Today shall be titled the Megabus madness. Yes indeed, madness. If you couldn't tell by the equation above, we had quite the situation on our hands. Mary set her alarm for 6:00 A.M., so we would have enough time to eat breakfast and get the rest of our stuff packed up. The alarm failed to go off, and my friend Nicole woke up at 6:58 and informed us, in choice English I assure you, the wonderful predicament that we found ourselves in. We scrambled to throw the last of our stuff into our backpacks while Mary headed out to call a cab for us. I luckily packed most of my stuff the night before and was out of Mary's apartment two minutes after waking up.
We had to wait a few minutes for the cab to finally arrive, and we hurriedly jumped in and waved a quick goodbye to Mary (sorry for the terrible goodbye). My friend Nicole told the cab driver to go as fast as he could to get to the Aberdeen bus station downtown. He took his sweet, sweet time in getting downtown and I was surprised to see the bus still sitting there when we arrived. I took out my ticket so we would be ready to go, and when the cab stopped my friend Nina sprinted to the bus and told them to wait. We were scolded for about a minute about the importance of punctuality and how we were supposed to be on the bus 15 minutes prior to departure and how inconsiderate we were blah blah blah. Not a very good start to our morning.
So after the scolding, Nina showed the Scottish man her papers and got on the bus. Nicole showed her papers and was also good to go. That left me. I went to give him my bus papers but they were no where to be found. More choice English words. So I told him I didn't have my papers, hoping that he would be understanding. His response, "No papers, no traveling." Shoot. Biggest fail ever. Normally I like Scottish accents but not now. Nicole decided to stay with me in case I couldn't get on the bus because I had also left my cell phone at Mary's flat, a fact we discovered on our taxi ride. Good friend. So I stood there for about 4 seconds trying to figure out what to do. Nina is on the bus and I am frantic. Then the lightbulb went on and I remembered that I had brought a spare copy of all of my papers for emergencies. What a thinker. So I told the man that I had the papers but they were in my backpack and I could get them. Too late. The bus left. More choice English words. So Nina was on the bus by herself, and Nicole and I were stuck in the Aberdeen Bus Station. Wonderful.End of the story: We caught another bus going to the same location as our original bus because I think the bus driver felt bad for us. It left 5 minutes after our other bus, and everything was fine. Nicole and I met up with Nina and continued on our way to the Glasgow airport. The bus driver who yelled at us formally introduced himself at the bus stop but I honestly couldn't understand half of what he said due to his thick Scottish accent. All I wanted was to get on the bus and sleep! It was a rather stressful start to the morning, and I was relieved when we finally made it to the airport.
At the airport, we had another funny moment. This was legit funny. The security guy had to look at our passports and check our tickets and he looked at Nina's and said "Brilliant." Mine, "Brilliant." Nicole's "Not so much." Wow. Could this morning get any better at this point? Nina and I shared a good laugh and reassured Nicole that he was just kidding. So after all of the morning's activities, we were able to get on our flight and got back to London.
We found our hostel with relative ease. It was located in a more residential neighborhood, close to Hyde Park. We walked around at night and finally had fish and chips! It was very good and I think I'm starting to like fish and seafood since being in Spain. I also got a McFlurry on our walk, always have to have dessert after the meal. It's the Spanish way. We were able to see the affluent part of London on our walk, quite different than where we stayed before. It's always fun to imagine what it would be like to live in other places, and strolling around this neighborhood definitely gave me time to fantasize and dream. It was a good way to end the day that began with so much stress.
"choice English."
ReplyDeleteoh, what a morning that was.