I have come to realize that traveling is great and horrible all at once. Traveling itself is usually good. Planning to get to all the places you want to go sucks.
I went to Scotland this past weekend, and it was fan-bloody-tastic. We saw lush green hills, a lot of sheep and some funny looking cows known as \hairy coos."" We got free samples of whiskey on a distillery tour (oh, it burns!). We also took fake pictures of the Loch Ness Monster, with which we could probably fool some gullible idiots if we really wanted to.
But that's only part of the story. There's also the part about trying to get to Scotland on a budget and not planning in advance.
A side note on planning: it sucks. I wish I could be spontaneous all the time and have it work out, but society doesn't seem to appreciate that. Travel agents probably appreciate people's spontaneity when the lazy fools have to pay 10 times more than they should for a flight. Those evil bastards are so funny.
To make a long story short, my travel mates and I spent way too long in a computer lab trying to find flights until we were pulling our hair out, begging to be put out of our misery. For some unknown reason we decided to wait on booking a relatively cheap flight, figuring we could get our bearings back on track the next day. The next day we found that our flight was now six times as expensive as the day before. You see why I hate planning?
So we took a train, thinking the scenery would be nicer on the ground. It was nice, even though it was mostly covered with snow.
To go on another tangent, it snowed two inches Friday in London and apparently the whole city shut down. Luckily I wasn't there to point and laugh at the so-called blizzard and all the chaos it caused. Conclusion: London needs to get its act together.
Where was I going with this? Right... so we arrived in Edinburgh in the dark, got some food and drink, and headed back to our hostel to sleep. We got to our room and found someone who will be known as ""weird girl"" for the rest of time. She was fully rocking out in her bottom bunk with her headphones on: arms flailing, head constantly nodding back and forth on her pillow, singing along in Dutch or something not English.
The next three days we spent a lot of time on a tour bus trying to cram in as much of the history and beauty of Scotland that we possibly could. I still think that the weirdest thing I saw (besides weird girl) was a man in a traditional Scottish kilt talking on a cell phone.
After a weekend on a bus, we took a train, another bus and then another train home since the tracks were being fixed. When we finally got to our flat at 2 a.m. it was nice to be back in a bed we could call our own, after having a lovely weekend. Then it was back to the stress and excitement of planning spring break. Oy vay...
