Wednesday June 9th, 2004

Awoke to the Bells gone Wild again ... home sweet Koblenz. Still more laundry to complete. Tom ventures out one last time for breads and pastries. This time he brought back some really yummy pastries with cream cheese and big strawberries covered in a sugar glaze. The best pastries yet!

While the last load was drying ... up to a 3 hour process ... Tom and I took one last walk along the rivers and bought our final German gifts. One last stop at the biergarten where I actually had the best schnitzel of the trip, in my opinion! A few final German biers. Sigh. It was so HOT out. Very odd for that time of year there. In fact, according to the papers it was cooler in Texas than it was in Koblenz that week. Koblenz was in the low 90's and that is really hot for there. And no one has AC! But also according to the papers, Scotland was going to be cool!

Gary got home mid-afternoon and Monica showed up shortly thereafter. We all piled into her car for the drive to Frankfurt-Hahn airport ... a smaller airport outside Frankfurt. We got there hours early for a 7:30 flight. The earlier you get there, the better chance of snagging a good seat. Our goal was the exit-row seats ... and we managed to do it! Yeah us!!

It was a 2 hour flight to Scotland and we landed at Preswick Glasgow airport ... an airport that is over an hour by train away from Glasgow. It was 50 degrees and raining and that felt wonderful to me! As the train pulled out of Preswick we saw we were on a beach area and then Tom and Gary spotted the Golf Courses ... gorgeous Golf Courses. Troon was the first one we saw but there were many more as the train headed inland towards Glasgow. I didn't want to go inland ... I wanted to stay by the sea ... sigh ... but our B&B was in the heart of Glasgow ...

Anyway ... the B&B was like a hotel ... 65 rooms! The bed was small ... the bathroom smaller ... but it's all good. The manager pointed us to the nearest pubs and warned us to be aware of the hill. Man was he right ... felt like we were in San Francisco! A very steep hill down to the street where all the pubs and cafes and shopping was. We found a place to have a few beers then staggered back up the hill and off to bed.