Scotland 2023 - Day 7. Glasgow

“Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day” Glasgow has exactly one day a year of sunshine, and today was it!

Fortified by a fine breakfast I boarded the bus for downtown, and being a trusty soul bought into the driver’s suggestion of buying the day pass for 5.40 pounds, instead of going for the 1.85 pound single ride. I was now armed to move around Glasgow like a native.

For starters I walked from Merchant Square (where the old warehouse district was located), to George Square, which is monument central in Glasgow (Sir William Scott and all the usual suspects). There I boarded the tourist bus, with the intention of taking one tour around before selecting a few suitable places to get down and explore.

Glasgow was the port where a lot of the merchandises came to Scotland from Europe and the Americas, and for reasons that are not completely clear to me it soon became the main port of entry for tobacco from the New World (maybe Scot emigrants created a tobacco monopoly in America, and of course favored their Motherland with their trade). Andrew Carnegie did the same with the trade of steel with Europe, so in the late 1800s an early 1900s Glasgow was a very important industrial center with lots of smoke stacks spewing soot into the air out of the many factories, train building shops, and shipyards. The dominant wind in Glasgow blows from the west, parallel to the Clyde River (where most of industry was concentrated), so the city became naturally divided into an Eastside, where most of the old monuments and government offices were located and where pollution was nasty, and a Westside where the gentlefolks and students preferred to live upstream of the nasty air. Needless to say, the University of Glasgow was located on the Westside. But I diverge from the thread of my story.

My tour first went to the Eastside, where the Royal Infirmary and the Cathedral are located (no wonder so many people died of pulmonary complications). The Cathedral was established by Saint Mungo (aka St. Kentiigern), who moved down the Clyde from the Highlands in the 6th Century, and is much venerated by Catholics and Protestants throughout Scotland. We also saw a very pretty mini Big Ben with a bright blue face on the clocks. Pretty, until you learn that it was there to mark the time when the executions were carried out (a super popular public spectacle in the 17th Century) and was surrounded by pikes where the heads of the executed were put in public display; immediately afterward the public market would take place, full of gaiety and fun.

We then drove along the Clyde, which has been transformed into a clean waterway, with new gleaming steel buildings owned by financial corporations replacing the old warehouses and heavily polluting enterprises. There are many modern sport complexes, theaters, and museums along the Clyde, and I chose the Museum of Transport, at the place where the Kelvin River joins the Clyde, as my first stop. Ronnie would have loved it! They had old and middle-aged cars on display, such as the Anglia that my family had when I was 10 years old, and the same was true of motorcycles, bicycles, locomotives, train cars, and boats. One of the prime exhibits is a tall ship, with square rigging, where I saw one of the techs removing some of the old caulking and then proceeding to renew the caulking with oakum and tar! Cool!

My next stop was the University of Glasgow, which was established in the 18th Century and could be the poster child of an old university, not unlike Harvard in the United States. Turns out that Lister, the inventor of carbolic spray and asepsis, was actually a professor at the University of Glasgow, and so was Bill Thompson, a physicist who made great advances in the science of thermodynamics. He became so prominent that the King made him a lord, which meant that he had to choose a geographic name for his lordshipness. The Clyde River had already been taken by Lord Clyde, so Bill though he would chose the name of the small river that ran through the university, the Kelvin River, and so Bill became Lord Kelvin, of temperature scale fame.

The University of Glasgow is also where one of my favorite authors, James Alfred Wight (aka James Herriot), studied to become a veterinarian, so I felt a certain link to the old buildings. Of course now there is a new School of Veterinary Medicine farther to the west, so I though I would use my day pass to take a bus there and check it out. Not! Turns out my day pass is good for one bus company, but not for the other that serves the city. There went my trusty investment on a day pass! Frustrated I changed my plans and went instead to the Botanical Garden, which because of the sunny day was a perfect day for people watching because everyone was at the garden taking the sun.

I stopped at a student eatery for lunch, which consisted on two slices of haggis and two slices of black pudding, smothered in batter, and deep fried in fish-and-chips style. You then add salt and vinegar and presto, you have a delicious Scottish lunch.

I very much enjoyed Glasgow, but finally came the time for me to resume my trip, and after using only for the second time my infamous day pass I caught the bus back to the hotel, took my brave little Fiat, and an hour later came back to the same lodge where I had first landed when I came to Scotland. It felt like I was home. I celebrated by going to the pub to have a pint of Tennent Caledonian beer. Now, today is Friday, and the bar will be hopping all night, but at 5 pm it was only the early crowd of workers and young idlers that was there to get a couple of beers before heading home. Scots are very friendly, and I immediately made friends with a young man and his friends. The only problem is that I cannot understand a word of what they are saying due to the brogue and the “young speech” full of modernisms.

Here is to a great trip through a beautiful land full of friendly people!

Finis

Scotland 2023 - Day 6. Loch Lomond

The weather has turned around and although I would not call it perfect it was an acceptable mix of clouds and sun (and right now, as I sit writing this blog in Glasgow the sun is streaming through the window making my hotel room very cheerful).

I spent the night at the south end of Loch Lomond, the largest lake in Scotland, which is a distinction in a land that has so many lakes. The lake is 630 feet at its deepest, 23 miles long, and generally less than 1 mile wide, but toward the south end it broadens to perhaps 5 miles, along the alignment of the Loch Lomond fault, which is the official boundary between the Lowlands to the south and the Highlands to the north. The lake takes its name from Ben Lomond, a 3,000 m plus mountain that frowns sternly over the Lowlands, as if challenging them. But more about this a little later.

To honor DJ, who is a big admirer of William Wallace, I drove 30 miles east to see the National William Wallace Monument, a tower/castle built in the late 1880’s to commemorate the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, where Wallace defeated the English army by a clever maneuver. The vale of the Stirling River is the natural path that an invading army would follow to move into the Highlands but at this point a roche moutonnee forces the river against a cliff of basalt over sandstone, so the English were forced to cross to the south end of the river by the Stirling Bridge into land enclosed by a big meander of the river. Wallace, who was directing the battle from the top hid his warriors on the neck of the meander on one side, and on the north side of the bridge on the opposite side, so the English army had no room to maneuver or escape the trap and got destroyed. Needless to say, the fiercely independent Scots are very proud of their national hero (and of their King Robert De Bruce, and the outlaw Rob Roy, and basically of anyone who has fought for Scotland’s right to self determination).

Incidentally, I learned that what I call roche moutonnee is here called a Crag and Tail formation. As I think I already told you, they are hard rocks that were sculpted by the glaciers, with the “tail” being the side from where the glacier was coming from, and the “crag” is the side on the stoss side, where the glacier plucks at the rock giving it the aspect of a herd of mountain sheep perched on a cliff (hence the adjective moutonnee). Practically every castle and abbey in Scotland sits on top of one of these hills. I took this opportunity to get the nature walk I had been craving by walking the forest all around the monument.

On the way back to Loch Lomond I thought it would be nice to visit the lake in the comfort of a cruising ship, so I booked a two-hour excursion, that I sweetened with a bottle of hard cider and some munchies. It was a lovely cruise, and I felt honored when we crossed the Loch Lomond fault (very obvious because of an alignment of islands and a change in the morphology of the Highlands). These hills were the site of one of the bloodiest clan wars between the MacGregor (Highlanders) and the Calhoun (Lowlanders). Apparently the MacGregor were outnumbered two to one, but they fought with such ferocity that they carried the day. Unfortunately, in the grip of blood lust they then proceeded to butcher the women and children, which was definitely not cool with the council of clans, which proceeded to erase from all memory the MacGregor clan (and as far as I know they are still banished from Scotland).

A 4 or 5-year old boy came to me toward the end of the cruise, gave me a serious look over, and then stated categorically “You were asleep”. Ah, from the mouths of babes. Yes, it was going on 2 pm and I had to take my customary nap. Little imp should also be taking a nap, I thought.

I took a drive up the valley of the Argyle Forest, another spectacularly glaciated valley, but there was some landslide mitigation going on, and the traffic was backed up, so I parked, took a couple of photos, and turned back to head into Glasgow.

Unfortunately, I entered Glasgow at 5 pm, and the worst of rush traffic, and I missed my freeway exit. So I had to get out of the freeway and cross through downtown (where it seems that every other street was blocked off due to construction). It was like my own personal tour of the old town, which is full of statues, towers, and monuments (including its very own miniature version of the Big Ben). I took many turns, but eventually made it to my hotel at a decent time. I think tomorrow I will leave the car here, take a bus to downtown, and then buy a day pass for the Hop On - Hop Off tourist bus.

Scotland 2023 - Day 5. The Isle of Mull

Last night another guest burst my bubble by informing me that the ferry that goes to the Isle of Mull was completely booked out weeks in advance. Rats! Fortunately my host John had an alternate plan that involved driving a little out of the way and taking two short ferry rides only known to locals. Perfecto!

Getting to the first ferry was a piece of cake, and the 10 minute crossing was completely painless. Unfortunately the way to the second ferry, 30 miles away, was poorly signaled and I made a wrong turn that took me in one of the wildest rides I have had in an adventurous life. The road was incredibly narrow, and hung on the side of a cliff that rose straight up from the North Sea. But these are two-way roads, which means that an anytime you might find a tractor coming the other way, at which point you might need to back a couple hundred yards until you find a slightly wider spot where two vehicles can barely make it pass each other.

I finally reached the second ferry, having gone 30 miles in a bit more than an hour. I have to acknowledge that I arrived a bit stressed, but the short wait for the ferry gave me time to collect myself. And what better way to decompress than by admiring a beautiful woman walking by. Tall, slim, with an aquiline nose, raven dark hair, and golden almond complexion. Later I found that this is a common set of features among the natives of Mull. The common explanation for this departure from paper-white red-headed Scotts goes back to 1588, when Sir Francis Drake scattered the Spanish Armada and three of the ships wrecked on the shores of Mull. The bonnie lasses of the island, fed up with their white, short, dumpy local red heads, looked with adoration at the tall swarthy strangers and promptly opened their … hearts to them to start the line of brunettes that now inhabit the island.

Mull is a beautiful island, from the tree covered shores to the high moors covered with bracken, every part of it is irrigated by hundreds of creeks. This is why it is a prime destination for holiday makers, who drive their caravans along the narrow roads to remote holiday parks, or inhabit the many B&Bs spread throughout the island. As I drove through this drizzle-drenched paradise, I reflected about what I knew of the geology of the Isle of Mull. Many years ago I saw a map of the island that showed hundreds of cone sheet dikes (arcuate fractures filled with magma) similar to the complex I mapped in Gran Canaria 40 years ago. But how did they map them? Everything here is either covered by vegetation of drops abruptly to the shore. All the rocks I see look black, wet, and are covered with moss. Squinting an eye and using my imagination I thought I could identify some ridges that could have a dike at depth. I am beginning to have the feeling those old geologists had very active Victorian imaginations.

Did I already tell you about the narrow roads? Well, they are all over the place, so to go around half of the island took me something like three hours, and by the time I went back to the ferries I was completely exhausted. I still had a long way to go to the south end of Loch Lomond, but I was trying not to speed through the caldera of Glen Coe, or the magnificent glaciated peaks of the Loch Lomond National Park. I finally reached my hotel for the night around 6:30 pm, and with a grateful heart unfolded out of my tiny Fiat, had a beer at the pub, ate a Steak Pie with Chips, and am finally putting the last touches to this email before seeking a well deserved sleep.

Scotland 2023 - Day 4. The Highlands and the Isle of Skye

My goal today was to visit the northwest coast of Scotland, and the best place to gaze over the North Sea was the Isle of Skye, which sticks out of the mainland of Scotland like a small hand. To get there I had the option of using the highway, or take the road less traveled weaving through the glaciated valleys of the Highlands, and of course I chose the latter. I had to keep an eye on the weather, however, because yesterday’s sunny sky has been replaced by gray clouds.

Country roads in Scotland are incredibly narrow, with a wide spot every 1,000 feet or so, where a polite driver can wait to let incoming traffic pass by. Not a problem since Scotts favor little cars, but a big problem because lorries also take these roads and they are so wide there is little room for error. Speaking of error, now and then I get mesmerized by the stark but beautiful landscape and slowly drift toward the right side of the road. On one occasion I startled seeing a car almost in front of me, but was able to take a sharp swing to the left just in time to avoid disaster (he, he, you should have seen the look of terror on the face of the lady driving the car).

Scotland is the land of lakes, and each of those long glaciated valleys has a beautiful lake/loch that could supply California for a year or two. It was a delight to see so much water, peacefully resting and waiting for the next torrential rain, which I thought might happen any moment now. There are fat fuzzy sheep everywhere, so it is easy to imagine a bearded Highlander strutting around in his kilt, oblivious to the steep topography and ever present drizzle. I also noticed that there are some very young forests on some of the slopes, way too geometric to be natural. Turns out timber is a lively industry here in Scotland, and the lumber companies are actively planting the crop of 2050 right now. But sometimes they overload the slopes and the whole thing becomes unstable and fails in the form of spectacular landslides. 

Eventually I got to the bridge that connects the mainland with the Isle of Skye, and then Mother Nature let me have the full Islander experience, with wind so strong that I thought my little Cinquecento was going to be tossed off the road. Oh, but the place is stunningly beautiful, with one gorgeous fjord after the other. I could well imagine the crusty Scottish salts, standing erect at the helm of their fishing vessels, sailing out of the fjords in a gale to head for the cod banks. In this day and age, however, you are more likely to see a salmon farm than an old fishing scowl.

Skye fills an important chapter in the annals of geology, because a very simple gabbroic intrusion (the remnant of a basaltic magma chamber) bulged the sequence of sedimentary rocks 60 million years ago, and fed a “distinctive” radial dike complex that allowed the old geologists to develop the concept of effective stress fields around an intrusion (more about this if and when I get to see the Isle of Mull). I call it “distinctive” because even to my trained eye it was difficult to see individual dikes, so I am taking this on faith knowing that the old boys were really good field geologists. I paid my modest homage to those old geologists, by walking a few hundred feet toward the gabbroic intrusion of Cuillin, known among British hikers as a rock climbing paradise. It is a good thing I knew that caution is the best side of valor, because the rain was coming down hard, and some of those creeks were going to swell into impassable torrents.

Did I already mention the beautiful fjords? One of my favorite moments was when there was a break in the clouds and a beam of sunlight painted a beautiful rainbow on the steep walls.

Getting out of the island I once again took the road less traveled to reach the town of Fort William, where I will spend the night. I had a very nice long talk with my host John, who wanted to talk politics. His favorite subjects were Scottish independence from England, and the chances that Trump has of getting a second term. On the latter I will say that Europeans in general like the mockery that Trump has done of the US political system and its much touted democracy, and love how he has made fools of all the citizens (Schadenfreude if you ask me). On a more personal note John went to his bookie 6 years ago, and betted 500 pounds that Trump would win the election, at odds 80 to 1. So, he made 40,000 pounds out of Trump’s win. This time round he has betted the same 500 pounds, at odds 800 to 1, so he is hoping that a Trump win will set him up for the rest of his life!

In the afternoon I drove a few miles out of town to see the Harry Potter train, which is a stretch of train track that parallels one of the lochs and that apparently was used to film some of the aerial views of the Hogwarts Express. There is not really a lot to see, but the track goes over an impressive bridge of stone arches. It reminded me a bit of the train that goes around Lake Baykal, in Siberia, which is a nostalgic steam engine that carries tourists from one end of the lake to the other.

Scotland 2023 - Day 3. On the search for Nessie

To match my sunny disposition I had a wonderful, clear day with mild temperature, the likes of which the poor Scotts had not seen all winter. I started before 7 am, so I could beat the rush hour traffic out of Edinburgh (it almost worked out), and by 8 am I was crossing the estuary of the Forth River using a super-modern bridge of futuristic design. The estuary is wide, so the bridge has three beautiful suspension spans.

Once I got to the other side I found myself in the Kingdom of Fife … now, that name rings a bell … the Kingdom of Fife … where have I heard that name before? Well, I am sure it will come to me once it is too late to do anything about it. I was enjoying my trip over the Lowlands, enjoying the suggestive names along the road, such as Aberdeen, Perth, and Saint Andrews, when it suddenly came to me: Saint Andrews was the birthplace of golf! In 1552 the Archbishop recognized the right of the town folks to take a ball and a stick to the links for a bit of fun, and since then generations of golfers, caddies, and instructors have made this the Mecca of golf. Not that I play golf, mind you, but thinking on Dave and DJ I felt obliged to take the 25 mile detour to tromp through the most famous links in the world: The Old Course. I always though playing golf on a flat green with gale force wind was kind of nutty, so imagine my shock when I saw, at 9 am in the morning, hundreds of golfers distributed over an area of maybe a square mile parallel to the shore, putting, driving, or moving in small groups from one drive to the next (there must be a dozen or more courses of 22 holes - actually, that was before the game was modified to only go for 18 holes and the pub). Dave, there is a very nice hotel here, so maybe you should hold the Ashby Invitational for one last time at Saint Andrews.

A traffic jam in the highway gave me the opportunity to detour through the valleys of the Tay and Tummel Rivers, both of which are the delight of fly anglers. To judge from the scoop net one of them was carrying, the salmon here must be the size of small dolphins. Dennis, take notice because the fishing must be really good here. Besides the fishing, the detours brought me into some of the prettiest mountain landscapes, and tested my ability of driving in roads that are very narrow and twisty indeed.

I was getting a bit stiff with driving, so I took the opportunity to walk for a bit in the Cairngorms National Park, which is an impressive mountain massif down of which tumble many streams (loaded with salmon) in so many beautiful waterfalls. I was the ultimate car tourist, but stopped at Blair Atholl and Bruar, had a lunch of Haddock and Chips, and then walked up a mile or so to the Falls of Bruar.

I kept going up the Highlands, a little disappointed that the higher I went the browner the landscape became. Clearly these slopes were covered with snow until just a few weeks ago, and the vegetation has not had a chance to wake up. Lots of small solifluction lobes on the slopes.

I was getting a little drowsy by that time (jet lag was catching up with me), so I decided to stop by the side of the road and take a little snooze, which in fact became my customary half hour nap. It is tough becoming old, but let me tell you that naps are wonderful things.

Tired of the highway I took to the small roads, trusting my general sense of direction, and an hour later reached my Booking.com accommodation, in a suburban community of Inverness. It is a nice room in a house that the landlord has turned into a hostel, and I have access to a kitchen! So I went to the store and bought a nice prepared dish of Haggis with Neeps & Tatties. Haggis is, of course, the national dish (plus blood pudding, I think), and is done by stuffing a lamb stomach with finely chopped lamb offal, and then cooking it in an oven until all the delicious flavors and spices blend together. I think we can do this Chico! We can use Faby’s instant pot to cook it, or we can roast it in the ataud. Yumm! What are Neeps & Tatties, you ask? Neeps are turnips and Tatties are potatoes, mashed and served as a side dish.

The afternoon was still young, so I drove down to Loch Ness, and spent a few happy hours looking for Nessie. The lake fills the valley formed by the Great Glen fault, Scotland’s own version of the San Andreas fault. The fault brings in contact terrains in Northern Scotland that are up to 400 million years old, so the fault has to be younger than that age. In fact, it looks geologically young, so maybe one of these days it will give our tartan-wearing friends a scare. Loch Ness is a beautiful body of water, and with Inverness at one end greatly reminds me of Lake Geneva. I think I would like to become a Physical Limnologist so I could spend my time sounding and sampling beautiful lakes, but I may need to wait until my next incarnation to get that done.

Tomorrow I plan to head for the Isle of Skye, which is another of the shrines of geology.

Scotland 2023 - Day 2. Edinburgh downs and ups

I found out that at 7 am it is impossible to find an Uber that could take me from Livingston Lodge, in the town of Livingston (named after the famous Scottish missionary and explorer of Africa) to the airport, so I thought I could take the bus there. Enter Google maps while I have wi-fi at the hotel, so I looked carefully at the route, trying to imprint it in my mind. Unbelievably I didn’t get lost, but walking along narrow roads with no sidewalks was a little unnerving. I do hate being a pedestrian!

My luck held, though, and after a couple of moments of doubt I finally got close enough to the right bus stop, and after what seemed like 10 miles the bus dropped me off close enough to the airport that I could reach it walking. I breathed deeply, getting ready for a battle with Hertz, but after some initial confusion they came through, and by 11 am I was driving out of the airport in a tiny Fiat. Note to Dennis: I had to add insurance of 33 pounds per day, and when you make plans be careful that you arrive between 8 am and 5 pm.

By now I had already lost two full days of vacation, so I had no time to loose and headed directly to Edinburgh Centre, intent on doing as much tourism as possible on my one day in the capital of Scotland. I was a bit concerned about finding a place to park, but my geographic sense held true and when I saw that I had entered the financial district I found a small street and parked there. By chance I found myself within two blocks of one of the stops of the tourist Hop On - Hop Off bus. Eureka! In no time whatsoever I was on board, with a senior ticket that gave me free access to the three routes through the city. This is my favorite way to see a new city, in the “comfort” of a double-decker bus (unfortunately the top deck is a bit drafty, but I was wearing my polar explorer jacket and lived true to my motto “Turisums muss Weh tun”).

Edinburgh is a beautiful city that had its origins in the XVth century but was gentrified in the 18 century during the Scottish Enlightenment into a city of handsome mansions, government buildings, bridges, and cathedrals. It is considered to be in the “flats” of Scotland, but in reality is built over the roots of a Paleozoic volcano, which left behind lots of volcanic necks and thick lava flows, that the glaciers of the Ice Age sculpted into roches muttonnees. The one in the center of the city was used as the foundation of the Edinburgh Castle, and the one in the southeast was reserved as the Royal Hunting Preserve, but is now the Holyrood Park, which is the delight of all folks who love to go hiking and climb Arthur’s Seat, or just go for a Sunday stroll. Today happens to be Sunday, so I joined the fun and lost myself in one of the trails up the mountain. For you geologists, this is the same walk that James Hutton took with his little dog, and it was close inspection of Arthur’s Seat that led him to formulate the principles of Uniformitarianism and Geologic Time. Adjacent to Holyrood Park is the high tech museum Dynamic Earth, devoted to explaining the fabulous history of the universe, the Solar System, and our Blue Planet.

For lunch I stopped at a Chinese place and had Pigs Feet in a Szechwan sauce that was super delicious. The owner of the joint looked at me with surprise, and took great pains into explaining me what exactly was in the dish. I assured her that it was exactly what I wanted, and proceeded to demonstrate my admiration of her culinary art by leaving a small pile of bones behind. “Wow”, she said, “you are even more thorough than I am”.  I know, I know, I should have gone for something Scottish, but I am going to save that for country pubs.

Edinburgh University is of course very famous. For geologists it is because James Hutton and James Playfair worked there, but for the rest of the world it is better known for its School of Medicine, with names such as Simpson (the discoverer of chloroform) and Lister (the discoverer of carbolic spray and Father of Aseptic Surgery). There was one problem, though; with so many medical students there was great demand for dissection bodies, so grave robbing was a fluorishing trade. Thousands of tombs in the many cemeteries around the city are actually empty boxes. But there was still good money to be made, so a couple of canal digging contractors simply went into the very profitable murder business as a side gig.

Speaking of cemeteries, the one on the Church of Saint Cuthbert, established in the XVth century, has the statue of a dog (a Golden Retriever look-alike), whose owner died when the dog was but two years old. Every night after the interment the dog would come to sleep over the tomb of his master, and this went on for the next 12 years, until the dog himself died of old age. How is that for devotion?

If I continue telling all the things I saw and did this letter would be a very long indeed, so I will save some of my stories for the next time I see you.

Eventually I made it back to my little car, right at the time when a cop was giving it the stink eye. So I clicked the door open from a few feet way and lied “I was just leaving, officer”. He accepted my claim without much trouble and proceeded to inspect the next car in the line. Maybe my luck has come back. Yes, it must be back, because I managed to navigate my way back to my hotel without any significant trouble. I am now back in my overheated room, basking on the warmth after a very cold and windy day (but also an unusual sunny day). Life is good.

Scotland 2023 - Day 1. Arrival in Edinburgh - Not looking good

 To add insult to injury British Airways not only stuck me in a middle seat in row 78, but it was also the only one in which the screen was busted, so instead of watching movies all night I had a whisky and soda, ate a hearty meal liberally irrigated with red wine, and then went to sleep until an hour before landing, when I woke up just in time for a traditional English breakfast and a minuscule cup of coffee.

With the time change I landed at 2 pm and manage to finagle a 7 pm flight to Edinburgh, where I got around 8:`15 pm and by the time I came out to the car rental hall I found the Hertz counter deserted. This is where things started to go downhill. I asked the rep for Budget and he told me they had all gone home for the night. Maybe I should try to call the Hertz number? I had arranged with my cell carrier in the US to have phone service here, and went through a rigamarole to get a SIM card that would allow me to do that. Nada!

Unable to contact Hertz I went to Europcar to see what it would take for me to rent a car. 1,000 pounds! He, he, thank you but that is too rich for my blood. So I went to see if there was a tram or a bus that would take me close to my hotel, but no cigar. I had to take a taxi (40 pounds) to my hotel, and in the way I was trying to figure out what to do: Shall I just ditch the idea of a car rental and move through buses and trains? Or shall I go back to the airport tomorrow morning (in a taxi) to try to fight it out with Hertz?

I think I will go back to Hertz, but I have to sleep on my options.

 Scotland 2023. Day 0.

Today was supposed to have been Day 1 of my eight-day trip to Scotland, but British Airways cancelled my flight, without “by your leave”, so I have lost day and a half of vacation. Anyway, in an hour or so I will take a 7:30 pm flight to London Heathrow, and by tomorrow I will be landing in Edinburgh at 9 pm. It is going to be a really long travel spell.

Faby brought me to the Modesto Mall at 10 am to take the bus to the metro terminal in Pleasanton, and suggested that I could spend the day in San Francisco riding the trollies, which is exactly what I did. I got out at the Embarcadero metro station, and took line J down the peninsula to Balboa Park, had a rice bowl with fried gyoza at a hole in the wall (I got there two minutes before a horde of hungry teenagers who had just got out of school), and then took line K back to downtown, where I changed light rail to line N to go past Golden Gate Park and all the way to Ocean Beach. Then back to downtown to take line M back to Balboa Park, to take the metro and finally get to the airport. It was a delightful slow trip through a beautiful city on a sunny day, with people enjoying the many parks and street side cafes!

 Once at the airport the evil folks of British Airways paid me back for getting a super cheap ticket by sticking me in the middle seat back in row 78. Grr!

But all is well that ends well, and I look forward to visiting legendary Scotland with its fine pubs and landmark geologic sites.