BTDU

After a very smooth overnight flight from Air Canada, but with hardly any sleep…mainly due to getting totally engrossed in the Martin Scorsese 3 and a half hour film, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on a true story….

….we touched down at Heathrow bang on schedule at 11.50 am at Terminal 2…

Our flight to Edinburgh was scheduled to leave at 1.50 pm from Terminal 5, in between which we had to collect a sweater of Julie’s (left behind on our flight to Dubai on 17 December!) from the Emirates lost property office in Terminal 3 – so a bit of a logistical challenge…

However, after finally disembarking, walking swiftly through this vast complex, getting a bus and being misdirected on wild goose chases 3 times, Julie and her cashmere jumper were finally re-united…

…. however, by now it was 1.05 pm..

Getting to Terminal 5 was not straightforward, given that it involves getting a tube train and jogging through the endless corridors and changing floor levels frequently…. however, despite that, we arrived at our departure gate 20 minutes before our flight was due to leave…only to find it had been delayed by 3 hours, due to IT issues…

Eventually, after a last minute change of gate, we finally left at 5.50 pm…

…. arriving at Edinburgh Aitport, in the sunset, about an hour later…

…and it would have been good if our checked through luggage had also appeared in the baggage reclaim area too…

Since it hadn’t, we joined the queue of other passengers who had suffered the same fate…

Fortunately, once we got to the desk, a very competent young man reassured us that our cases would be arriving in 2 hours time and would be delivered the next morning 😊

Grateful for that news, we exited, to be met by the family paparazzi, in the shape of my sister Sheila and her husband Steve…

…who were less impressed by my authentic boots than we were for their patience in waiting so long to drive us home😊🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

On entering No. 6 we were immediately greeted by our dog, Skye, who welcomed us warmly, but in a kind of “about time too!” way 🐕‍🦺😉…

We then fielded numerous questions about our trip from S&S, one of which was: “Can we see your suntans?”, knowing how our history in that department was pretty miserable to date…

…so we duly obliged…

After having a lovely meal they had prepared in advance for us all, we were both overcome by waves of intense tiredness so we retired, very pleased to be re-united with our own bed again, reflecting on how grateful we were to have experienced our “Trip of a Lifetime” by travelling around the world in 80 days; surely that would be a great title for a book or film…😉