen and returning the living room furniture back to its original arrangement. David’s talent is especially helpful as he is also in possession of a desire to always have with him all of the items that he might have even the smallest chance of needing at some point during the day. This worked out well for the four of us on this trip, since he was always toting around a backpack full of water bottles, rain jackets, extra shoes and the like, in case any of us needed anything while we were traipsing around Paris. You can imagine the surprise and disappointment, therefore, of the young woman who stood right behind him on Line 1 of the Métro a few days ago, pretending to read a tourist map while helping herself to the contents of the outer pocket of his backpack. For her efforts, she came away with only a handful of rumpled napkins and a pulverized fruit bar!

We managed to tumble out of the apartment only twenty minutes later than our firm check-out time (though no one ever showed up to usher us out, fortunately), only to discover that, though the rain had stopped and the sun was out, it was still a brisk morning. Our planned leisurely walk through the Marais therefore turned into a purposeful march, as we all wanted to get somewhere warm. We ended up in front of the Centre Pompidou, home to a collection of modern art and space for theater and film, and known for its wacky, colorful inside-out architecture and crazy fountains in the square outside. We had stopped on the way to buy a few croissants for the kids’ breakfast, but they were too cold to eat sitting along the fountain, so instead we went into a small café and ordered espressos for us and butter and sugar crepes for them. The café was empty and warm, so we stayed for a while, and the kids worked on some postcards to send to their classmates at home. Then we did a bit of shopping in the area around the Marais, and the kids found some souvenirs for themselves while we picked up a few gifts. We walked back towards our apartment, stopping at the Musée Carnavalet, which houses a collection of items (paintings, sculptures, models and furniture) related to the history of Paris. I wanted to see some of the paintings of streets in 16^th century France and the portraits of Madame de Sévigné, once considered the most beautiful woman in Paris, along with the paper which Robespierre was in the process of signing when he was seized and taken to prison, but the kids were a bit restless and ready to move on to the next thing. We breezed through as a result, though we did see the paintings of death by guillotine of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, as well as a few of her personal items, so it was worth the short visit.

We then stopped at La Poste to mail our postcards, then walked through the Marais one last time on our way back to our apartment to pick up our luggage. Our driver was waiting for us when we returned to the flat (again, well worth the money!) so we grabbed our bags and hopped in. John fell asleep on the way up to Charles de Gaulle, while Emma looked out the windows wistfully at the Seine as we drove away. David managed to finish most of the bottle of wine that we had left on the ride to the airport, which was a good thing, because when we arrived, our terminal was in total lock-down mode and surrounded by French soldiers wearing camouflage and carrying American-sized machine guns, so he benefitted greatly from being so relaxed going in. I on the other hand was a bit alarmed, but our driver just shrugged, and said that this happens pretty much every day. Inside the terminal, a huge queue had formed while the terminal was reopened, and we inched our way through security. John was having a ball riding on the luggage cart, while Emma was making faces at all the Euro Disney-clad kids in line. David kept them in stitches with a fake French accent: “Come on, kids, ALLON-ZEE!” he would say, then lean over to me and say, “What does allon-zee mean again?”

While we waited, we all talked about the American man who came into a bakery after us one morning and said to the girl at the counter, “Hi there, uh, polly-VUU ann-GLACE? Oh, great, then, I’ll have one of those things there, a cra-SAHNT, right? And how about one of them pieces of bread there…the long ones?” Lovely! By the way, I did notice that most French people I spoke to (in French but obviously with a native-English-speaking accent) asked me by default if I was English. “Vous êtes de l'Angleterre?” I wondered at first if we were wearing or carrying some kind of clothing or bag that was from the UK that gave them that impression, but later in the trip realized that it’s probably more likely that the French might be afraid that asking a native English speaker if they are American could be a bit insulting, just in case the person is actually English or Canadian. I suppose that asking someone if they are English is the least likely way to offend someone of a different nationality, and they only risk offending the Scottish by doing so!

So, we returned to St. Andrews last night at about 7:00 pm, had a quick dinner of frozen lasagna and a big glass of Pimm’s and lemonade (thinking the whole time of our meal in Montmartre), then went to bed. The unpacking can wait…