The Scottish Highlands

2 September 2013

Above:  Eilean Donan castle on our drive approaching Skye.

Leaving Istanbul

It is my birthday today and I’m flying to Edinburgh to meet Kim. The airport shuttle collected me at 0600; I had to check it was going to Ataturk Airport rather than Sabiha Gokcen just to be safe! I like Ataturk because is much closer, but it has become supercrowded. There were queues for a prelim X-ray to enter the terminal (not done at Sabiha Gokcen), then queues for check-in, then for immigration.

Check-in for UK and Israel flights were at the same counter and involved a security interview. There was an online check-in counter (with no interview staff) which I hadn’t noticed till later but the queue had grown by then.

I unsuccessfully tried to exchange my remaining Liras but it wasn’t enough to buy the minimum of GBP10. I managed to drop them into a machine which will supposedly credit it to Paypal. Let’s see.

I noticed that the HSBC had a lounge that I could use so I grabbed some coffee and a cake before finally getting to my gate with about 5 minutes to spare.

It was a pretty full flight on the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-900ER. The hot breakfast of spinach/cheese pie, scrambled eggs and grilled tomatoes was yummy. The sides of muesli, white cheese and olives were good too.

Best of all was the hand squeezed orange juice and lemonade with mint, in unlabelled bottles. They’re shown as freshly squeezed and homemade, respectively, on the menu. Both were just so good, it’s like the ones you get on the street direct from the fruit.

Scotlandistan, here I come

This is my first time in Scotland, or Scotlandistan as I’d call it if they become independent.  Immigration at Edinburgh was slow with initially only one counter open. Kim had been delayed on his flight from London so we showed up at the Hertz rental car counter within minutes of each other.

We had a choice of a Vauxhall (Opel) Corsa or a Fiat Punto. He asked my opinion so I opted for the Corsa. But as he was driving, I said he should be choosing. So the Punto it was!

It looked nice in black and when he started it, we thought it was diesel. So did the Hertz attendant. Kim thought it would be gutless on the hills so he went back and swapped it for the Corsa.

I prepared to transfer the luggage and realised from the fuel flap it was actually petrol! Kim was surprised too when he realised that it was petrol. The moral of the story is that I’m always right when it comes to the choice of cars, and never go Italian. It’s a tough lesson for someone who has two Maseratis.

About 10 minutes into our drive, Kim realised he had left his phone in the cubbyhole of the first car so we went back for it.

We set off in earnest around 1300 and got to Kyleakin on the island of Skye around 1800. We had a lunch stop at Pitlochry with grub from the supermarket. As we entered the Scottish Highlands officially  (as marked by the signboard), the scenery became hilly, cloudy and drizzly. It was very characteristic especially with the small white-washed homes by the lochs and the sea.

We had a nice birthday dinner at the King’s Arms where we stayed. A 3-course meal was GBP15 and just mains was GBP10. You can’t even get that in NZ at a pub. No wonder I’ve met Japanese and Scandinavians that tell me NZ is expensive!

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