Day 1

Yeah! I finally have my pictures. Unfortunately all of the first days' and part of the second days' pictures were overwritten by photos I took before I realised my pictures were gone. So I will be using my dad's pictures for that.

So, after all of the last minute hoovering, dishes, and general tidying, we hopped on the bus to meet my parents at Edinburgh airport. They ended up being about 25 minutes late. After our hugs the first thing they talked about was Heathrow. :) We have never had to go through Heathrow and we hope we never have to. They said their flight from Chicago was delayed by 1 1/2 hours because of a snow storm. The plane was waiting for a flight to arrive from Texas. This delay caused them to be late for their flight from Heathrow. They were obviously in a rush once they got to customs. The officer took his time chatting with them and looking over their passports. When my parents asked, "Aren't we going to miss our fight?" the officer said, "Probably." Then when they asked someone else, "Will they hold our flight?" (since they remembered that their flight had been delayed waiting for another flight), the person responded, "No, because you flew in on American Airlines. If you flew in on British Airlines they would have waited for you."

Appearantly the travel agent told them they wouldn't have much of a walk at all from the the gate they arrive at to the one they depart from at Heathrow. This was far from the truth. They had to book it from one end of the airport to the other. Thankfully their flight was delayed and they made it just a few minutes before take off.

Other than that, they loved the flight. My dad even took some video of take-off and landing. He loved that part. That is the part of the flight I dislike the most. We are so glad that their first experience flying was a good experience (other than Heathrow).

After all of that we knew we would have to try to keep them up as long as possible, otherwise they would never get on our time schedule. So after the initial resting up and opening their suitcases full of goodies for us, we took them on a walk around our neighborhood.

It was such a lovely day. We walked down the River Leith. This is one of our favourite places to walk. We took them to explore a bit of Dean Village.

And my dad got his first photo of a red phone booth. :)

Josh was pretty tired by this time so we had to stop and rest so he could catch his breath.

Mom does not look like she just survived a long flight and a quick jog through the airport, does she?

On our way home we had to stop by my place of work. Ya know, just so they could see where I work. Ok, we got a little treat, too. :)

We went back home to get some dinner, but first my dad wanted to take a wee kip. It ended up being a not-so-wee kip as he slept through the rest of the evening. He woke up for a couple of hours just as we were going to bed, but then slept through the night.

While mom was still up Josh ran out to the chippie for some good ol' Scottish food. He brought back some battered and fried sausages, battered and fried hamburgers, and of course, some chips. We all tried Branston pickle for the first time. We decided that it had a good flavour and would have been good without the chunks of vegetable. We couldn't stand much more than a bite of it. Sam happily took it off our hands the next time we saw her. :)