Sunday, June 10
the plot:
...and we're off!
Sunday was a very, very, very long day. I met up with my friend Cathy (who I met at last year's conference in Reykjavik) at Newark airport on Saturday night. The original plan was to fly from NJ to London, and from London to Glasgow, Scotland, arriving around Sunday lunchtime. After that, it would have been bus, train, other train, other bus, getting into St. Andrews for the conference by 5:30 or 6pm. Instead,...
(1) our flight from Newark took off over an hour late, which got us into London/Heathrow an hour and a half late.
(2) although we still had 1.5 hours until our connecting flight, Heathrow is huge. Even with going through the express security line, we arrived to check in for our flight to Glasgow 30 minutes before takeoff and they wouldn't let us on. So instead, we had 4 more hours of sitting around Heathrow.
(3) our Heathrow to Glasgow flight was an hour delayed, getting us into Glasgow, Scotland after 5pm.
(4) exhausted from our extra long day, neither Cathy or I had the energy level to make it through 4 more kinds of transportation, so we hired a car to take us the 2.5 hour drive to St. Andrews.
Thankfully, once we arrived, the rest of the day was quite peaceful. We walked into town from our dorm to get dinner and explore a little, and then slept quite well.
the pictures:
(click on any thumbnail/caption to open a larger version in a new window)
- and we're off!
- the drive
- about town
- my room
where to next?
UK bound...
view of wallace monument on the drive across Scotland
closer up
what a beautiful country...
about town at night 
that double tower in the background is st. andrews cathedral... you'll see plenty more of it.
my building for the week...
dorm, sweet dorm
the shower corner
as always, i'm amused by word choice/spacing :P
invisible heating... as opposed to... fire and smoke? ;)
ok, so this is actually pretty smart -- the lights in the room only work when your room key is in the slot next to the lightswitches... then it's impossible to accidentally leave the lights on when you're not using them.