Claudine and I just got back from our third U.K. trip since moving to London. This time, we actually made it out of England and headed up to Scotland, the land of sheep, shaggy cows, castles, bagpipers and deep-fried pizza.

I've tried to keep the commentary interesting by pruning out the boring stuff. Hopefully, you agree.

09.24.04 | Scotland By Bus

DAY ONE: We started our trip at Heathrow and boarded our British Airways jet only to learn that its maintenance hadn't been completed yet. So we waited about two hours on the tarmac as crews fitted a new tire and fiddled with a window seal. Sorry guys, but isn't this something you should have taken care of before you let people get on the plane?

After about a 1.5-hour trip, we landed in Glasgow. We took a bus from the airport into the center of the city. The center, at least, seems recently redeveloped and has many new restaurants and shops. This has the unfortunate effect of making a city rather homogeneous, of course, but there were enough buildings in the early 1900s style to keep me interested.

Claudine and I were surprised on how close everything is in the city center. It's really easy to walk, which is how we got to our hotel from the bus stop. After some lunch, we decided to try and see two places: the cathedral and the Science Centre.

I really dislike riding busses, particularly in new cities, but this was best way for us to get around. I had read in our tour book about a bus route map so we walked to the main bus station to get one. The learning curve for understanding this map, you might say, was rather steep. After 10 minutes of unsuccessful deciphering, we had to ask a ticketing guy how to get to the Cathedral.

The cathedral was mildly interesting. According to our tour book, this was the only one on the Scottish mainland to survive the Reformation. Beyond that, however, Glasgow's Cathedral is pretty average. Claudine noted that it could really use a bath. The inside at least had some nice stained glass and a wood ceiling.

Next up, the Science Centre/Museum. The guy at the bus station had told us how to get there from the Cathedral and we managed to find the right bus. When we got on we asked the driver if his bus was the right one. He indicated that it was and said he would tell us when to get off. As we moved out of the city center and south of the Clyde (the main river in city) I tried to visually match where we were with what was on our cryptic bus map. I started to get concerned when it seemed like we should have gotten off at a certain point. We worked up the nerve to ask the driver but he reaffirmed that we hadn't gotten there yet. OK, bus-driver guy, hope you're right.

Err, well, he wasn't. He dropped us off nowhere near the Centre and it seemed like we had to walk forever through not so great parts of Glasgow (using, once again, the lame bus map) before arriving, at which point it was 20 minutes before the Centre closed.

We had to figure out the bus situation again to get back to the hotel. We weren't done with busses, though. We needed to do it one final time in order to get to a restaurant for dinner. By then, it was raining and all of the windows inside the bus were fogged and we couldn't see out to spot our stop or restaurant.

It's the little things like this that are the dirty little secrets of traveling on your own.