The downside to booking tickets through London is that we had to make it back there before we could get home. Since we were currently in Aberdeen, that meant another long driving day (roughly 130 miles). We packed everything into the Fiesta fairly early and started down the road.

Almost all of our driving this trip was in fair conditions - not too rainy and only during the daytime. This last drive was probably the worst one due to heavy rains over most of Aberdeenshire, Perth, and Fife. We had considered trying to do some more scenic driving, but the rain put a definitive stop to that since we could only see about 500m from the road.

This was probably also the most city heavy day for driving, though with all the practice we'd both had navigating through Inverness and Aberdeen we didn't run into any new road signage or other wrong-side-of-the-road problems. About 5 minutes before we got to the rental car return the Fiesta shut off without telling me (while stopped, thank goodness). We were glad to be rid of it.

Our flight from Edinburgh to London was brief and not at all scenic. Heathrow was again a huge mess. We tried to take a private shuttle called a "Hoppa Bus" to our hotel, but we bought the tickets and it didn't show up at the stop for 45 minutes. We opted for a cab instead - maybe I'll try to get a refund, but I'm not hopeful for it. I'll chalk it up to lessons learned.

Our hotel was a typical airport hotel. The room was fine, but the entire place was built to nickel-and-dime you for the smallest things. We ordered gin and tonics at dinner (listed as gins with recommended tonics, $5-7) and they charged us extra for the tonic water. The tonic water was nowhere to be found on the menu, and in fact they didn't list a price for a gin and tonic, only the gin. I ordered a meal that was supposed to come with an avocado and got a green puree that was at least 50% mayonnaise. More lessons learned. When we shared a beer they didn't charge us for the privilege of using their glassware for 30 minutes, so I guess it could have been worse.

We got as much sleep as we could before waking up and taking a taxi back to the airport. We entered a fugue state for the next 12 hours as we watched various in-flight movies and read our books, but the only important thing here is that we got home with all our bottles intact.

This marks the end of this travel journal. I started this as a way to share our trip with friends and family, but also as a way to chronicle our experience for ourselves some years down the road. I'll likely do some work in the coming week or so to tweak things and fix formatting, since until this post the entire blog has been edited from my phone.

Thank you for keeping up with our trip!

Love,

-Eric and Susan