Off to Scotland

My old college roommate Jess caught me online a little over a week ago to tell me, "I'm going to be in Scotland!" Given that Scotland is a lot closer to me than Seattle, I was only too happy to take a train up to see her for the weekend.

I packed on Friday morning (of course I had not managed to pack in advance), and then caught the train from King's Cross at 2 PM. Yes, very cheeky to leave in the middle of the work day, but using the on-board Wi-Fi, it was easy to work to finish the presentation I had to do. I was actually a bit surprised at how hard it was to work whilst travelling backwards, but luckily I got everything done in time before we pulled into the Edinburgh Waverly station at 6:30 PM.

Of course work was not my only entertainment on the journey, as the Young Dutchman called, as I teased him for using the ancient technology of the telephone, he said, "I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice!" Awwww, how sweet. He told me good news about all of the jobs he's been offered after going to a bunch of media networking events this past week, and how he managed to pull a bit of reverse psychology on a girl and get her to ask him out. As usual, he had me giggling for our entire conversation.

Once I arrived in Edinburgh, I was grateful for my iPhone, as I was able to use it to figure out where I was and plot myself on a map to make it to the hotel. Once there, I used Skype to call Jess, and she came down to meet me. We then were joined by the colleague that she's travelling with, and we went out in search of a pub that a friend of mine who lives in Edinburgh suggested. When we got there, it turned out to be way too loud, so we wandered on and found another place that was much quieter, where we had a really nice dinner. We also had a great time using my iPhone to take pictures of our mini-reunion!

Then that place got loud as well (the music turned up and a surprise birthday party arrived), so Jess and I decided to go back to hotel with a bottle of wine and chatted for a while, then called our friend Shelley back in the US. Had a good hour-long conversation with her, before finally at 1 AM we tucked ourselves in and went to sleep!