Simply Green Photography: One Thousand: My trip to Scotland

A few weeks ago I embarked on a spur of the moment trip to Scotland to visit my family. It was a trip to surprise my sister. I'm sure that after all of these years she is getting sick of all the surprises: the started when we lived in Egypt when various family members would suddenly show up at the door to surprise us with their presence. The shock is still going on today. Sadly, I am never the one to be surprised. Being the oldest child, my mom bestows upon me the privilege of knowing when people are going to visit. So all these years I've had to keep surprises! Grrr....

This time it was my turn to be the surpriser. I flew out on May 17th. The plan was to fly out of Sacramento to avoid the driving traffic in San Francisco. I was scheduled for a 3:00 flight from Sacramento to San Fran and then from San Fran to Frankfurt and then Frankfurt to Aberdeen. Unfortunately the weather in San Francisco was less than desirable. So while I booked my flights to avoid missing my flight out of San Francisco, I still managed to miss my flight out. Sigh. My flight leaving Sacramento was so late that I missed my flight out of SF and had to stay over night. After a long and drama filled evening of being passed off to every other airport staff, my bag not coming out, missing my flight by 10 minutes, having all the local hotels be booked because of a marathon, and having no money on me, I finally settled down for the night in a Marriott in the business district.

My flight was rebooked for the next day at 7pm....! Basically, it would have taken me all day and all the next day to travel 90 miles. How depressing! My mom luckily pulled some strings and got me on an earlier flight the next day. Because I was booked with air miles, they didn't want to put me on the better flight. However, it all kind of worked out better because I got to go on a double decker plane and be on the second floor in my own little pod! While it ended in a great way, I tried to remind myself during the drama that this is an adventure and that I am blessed to even be able to take this trip. There were still many tears.

SO I finally got to Aberdeen the next day (the 19th).

Surprising my sister was fun! There were tears.

The next 9 days were super busy. I had originally planned on having a relaxed time while I was there but it turned out to be anything but! In a good way though. I had photo shoots, days at the beach, lunches, dinners, venue walk throughs with a couple of my couples, and battled no sleep. So while these are all very relaxing activities I was doing them on very little sleep.

It was a great time though and I am so glad I went! I got to see my sister off to prom and there was not a drop of rain the entire time I was there! Apparently we had better weather there than there was in Northern Cali. I like to think that I brought the beautiful weather with me. You're welcome Scotland!

Gift #108: Last minutes trips to Scotland