Daily Blog #5 – Belfast to !!!

Fuck.

Fuck!

FUCK!

Phew! Glad I got that out of my system.

Today was another travel day. The last major one of this vacation. And the one that, on paper, would be the most adventurous. Why?

Because it would involve a boat.

And the end result DID involve a boat, although it went somewhere completely different than where I needed to go.

And that was only the beginning!

Let me see if I can explain it matter-of-factly, without screaming or saying the word “fucktard.”

[Deep inhale]

OK.

Today’s destination:

Scotland.

The whole real purpose of this little UK excursion, was to go here. To Scotland.

And when I found out that I could go by ferry from Belfast, to Glasgow, I was like “yup imma do that shit.” And then I realized, just two days ago, that all of those ferry rides were sold out for today, the day I wanted to depart. They were sold out yesterday, and tomorrow as well. Pretty easy to sell out when you’re only offering THREE BOAT RIDES per day!

Flights? Sure. It’s a short flight: 40 minutes from Northern Ireland to Scotland. Price? 200 pounds. On Easyjet. Which means, you’ll have to pay extra for having a bag? So that’s like another 50 pounds. So the final price is the rough equivalent to 300 USD. Fuck that shit!

Just when I started to think that my only hopes of making it to Scotland were by going to the docks on the day of, and offering a crab-fishing crew a bevy of sloppy blowjobs in exchange for a shuttle across the sea, I managed to find a different ferry. Going yes, to Scotland, but not anywhere near Glasgow. This was a ferry to “Cairnryan,” and don’t ask me to pronounce that. 50 dollar ticket: purchased.

The boat itself? Great! Got a bunch of ways to keep yourself entertained for the entirety of the 2 hour trip. (Read: alcohol.) And then we get off the boat, and I ask the desk people about the bus, and they say “you’ll need to pay for the bus in cash… oh, no, there’s no cash machine here, anywhere, at the dock.”

I find the bus driver for the one bus that says it’s going to Glasgow—the last bus of the day—and he says, yeah, well don’t worry about the money—this bus is booked full.

FUCK

Fortunately, there is another dude here, a kind of Asian-lookin’ dude, with a hot wife and a cute kid, and he’s trying to get to Glasgow too. We decide to team up, to tackle this situation together, and if it wasn’t for this man, I would still be back in Cairnryan, sleeping at the dock.

We convince a DIFFERENT bus driver to take us to a nearby sleepy little town, which he does, telling us not to worry about paying him, and this was a very warm welcome to Scottish hospitality. Also, he was dropping the word “wee” like crazy, and I absolutely love it, think it’s hilarious that they say that instead of “little.”

In the sleepy little town, “Stranraer” there is a train station, but for some reason or another, there’s no trains running that day, and the one guy working there is all like, “well, we got a back-up bus running instead.” So a bus comes, picks the four of us up, and fueled by the sounds of late 90’s electronic music, the bus driver speeds along the coast, zipping about, making me nauseous, making me sick for two straight hours, until finally, we are there. That’s right:

Ayr.

Now, as some of you more eagle-eyed observers may be able to point out,

Ayr is NOT Glasgow. Ayr is also not even close to Glasgow. We only drove about half way. And then we were forced to get off the bus, and get on a… train? An old train, a diesel-powered train. Which took us 2 stops, a total of 5 minutes, to a place called “Prestwick,” where we disembarked our train, and transferred onto yet ANOTHER TRAIN! I was pulling my friggin hair out at this point. The Asian dude was laughing about it the whole time. I really admired his ability to look at a shitty situation and just laugh. Also, since he was living in Glasgow, he knew the route to take during this last leg of the trip. Again. Lifesaver.

Thankfully this train would be the last one we’d have to take on this journey; about 45 minutes later, the train pulled into Glasgow central station and salvation was ours.

There is a LOT I want to say about Glasgow, and my initial impressions and all that hoo-haa, but I’m so pooped with the travelin’ that I’ll have to share it with you guys tomorrow.

Ciao!