Last day in Scotland

Tuesday 6/16/09
There has been a serious laundry meltdown. Yesterday when we got to the hotel they offered to do the laundry as a free service that the hotel provides. I specifically asked about how much time it would take to get the laundry back, because we were taking a long trip the following day, and needed our warm clothes washed. I was told it would take 3 hours. After 5 hours, I asked about the laundry, it hadn’t been moved out of the dryer. After another 2 hours, I was told they just needed another 10 minutes because it wasn’t quite dry. At 10 pm we were getting ready for bed and I went for a final check on the laundry... no one was at the desk; apparently they had all gone to bed. Right, so being skeptical that it had actually been finished, I managed to break into the laundry room, which is normally for house staff only. I found our laundry, in a very tiny dryer which was so jam-packed that none of the clothes had dried at all. So I took out half the load, and restarted half the load so it would be dry in the morning. Woke up this morning, and found that the laundry was still not dry, apparently the dryer is broken, and hadn’t been blowing any air at the clothes, just tumbling them over and over. So what’s a girl to do? I grabbed pants, underwear and a shirt for Morgan and myself and proceeded to spend the next hour ironing wet clothing so that we would have something warm to wear. Not exactly how I planned to spend my morning. Fortunately the morning did improve greatly. We made it to the train station a little early, and were able to walk to the grocery store next door and grab some breakfast. The train ride on the Jacobite was quite an adventure, the scenery was unbelievable and we took tons of pictures, all be it from a moving train, so they’re not all good, but there are some stunning shots. On the trip out our train was filmed crossing the viaduct for an independent film. We had a lovely dinner tonight at “The Grog and Gruel.” We also got to listen to a bagpipe core playing out on the street during dinner. Tonight we are packing, and getting organized for our trip tomorrow. Should be very exciting, despite the early hour. Italy here we come!