Leaving Scotland and entering France.

I downloaded this pic of a Scottish magpie, so you can see the difference, they are quite pretty and they don't attack people...

I left She and Ally yesterday at 4.10pm, they drove me to Dundee to the bus stop.  It has been amazing catching up with them after 11 years.  I shall miss them.  I hope to come back in a year or two and do a tour of the west coast, around Skye.  Sheonagh is up for it, so lets hoope it works out.

The Scottish coundtryside is beautiful.  So lush and green.

The bus was an all nighter to London, arriving at about 6am.  We had a 2.2 hour stop over in Edinburgh.  I then had to wait until 7.30 am for my bus to Paris, and what a ride that was.

Another chalk white horse, this one a little more modern in design. Just before we left britain to go by train to France, through the tunnel under the channel.

Just as our bus is entering the train

On the train, in the bus.  It was a 35 minute crossing

We had the bus driver from hell, no joke.  He had a friend board the bus, a nasty little loud woman, and as they decided that she would sit behind him, they just ignored all the people who had paid to sit with extra leg room or with friends.  It was unbelievable. One woman had paid to sit behind the driver, with her son and they had picked this particular bus as it had those seats free.  She had to get up at 4am to get to London to catch it and then had to sit in cramed seating all the way.  Three young Canadian boys paid to sit together, didn't happen.  The bossy woman was telling everyone who entered to sit where ever they liked, so people did and that was the end of priority seating.  It worked out well for me, as I got a cute young Canadian to chat to for 8.5 hours.

The driver then proceeded to run 4 red lights in London.  Was on his phone the entire time and then had an altercation with another driver in Paris.  After that he actually ran into another car, didn't stop and yelled at the driver.  We could see the damage to the car, scratches all up the side and bits hanging off and dragging on the ground.  It was amazing.  I didn't get a pic of that, but did get one of the bus, the damage to that was minimal compared the the poor car he hit.

Damage to the bus

I walked about 25 minutes to my hotel in Paris, which would have been fine, except for the cobblestones.  Dragging my luggage was really difficult, but I did appreciate the good nights sleep that I got that night.  

Paris train system is not the best.  The smaller lines have no idea what an elevator is.  After lugging my heavy luggage up two different sets of double stairs in two different stations, I was getting quite annoyed.  Luckily two different young ladies in two other stations took pity on me and carried my luggage down two different flights of double stairs in two other stations.  

I got a ticket to Charles de Gaulle and the train station and the railway station are two different things.  Arriving at the station I find I should have gotten off two stops earlier and took the Grd de Nord line.  Once again a lovely French lady helped me by interpreting to the ticket guy and then wrote out his instructions for me.  So I did finally make it to CDG airport.  I didn't realise my flight was so late in the day, that was an oversight by me, but I have spent hours in an airport before so I can deal with that.

Tonight will be Croatia, looking foreward to it.