Saturday, April 17, 2010

In Glasgow

We lucked out yesterday. Trevor had bought us train tickets up to Glasgow (he's got a conference here next week and we came up early to sightsee). First off, we were lucky we opted for the train, because a couple of days ago a volcano in Iceland closed the UK airspace. All commercial flights were grounded.

So the train station was a zoo, and we got there about 15 minutes before our train was to depart. Hundreds of displaced travelers were trying to get seats on the trains, and given the signage wasn't great, we ended up in the line with people who didn't have reserved seats (we did have reserved seats). 2 minutes before the train was to leave, we managed to flag down a railway worker and learn that we could go around and get onto the platform, so we did, at a run.

This turned out to be lucky too. Our reserved seats were in carriage D, and we couldn't make it down there before the train left, so we jumped on one of the first class cars. As we tried to make our way down the train (which started moving seconds after we got on) we got stuck in a first class car just as the crew declassified it. They told us to forget about getting down to our carriage and just grab seats where we were. Which meant, yes, we rode up to Glasgow in first class seats across a table from each other. We even got free wifi. Our son behaved himself wonderfully, eating the food we'd hastily grabbed on our way to the station and even napping for a couple of hours.

80 people with reserved seats were left behind on the train platform, and many people were confined to standing room only for the entire 4+ hour trip. By the end of the journey, there were people standing in the aisles all up and down the length of the train.

The only bad thing that happened (to us, that is - no offense meant to the people standing) was that we lost our camera, but since I've been uploading pictures daily for my Etsy business, we lost no actual pictures. So, that too is okay. Sad, but okay. Now we're in Scotland, seeing the sights and playing with our kiddo. I'm spending the evenings revising my novel. I finally feel over the initial editing fatigue and ready to do the final round of fixes before sending it to agents. It's a long process, but the end is in sight!


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