Day #15 - We're Home - Last Post

Writing on 14 July 2009 18:55 EST
Posted at 23:45 CST from home! (it is 6:45 in Scotland!)

Today has been a very long day, long, but uneventful. We were up around 7, had breakfast at 8 and we were in the airport around 09:45 GMT. In CST that translates to up by 01:00 and in the airport by 03:45. We're in Newark as I type and on to Minneapolis / St. Paul at 20:00.

Continental did a great job taking care of us from Edinburgh to Newark. We didn't get emergency row and we tried three separate times (can you say annoying?), but they fed us well and there was plenty of entertainment via individual consoles for each seat, from movies (we both watched Duplicity & I watched Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid) to TV shows, games (Beth played Alchemy) and music. It was a slick set up.

Prior to the flight we spent some time debating whether we should be honest on the customs form and declare every single thing and the total costs. The form ended up dictating some of it for us, it was too short to list all of the goodies individually and we didn't convert the amounts from pounds and just listed the pound amount as dollars (lessening the amount we declared, as the conversion rate is about 1 pound to $1.78). In the end I think the customs officials we spent time with looked at the form for about one minute and all went just fine. I'm hopeful that everything is intact when we get it back from Continental in Minneapolis.

One of things we had fun with on the trip was learning new words or expressions. We thought we'd try to keep some of these in use as we return to the US. Here are couple we heard and used in Scotland:

For hire - to rent
Queue - get in line - we saw this with road construction too - "Queues likely;" as opposed to the "Possible delays ahead" signs we see at home
Cheers - we heard cheers used as a greeting, for a toast, as a thank you and as a good bye
Give Way - Yield, The road signs say "Give Way" instead of yield, there are lots of 'Give Way" signs and very few stop signs
Chips - French Fries; fish and chips being the most popular
Crisps - potato chips
Dual Carriageway - a 4 lane highway (2 lanes each way)
Petrol - fuel
Haar (pronounced Haah) - thick fog from the Firth of Forth (and other coastal areas as well)
Water Closet (abbreviated WC) - Toilet
Close - an alley
Loch - Lake
The boot - trunk of the car
Mobile (long i) phone - cell phone
Pub - bar
Ring you up or phone you - call you
Knock us Up - at a B&B the note said "Knock us up if there is an emergency"

If it isn't clear from our posts that we had a wonderful time let it be clear - we had a wonderful time! We're excited to come home, see the boys, relax in our home, sleep in our bed and reconnect with all of you. Thanks for reading and thanks for the comments.

23:45 - We got home to a clean house and two very happy dogs! Thanks to Callie and Maggie for dogsitting the boys and to Sean for mowing the lawn. Thanks to Todd for being our airport shuttle!