Scotland Trip: Day 1? and Day 2

It has been ages since I've actually blogged and I quite missed it. I figured I'd blog then, while we're in Scotland so that I can keep family and friends up to date and also have an excellent record of our trip! So I'll start at the beginning. We left July 7th. The reason it says "Day 1?" Is honestly because I have yet to truly sleep and it really feels like I'm still on the 7th. We were lucky enough to get a direct flight from Salt Lake City to Paris and we upgraded our seats for the extra leg room. Unluckily we were in the seats that were in front of the exit, so they wouldn't recline. Definitely a bummer because it was a 9.5 hour long flight.

Our flight path from Salt Lake to Paris - not what we expected.

Excited to be flying out!

 We arrived in Paris around 11 am and that's when our day began to get crazy. Although the flight in was surprisingly beautiful with quilted farmland for miles upon miles! The Charles de Gaulle airport is massive and rather confusing, especially when you don't know the language. We were finally able to locate our bags and then had to face the mobs to get our tickets and then proceeded to check our bags. The airport was insane. It was so busy crazy that I honestly thought my one chance of seeing the Eiffel Tower was not going to happen because we knew it would take a while to get in to the heart of Paris. I was honestly getting ready to cry because it was all I had hoped for since booking our tickets back in April. Luckily we were able to get our bags checked, train tickets bought, and on the trains by12. We had approximately 2.5 hrs to get to the Eiffel Tower and back if we were to catch our flight.

Looking down on the clouds.

Waiting on the train in to Paris.

One of the soccer stadiums. The buildings we passed were all covered in graffiti. Amazing how something like that spans cultures, even if you still can't understand it because it's French.

 The train was interesting, I had never been on an underground train system and it was fascinating to see. We had to switch trains midway but made it to the stop for the Eiffel Tower within an hour. I fully expected to just see the Tower upon coming up from underground and was shocked I couldn't see it. As we walked though it was amazing just how quickly it appeared. I am still in awe at how big it really was. We were able to take pictures with it, but none that included our whole bodies and the whole tower together, it was just too big. Finally we figured out we could use panorama and get the whole thing but just for one of us at a time.

We saw a lot of guards around the tower. It was kind of eye opening as I don't believe I've ever seen this in the United States.

Looking up the tower.

The trolley you can take to the top if you wanted to.

Our panoramic photo of the Eiffel Tower. The only way we could get the whole thing in one shot!

      David & I with the Tower.

The best we could do. We tried getting someone to take our photo and she didn't quite grasp how to work the camera...

Some of the beautiful buildings.

On our return journey we had a train of primarily French citizens and understood none of the conversation. There was a very inebriated man who seemed to believe he was a conductor for the train. He was crazy!

The train tunnels under ground.

We made it back with about an hour to spare before our flight and I was lucky enough to sleep for about the hour. Everything about this flight felt rather disorganized and I didn't have faith in the pilot. Luckily we had a 3x3 cabin setup and just David and I, so we were able to spread out a little. The flight was quick enough but we had to abort our initial approach because turbulence had bumped us too close to another aircraft. Birmingham, like Paris, was shockingly dotted in farmland. Sadly when we landed, we learned our flight had been delayed with no true timeline. We were supposed to leave around 830 and now had an estimated leave time of 10. We waited in the terminal for what seemed like hours.

Our plane to Birmingham.

The farmland surrounding Birmingham.

Birmingham itself. No more grid system for the Utah girl!

When we finally got called we were on a tiny little propellor plane with 2x2 cabin seating. We actually boarded from the Tarmac which was a new experience. I was very excited to finally be going to Scotland! Sadly we wouldn't be able to see anything but seeing the towns all lit up at night was a good compensation. When we arrived in Glasgow, rather unluckily, we found out our luggage had not made it on to the flight from Birmingham :( NOT the way we wanted to end this long traveling day.

Looking down on England from the sky. It was awesome!

I couldn't capture the sunset to its fullest beauty!

Glasgow! Finally!

David's parents picked us up and we were able to shower - albeit without a change of clothes. Speed to the present I've been able to experience a REAL breakfast and have slept quite a bit of the day waiting for our bags to arrive, but we're so excited to finally be here and I'm excited to finally have met my in laws, who are truly wonderful people. Once our baggage arrives we should be able to finally begin exploring.