Are they speaking English??

May 3/07

We caught a bus to the airport. It was listed as an Oslo airport, but just out of town...120Km. It was almost 2 hours just to get to the airport, that's longer than our flight time. But it was a beautiful drive. We were happy to arrive early, and got in line for our check-in. Bad news. We were over on weight...my bags weighed 18Kg for the pack and 20Kg for the wheely bag. And Bridgette was no better off. And every extra Kg was a 64NOK (11$) surcharge. AHHHHH!!! This was not good news. And our carryon still had to be below 10Kg. We started to rearrange and remix and caluclate the credit left on my MC. Then Bridgette mentioned that she thought we could buy an extra bag for only 84NOK. I had heard that, but figured it was 84NOK, plus 64NOK per Kg. We checked, and nope, if we bought another bag allowance, we got another 15Kg. Great, we'll check TWO bags each. We moved stuff around again, throwing all our careful organization of the night before into chaos. My stuff was in Bridgette's pack and her stuff in mine, and I was carrying on her stuff in a plastic bag, and she had my carry-on pack. It was a mess. But...in the end, all 4 checked bags were really close to 15Kg (One was 16, one was 17). The lady at the desk let us get away with just paying for the extra bags, not the extra 3Kg as well. (I felt really bad for all the nasty thoughts I had in her direction, while repacking).

All of that took about 1/2 hr, so we still had lots of time to get through security and jump on board our flight. During our flight we were talking about home, and people and things we missed, and we were both a bit sad to realise that there was going to be noone to meet our plane in Glasgow, and that we only had 12 days left. This flight was really the first step to going home. I'd been looking forward to it, and also wishing it was farther away, and now I was really flying. When we landed, we were also 1hour closer to home, as the time difference is less here (only 6 hrs).

In Glasgow, we got our luggage, and hopped a train to Glasgow. It was a very different train than the rest of Europe, more like a big metro than a long distance train...and we had to sit in 2nd class. When we arrived at the train station, we took a look at the map and decided it looked really far to walk to the hostel. And our packs were full of all the heavy stuff again, so we decided to take a taxi. It was a great decision, since the bus stop would have been a good 15min hike (UPHILL) to the hostel.

It was a long day, and we were tired when we finally check into our hostel. We dropped the luggage, and took a short walk around the area before eating supper in the cafe attached to the hostel. The evening was spent figuring what stuff was who's and which bag it all belonged in.

It's odd, after all this travelling, I'm finally in a country that speaks English as it's official language. I keep feeling like I should still be asking "Do you speak English?"

May 4/07

The internet was really cheap at the cafe, cheaper than almost anywhere in Europe, so I got up at 7:00 and spent a few hours typing away industriously.

We had a lot to see today, as we had to continue to Stirling tomorrow. First, we took the bus all the way over to the Necropolis, a huge Victorian grave yard where lavish was the word of the day. I've never seen such a large and elaborate cemetary. Some of the headstones were actual buildings and had life-size statues of the person on them.

We visted the oldest building in Glasgow, it had something to do with a church, not quite sure what. Then we walked into downtown. Here, we ran across a dance competition going on in a square. It seemed to be tryouts for a tv show, something like "So you think you can Dance??" I'm not sure if some of the participants really did think they could dance. It was pretty bad, so we left to walk around a bit more. Glasgow has a very long pedestrian street and we wandered along it for about 2 hours. We went into the mall, and got all sorts of free food. There were booths giving out samples of rice pudding (and not just a dixie cup full). The guy tried to convince us to fill my pack, but we were conservative, and just took 3 containers...each. It was good breakfast food. Then, we found a bread-tasting booth, which had a slice of ham in it too. The bread wasn't great, but the ham was really good.

We eventually ate a real meal, then went back to the hostel.

May 5/07

We wimped out and took another taxi to the bus station this morning. The bus we were aiming for was full, but there was another one in an hour. We were taking the bus because something was wrong with the train-lines, construction or something, and if we took a train, we'd end up having to transfer to a bus anyways. I found myself listening to the announcements in the bus station, and realizing that I had an easier time understanding the ones in ITALIAN, than I did understanding those in English, here in Scotland. Hmmm, that accent really does get hard to understand.

Our bus ride took about an hour, and we found the hostel a few blocks from the station. The guy at the desk had a suggestion of activities for us, including a nice little hike along the river, from Dunblane to Bridge of Allen (two small communities outside of Stirling). We decided to leave the tourist stuff for another day, and go for a hike. We caught the bus to Dunblane, and asked the first people we saw where the path began. It was easy to find, and had a sign that said it was only 2.5miles. It meandered alongside a golfcourse for a while before heading into the woods, bordered on both sides by rock walls. Eventually we walked along a river, and between fields of sheep. We even wandered by a cave that turned out to be one of the haunts of Robert Louis Stevenson, author of "Treasure Island".  A beautiful walk, it took us about an hour. We arrived in Bridge of Allen a bit early for the suggested meal of Fish and chips, so we checked out all the stores in the area. There was a locally popular fish and chip restaurant that we decided to try. It had fantastic fish, though the chips were a bit soggy. And it served homemade icecream.

We caught a bus back to Stirling and spent the evening reading in the lounge. I found something to read on the bookshelf, since I couldn't stand to read any more of Dr Zhivago for the time being. I've been working on it since Budapest and it's really long winded. I have about 100 pages left. I'm sure I can finish before returning to Canada.

May 6/07

We started out today going to visit the William Wallace Monument. We'd been intending to just look from afar, but had it on good authority that it was a good visit. We walked up to the visitor center, and caught the shuttle all the way to the top of the hill. It was a bit windy and starting to cloud up a bit. We headed inside and up the long spiral staircase to the first floor of the tower. While learning about the revolution that Wallace led, the weather really pick up. There was an announcment that we could go out to watch an interpreter tell us about the Battle of Stirling Bridge, so we did. We were almost blown off the side of the hill by the wind. It was so strong that walking in a straight line was impossible. We lurched from side to side, and huddled in the lee of the tower to watch the performance.

Back inside, we saw the rest of the tower, before emerging onto the roof top viewpoint. We were almost blown away. I've rarely felt wind like that, except in Newfound Land and Drumheller. It was strong enough to push us around. We didn't spend much time admiring the view, as we were also being pelted by the beginning of a rainstorm. Back down in the relative protection of the valley, we walked back into town.

We picked up some lunch and ate outside in the sunshine. Before continuing on our walking tour, we popped inside a shop to see what they  had. In the time it took to poke around the racks and walk out, the sunshine had disappeared, it had rained HARD and the sun was back out. Wow, I think it rivals Alberta for weather changes.

We wandered along the old city wall, built to protect the town from invasion and looked at the Old City Jail. At the top of the town, there was Stirling Castle. It was late in the afternoon, and though we wanted to visit, it was very expensive. We decided to see the outside, and leave it at that. It would have been interesting, but just not today. We headed back into town and finally got caught. The rain poured down, drenching us from head to toe, so we got back to the hostel looking like drowned rats. A hot shower and dry clothes were great. We settled in to the lounge for an evening of relaxing.