If you invite us, we will come

I left on Sunday but it was a very stressful Saturday because I thought I was leaving at 11pm and it turns out I was leaving at 11am. I had lots of plans for those 12 hours which mostly consisted of getting ready for Scotland. Luckily I was online when I got my 24 hour check in from the airline. My first reaction was why are they sending this so early. My second was holy sh*t I better get out of bed and get going, I have a lot to do! A leisurely weekend of getting ready turned into a frantic one day of getting ready. So far I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything, knock on wood!

The flights were uneventful. I was worried about being hungry on the 10 hour leg from San Francisco to Amsterdam so stopped at 7-11 and loaded up on junk food. Turns out all I ate was my beef jerky and Pringles. International flights are the only ones that serve food. Not great food but it kept my stomach from eating itself. I also watched 3 movies, Self/Less with Ryan Reynolds which I really enjoyed. Trainwreck, which while it had a couple of laugh out loud moments wasn’t as funny as I was expecting and Transporter Refueled. I enjoyed it for what it was.

Met up with my partner in gluttony Su in Amsterdam. Where I go, she goes (I’ve tried ditching her but she’s like gum at the bottom of my shoe, can’t get rid of it or her). Of course I’m kidding! My vacations wouldn’t be the same without my fellow Asian cackler. We spent our one hour layover catching up and cackling. It had been a whole month since I’ve seen her (which is the same thing I said when we went to Vietnam, for someone who lives in a different state, I see her a lot, lucky me?).

We had a couple of rows between us on our flight to Glasgow so I put my ear plugs in and tried to sleep. It was a loud flight. When we got off the plane Su turned to me and said, they were speaking English. We do have to concentrate to understand what people are saying because they speak so fast and have an accent (to us). Yay, we are in Scotland!

I didn’t have the address of where we were staying on me (it’s all online) for when I filled out my entry form for Scotland on the plane so I walked up with Su and we proceeded to talk off the ear of the poor woman who was just trying to stamp out passport. We were a little excited to be in country. And she was very sweet.

Our friends James and Imogen were picking us up. They shall be known from this point on as ImoJim. We met them a year ago when we were in Vietnam and fell head over heels in love with them. We warned them that if they invited us to Scotland that we would come. Apparently they didn’t believe us.. This fabulous and way too cool for us duo got engaged and invited us to their wedding. So the answer to the question who gets married in Scotland (everyone asked me that) is Scottish people.

Wandering out into the airport we didn’t see them and thought, we should have made a plan on where to meet. Luckily Glasgow is a small airport. Course we still didn’t see them as we wandered around. Su, having been here before said we should go to the area that said pick up. Once we got there I said this is the shuttle pickup let’s go look around. In my infinite wisdom I said I will look inside and you look outside and let’s meet at the next set of doors. Well the doors were emergency exits so I came back out  and of course couldn’t find Su! I was getting hot but didn’t want to take my jacket off because it’s the last thing she saw me in. I wandered down where we started because when two people are lost its good for one to stay in place to be found. Hopefully both people don’t have the same idea. At that time ImoJim ran up, they had been running late. So we didn’t miss them! Was so awesome seeing them again! James went to look for Su and of course as soon as he left, Su found us. Imogen went to look for James who showed up after she left, just like a comedy routine and then finally we were all reunited. So happy! We are in Scotland with two of the coolest people around! What were they thinking inviting us to their wedding?

For those who don’t know (since I never reached that day in my Vietnam blogs) we met ImoJim a year ago when we were cruising Halong Bay. We were on an excursion and they were listening to Su, Nancy and I bicker about our pic. Imogen offered to take the picture for us and a friendship was born. We only spent a day together before our adventures took us in different directions but there are some people you just click with and we clicked. And now here we are to celebrate their wedding! Unfortunately Nancy couldn’t make it due to work.

We got in around noonish and wanted to try and get our body clocks set so no naps for us. After a quick visit to their amazing flat we were off!

Our first stop was a fantastic little restaurant that had rave reviews. The hilarious thing was a lot of the food was Asian inspired. But we did try a bite of ImoJim’s haggis. The rest of the food Su and I ordered, we like to try a lot of things.

My favorite was the pan fried chicken livers with pickled veggies (shown at the top of the page).  It was cooked to perfection and we also ate some mussels. Su and I have never been light eaters, lol.

Next we were off to The Wee Pub which was as wee on the inside as you would think. So cute and quaint. I had an amazing apple soda in there. We sat around just telling stories and laughing. So much laughter!

Since its Monday night, it wasn’t too busy the bars weren’t too busy. We stopped in Vodka Wodka to have a drink. I actually ordered an orange flavored cocktail. It was very tasty but a little sweet for me so by the next bar I went back to water. I did split a Long Island iced tea with Su but it was too sweet so just had a sip. It was nostalgic for me since I drank them in the Army.

After the 3rd bar we called it a night. I think it was around 7pm but we were wiped after flying for so long. We went back to ImoJim’s flat and sat around and gabbed some more and James ran to the store to get us a late night snack (or 8pm snack). The cheddar was amazing, add in some ham, bread and the motherload of snacks I bought for the plane ride and it was a feast. We fell on it like starving dogs which is funny because when James asked us if we wanted anything we were like, “I guess I could eat.”

Fat, sassy and very happy we crawled into bed and went to sleep. Yay, we’re in Scotland!