Scotland 2014 Day 1: Meet you in Newark

5/8/2014
Scotland 2014 Day 1: Meet you in Newark

Onwards!

The epic year of travel continues! Yes, I quite literally just got back from China... but I managed to squeeze in the end of my China trip blog JUST before leaving for Scotland... so here comes the Scotland blog!

I left SF via SuperShuttle and had a nice driver. It was quick to SFO and I grabbed a nice egg and cheese bagel at the terminal - man, they sure have fancied up that terminal lately.

Mmm...

The plane left about 30 min late but no worries. As we started going, I opened up my special "airplane package" gift from Michal!! Super awesome! She is so sweet. She got me a bunch of super useful things I could use instantly -- face wipes, Apples to Apples card game, candies... and also a pair of Homer Simpson boxers, those will also come in handy. This package was super fun and a great way to start the big trip. :)

Special flight gift from Michal

Look at this awesomeness!

Almost in Newark...

As usual, the plan ride was excellent for email catchup. I had the Larabar from my flight gift and that made a great lunch. Soon after I arrived at Newark and went to find Heev (aka "Matthew", my bro from forever who I'm traveling with on this trip.) I should mention, the actual initial point of this trip was for Matt to be at his friends' Lee and Jenn's wedding, and they kindly invited me along for the fun as well. Matt decided to extend his trip out around both sides of the wedding, and I decided to invite myself to come along for his trip! Ahh, the joys of being friends for so long with each other... you can really get away with anything. Haha.

Talking about getting away with anything - the United Lounge totally hooked us up in Newark. I found Matt (complete with his slick new glasses), and we went to go see if we could use my passes to get us into the United Lounge. Our flight was 2hrs delayed, so we want to get dinner too. They said we couldn't bring in food, so we said "No worries" and "We'll see you again soon". We got a tasty portobello sandwich and took the obligatory selfie.

Random huge cupcakes

Travel selfie #baller #newark #yessss

I scarfed the sandwich and headed back to the lounge. As we walked in, the same lady was there who we'd just talked to -- "Ah, there's my boys!" she said as we walked in. I figured that was a good sign. I told her I had no status yet but would be getting it after this trip, and then gave her the free entry passes - "You know what? You keep those" she said, telling us it would be her good turn for the day. Amazing!!!!!!!! That was super nice and perhaps she felt back about sending us away to get our dinner earlier. In any case, awesome stuff. That rocked.

Not sure what's happening here. Matt is psyched re: free cookies I think. Plus we ate tons of cheese.

In the lounge we got some janky-but-free Whisky to start the trip off right. We got some snacks and chilled for a while. Then headed to the plane and it was a good flight. I watched "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2" and it was hilarious. The animation was really awesome and Sony really rocked it. The script was hilarious like the first movie in this series, and they said the phrase "Crap balls" a lot which was really hilarious. Loved the animation on the main bad guy character, and the "butter frog" was so funny I re-watched it like 10 times. Great movie.

Had some good chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner and not enough sleep, but did get in 1-2 hrs perhaps. Heev seemed to get a bit more sleep so that was good. We were also sitting Aisle + Aisle rather than beside each other, which was a pretty solid strategy.

Excited to get to Edinburgh!