Like most days devoted to getting from one place to another, today was not especially memorable. We had a mid-morning flight, but we had to get out to the airport, about 45 minutes outside of Reykjavik, return the car, and then do all the check-in and security stuff. None of this was particularly interesting, and dealing with the car, and the insurance claim for the scrape and crack to the bumper, was irritating and depressing. Keflavik airport is basically pleasant and compact, but it is handling more travelers than it was ever designed to handle. And, rather strangely for such a cold country, all the gates are at ground level so that you have to go outside and walk up a flight of stairs to get to your plane. There are no jet bridges as you find in almost any other airport, even Medford. This makes it difficult for people like John who have mobility issues, and the workarounds are rather cumbersome.
Our flight slightly delayed while they fixed a minor problem with the plane, but it was otherwise quite smooth. It's about two hours from Iceland to Scotland, three after you add in the one hour time difference. So we arrived in Glasgow mid-afternoon. It was overcast and there was the slightest hint of drizzle. For anyone from the Pacific Northwest, it seemed pretty much like a typical spring day. We took a cab from the airport so we would not have to wait around for an Uber. The cabbie was a garrulous native Glaswegian, probably in his mid-to-late fifties. He regaled us with stories about growing up in a row house with the "loo" in the alley, and how when he was a "wee bairn" all the buildings were still black with the soot from the coal fires. John understood almost none of it, even though I knew we had not yet heard the real Clydeside dialect.
We are staying at the Hotel du Vin in the West End. The West End is rather like the Back Bay of Boston, an affluent, mostly residential area just adjacent to the downtown center. I was interested to learn that the du Vin, a small chain of boutique hotels found largely in university and cathedral towns, was founded by a Gerald Bassett, Perhaps a distant relative? The Glasgow du Vin had originally been five nineteenth century row houses. These have been reconfigured so that they now form one building, although most of the features of the original houses are still intact. I had requested a room that was mobility accessible for John. We were given a wonderful suite on the ground floor. It had probably originally been one of the parlors. As such, it was quite large.
