Getting to Scotland (Amazing Race part 1)

I'm going to split Scotland up into multiple entries, one because it's long and two because I don't have all of my pictures up yet.

So first things first, we had to get to Scotland. More specifically, we had to get to Glasgow and my friend Sam. This ended up requiring two trains, a metro, a bus, an airplane and a taxi.

The two trains, the metro and the bus all happened in France. Because of the cheap airline we took, we had to fly out of Paris-Beauvais. I'm not sure why they call it Paris-Beauvais, because it's effectively an hour outside of Paris. Anyway, the SNCF workers went on strike so only about half of the trains were running. We got really lucky, because both of ours were on time. The total travel time by train was about two and a half hours, with an hour in between to take the metro (Paris subway) from Paris-Montparnasse to Paris-Nord (two train stations in Paris) for our train to Beauvais. Afterwards, Alex and I got dinner at a Belgian restaurant, then hopped on the bus to get to the Beauvais airport (about 30 minutes). On the bus we met a couple of Canadian college students that were studying in Rouen and en route to Barcelona for the weekend. That was pretty cool.

So at the airport, check-in went fine...then we had to get through customs. I went up to the desk, the guy stared at my passport for a minute or two, then stamped it and let me through. Alex was behind me in line, so she goes up to the desk (I'm standing on the other side of the customs guy waiting now). The guy looks at her passport for a really long time and says something to her. I don't know what he said, but she got this terrified and confused look on her face. The guy kept looking at her passport and shaking his head, while she tried to explain something to him. Eventually she got through. I'm not sure how she did it, because the problem was that her visa was only good for two months, after which she had to have a carte de sejour. She hasn't finished going through the process for the carte yet, so the guy basically said to her "I can't let you leave France. Actually, you're not even supposed to be here, so you need to come with me." Fortunately, she had a piece of paper stapled into her passport that said she was in the middle of getting her carte, and that's how she got through. It wasn't very official at all, so I know now that if I need to sneak across a border all I have to do is staple a paper to my passport. The flight was fine after that.

Once we got to Glasgow-Prestwick (again, about an hour out of Glasgow, why do they even call it that?!) it was about ten til midnight. We were thinking, okay, Sam said there was a train headed in our direction, so we should be able to just take it back to Glasgow, right? Nope. The train was headed to Ayr, (Prestwick is between the two) but there was no train headed back. We found this out as we were standing on the platform, waiting. In the meantime we met a French couple who was also trying to get to Glasgow, but spoke no English. So we thought okay, we'll just take a bus. Sadly, all of the buses available appeared to be tourist buses. So, we walk into the airport and ask an employee where we can find a regular bus going to Glasgow. He says "aye, there's a bus that leaves right about midnight from o'er there!" So we go back to where we saw the tourist buses (which are no longer there), and ask some guy over there when the bus leaving at midnight is coming. He says "I'm sorry lassies it just left!"...it wasn't midnight yet. Evidently the tourist buses we saw were actually the legitimate buses to Glasgow. So what do we do now? We've missed the train, missed the buses, and a taxi is expensive. Oh wait! We've still got this French couple with us; we can all share a taxi and it will be affordable! So we called a taxi. Our driver was utterly incoherent. Not by any fault of his own, but because of his super thick Scottish accent. Every time he spoke, Alex and I were like "?????". Somehow, miraculously, by the grace of God, we ended up in Glasgow. All we had to do then was meet up with Sam, who greeted us with a smile and a giant bag of cookies, even though he had been waiting in Glasgow for a full three hours. From there we walked to our hostel and finally, finally got to go to bed around 3 in the morning.

Phew.