Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in the gallery.
Ken worked a partial day from home, and Julie went into the office but came home early.
We had a bit of excitement as we were leaving, because we had arranged with our neighbors to drop our trash off with them, but Marnie wasn't at home. We eventually got ahold of Marnie and she told us that she'd be back home soon, so we just left the trash bag in front of their garage.
We finally left home around 4:00pm. Perhaps surprisingly, we had no major problems with traffic on the way to airport. Ken dropped Julie off around 4:55pm, then went to park the car at the employee lot.
We met for dinner inside security at French Meadow Bakery & Cafe, which has a good selection of gluten-free meals. It worked out well enough that we'll probably do it again the next time we fly somewhere.
The rest of the evening was uneventful. The flight left on time, and we both managed to sleep a little on the plane.
In Amsterdam, got lunch at McDonalds before catching our connection to Glasgow. We initially ordered at a kiosk but it wouldn't accept the credit card and we had to go to a person to pay — maybe because of chip-and-signature rather than chip-and-PIN?
Although we boarded on time, our connection ended up being about 45 minutes late. Air traffic control wouldn't let us start our engines because the flight pattern was too busy. Julie slept while waiting for take-off, and Ken slept on the flight, so we got to Glasgow feeling pretty good.
Once in Glasgow, we took the airport bus to the Queen Street station, then the train to Milngavie. We arrived at Morag's around 3:00pm. We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with Morag, and then arranged to meet our friend Tom (from our last sailing class in Scotland in 2014) for dinner.
Tom and his cousin Roger picked us up at Aunt Morag's around 6:45pm. We had a bit of confusion dealing with everyone's cell phones, so this was a little later than originally expected. We got dinner at the Tickled Trout, a little pub not far away.
The food was really good, although the service was slow. Julie had a ham hock, and Ken splurged on a pumpkin pasta. For dessert, we split a sampler, which included a really good Eton Mess.
We were back at Morag's around 9:15pm, but went down to our room soon after and were in bed by 10:00pm.
We had to leave for our train to the airport around 11:00am, so we only had a few hours to visit with Morag. We got up, showered, and got breakfast with her around 8:45am, by which time we were pretty much over jet lag.
Besides just chatting with Morag, we spent a while looking at pictures of relatives on Facebook — so Morag got to see pictures of Kaitlyn, Abby, Will, etc.
Unfortunately, we had looked at the weekday train schedule instead of the Sunday schedule, so we ended up catching a later train than expected — 11:41am. Due to construction at the train station, it was difficult to find the airport bus, so we got to the airport around 1:00pm.
Checking in went ok, but we had some confusion with the self-service bag tags, which we couldn't figure out how to use. After dropping off the bags, we got a quick lunch at the airport Tesco grocery store (salads and sushi) and then caught our small turboprop — although we left about 45 minutes late.
We arrived in Kirkwall with no problems. This is the smallest commercial airport we have ever been in, just one gate — the back door to the building. After our luggage arrived, we caught a cab to our hotel (The Shore) around 2:10pm. After checking in, we went for a walk to the marina (although Mahina was not there yet), then got a little lost, and finally ate dinner at Dil Se, an Indian restaurant we remembered from our last trip to Kirkwall.
After dinner, we went for another walk (back by the marina) and spent night at the hotel planning for the next day and relaxing.
We pre-ordered breakfast at the hotel for 8:45am. After that, we went to island of Hoy to see the Scapa Flow Museum. This was the main base for the Royal Navy during WWI and WWII, to control the northern exit out of the North Sea for Germany. The museum was pretty good, but we definitely didn't wear enough — we should have brought warm hat or long underwear (note: this was a common theme for the rest of the trip!). It was cold, windy, and sometimes raining. We walked to the bus station, took the bus to Houton ferry, then across to Lyness. The cafe at the museum was good (and heated).
We got back about 20 minutes before the initial Mahina orientation. We met the other 4 students (2 men and 2 women). We felt seriously overwelcomed in terms of sailing experience — everyone was a lot more experienced than us. Two people (Martin and Lisa) just bought boats and will be cruising full-time. Rick is a cardiothoracic surgeon, and does transplants. Michael just retired as an orthopedic surgeon.
During the orientation, the Kirkwall harbormaster stopped by and we all met him. It turned out that he was a retired farmer whose family had been farming their land just north of Kirkwall since the 1600s and had been on the island since 1480. Wow.
Julie almost had a meltdown during orientation because she was hungry. The orientation was supposed to be 4-6pm but was 4-8pm instead, so we were not prepared in terms of food. This seems to be a common theme with sailing schools in general, since the same thing happened to us in both of our previous classes in Turkey and Scotland.
After the orientation, we had dinner with the other students at the nearby Kirkwall Hotel. It was surprisingly good and was probably one of the best meals we've ever had in Scotland. Ken had a chicken dish in a cream sauce with haggis, which was excellent.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel and did laundry for the next day. It seemed important to have as many fresh clothes as possible, since it didn't sound like we would have too many opportunities to do laundry before Tromsų.