All I Wanted Was a Nice European Vacation

I have a vivid memory from living in Zurich, not of an event, but rather a lifestyle of traveling in Europe…Where traveling meant you took the train (either from the airport or straight from home) to the historic center of some old city where you could explore the new town, find a new bar, enjoy a new restaurant and take in the overall experience of a new place and culture.  Our recent trips to Europe have involved staying at Martin’s parent’s house in the countryside of Germany or driving to the Alps. And while amazing, it was not satisfying the craving…This trip to Europe, I traded the 7am flight from London to Germany, for  5 nights in Scotland for New Years.  What I got, was what I had envisioned, but with just a few road bumps along the way:

• While we were able to save money thanks to a free hotel in London, we ended up spending the same amount, if not more, on cabs to and from said hotel
• Two days before we left on the trip, I realized we had forgotten to reserve transportation for two legs of our journey (to Inverness and to Aberdeen).  And due to the last minute reservations and the holidays, we ended up paying double the normal fares and having to take a bus on one leg…the bus ticket was so expensive the driver shockingly asked us where we were headed for that amount 
•  On the train into London on our way to Edinburgh we realized that we had bought our tickets for November 28, not December 28…Thankfully tickets were still available for a train that day (since we had dinner reservations that night)…unfortunately they were over double what we had originally paid or approximately $400.  A flight was only slightly less expensive and driving was out of the question – it would have taken 10 hours.  So we bit the bullet and put another drop in the bucket. 
•  After originally booking our flight back to London from Aberdeen, we made the decision to stay in Inverness.  We did not think to change our flight to be out of Inverness, resulting in the 5 hour bus ride.     
•  And our final flight back to the US went through Washington DC and due to a plane change was delayed 1.5 hours…thanks to Storm Hercules, it was delayed an additional 2 hours once we had boarded the plane making our trek home from Scotland over 30 hours all in.