Saturday August 28

Saturday morning our taxi arrived 30 minutes early (8:00 instead of 8:30). We rushed to get ready. The street cleaners were out once again cleaning our street. I think they need to do it everyday or else the trash would pile up in no time. We were at the airport in 30 minutes and had 2 and ½ hours to kill before our flight left for London. Yesterday was such an exhausting day, we were all really tired. Sitting around and doing nothing was not a problem.

A retired Air France Concorde on display at Charles de Gaulle airport.

England from the air.

The London Eye can be seen at the bottom of the picture.

When we landed in London, we had 45 minutes to get to our next flight. I thought no problem. We would not have to go through security since we were connecting to another UK destination and we were in the same terminal. Wrong. Now you must pass through immigration AND security. I was thinking, there is no way are we going to get our next flight. We had our luggage forwarded to our final destination in Glasgow Scotland so we were not worried about that. When we got upstairs, the security lines were awful. Audra asked an queue attendant if we had time to make our flight. He went to ask someone else. We were allowed to cut in front of everybody to get to our next gate. We got there just in time. When were about to push back from the gate, the pilot came on the radio and told us they had to remove someone’s luggage since they were not on the plane. This caused us about a 30 minute delay. Then we were off to Glasgow Scotland.

Scotland countryside.

When we arrived it was cool and cloudy. I went to get the rental car and Audra and the boys went to get the luggage and we would all meet in the parking lot (Glasgow is a small airport). When I went outside, they were already there…. without our luggage! It would turn out that our luggage “did not make it” on our flight. It would be on the next flight (4 hours later) and be shipped to our rental house.

Our rental house was about 45 minutes away in the city of Ayr. Our landlord had told us that he would be meeting us at the house and had asked for our flight information in advance of our arrival. I assumed he was tracking us and would be waiting for us at the house. Wrong again. He was not there. Then I realized his phone number was on an email that he sent to my Gmail account. When I tried to get to the Internet, no network was available. We then went to a local store for a few supplies thinking that he would be there when we returned. Still no landlord. I tried the Internet again and then I got a connection. I called him and he was there in 5 minutes.

On the way to the house.

Yeah, I'm driving on the left side of the road now.....with a manual transmission...after I overcame the engine stalling, it was great fun.

After 6 or so hours had passed, I called British Airways for an update on the luggage. The girl told me the luggage had arrived but the courier would be delivering them to us sometime tomorrow. When pressed when, she could not say when but if would be after 12:00PM. We got back in the car and drove back to the airport to get our bags.

When we got back home around 12:00 AM, were ready to pass out since it was around 1:00AM in Paris time. Another long day has passed.

The good news is that God had given us a safe journey so far and that we were at our next stop with all our stuff.