A Story of September: my travels in Scotland and the USA

For anyone who works in education, September is an unavoidably busy month, and this September was no exception. I hope you will accept this post as a solid explanation of why it has been the only one in some time – the weeks have gotten away from me. Not in the least because as now has become standard for me, September is travelling-for-work month. I was fortunate enough to see some truly spectacular sights in my just over two weeks away, from the Golden Gate Bridge to the redwoods of Muir Woods and the streets of a new city or two. I also managed some fantastic ‘out of the plane window’ views, and even a glimpse of the northern lights, all topped off by a beautiful early-morning return to Edinburgh flying across Fife, with the sun rising in the east. So, here is a glimpse into my busy and exciting month of September.

The Northern Lights – a glimpse of magic while still in Scotland

I am fortunate to have friends and an other half more than willing to go out at 9.30pm to stand on the dark beach of West Sands and look for stars, the rising moon or, in this case, the Aurora Borealis. The alert app I use had been red a few times this summer, but usually only in the middle of the night or while the sky was still light (not, of course, mutually exclusive in Scotland in summer), so I was excited when there were rumours of two good nights in early September. My fellow night sky aficionados and I headed out as the last light in the sky was fading, and we were lucky enough to catch a bit of green and purple through our lenses – not visible to the naked eye, but still fantastic, with colours not normally seen in the night sky. This made for an excellent start to the month, and an excellent opportunity to play with night settings on my new camera.

I try, before disappearing for a few weeks, to connect with friends I may not see much, and we enjoyed a lovely end of summer evening at the local pub, with a pint or two down by the river. It was truly the end of summer, for while I left Scotland with temperatures still hovering at no-jacket levels, by the time I returned autumn had well and truly landed. Edinburgh was 4℃ when I arrived (around 40℉).

A quick jaunt to England

Before departing for the US, I first had a quick overnight trip down to Manchester to attend a training session. I will spare you the absurdities of UK train travel, which works well a good portion of the time but when it goes wrong goes spectacularly wrong. Suffice it to say, it was helpful to have knowledge of the trains and very little luggage as my original train was cancelled and I was forced to very quickly change plans. I arrived about 3 hours later than planned, but the next day’s return journey went very smoothly. Train journeys in the UK – particularly long ones – are a wonderful opportunity to get a good feel for the countryside and I have been known to just stare out the window for the whole trip between Durham and Edinburgh.

Manchester required a different route than I was used to, passing through – amongst other places – Lancaster, a northern city I have always wanted to explore. We were held up for a short time just at the edge of the city, at sunset, allowing me to capture these lovely views.

I had hoped to add a few tidbits here about Manchester as well, but I really did not spend enough time there to get a feel; I arrived late, spent all day in the conference centre, and left after a short walk. I was delighted to discover a Dunkin Donuts near to Piccadilly, but did not have the time to pop in. Definitely a city I would like to have more time to explore.

Across the pond…and beyond

Two days after my training journey to Manchester, I woke up well before dawn (3.30am if you must know, who says travel is all glitz and glamor?) to get the airport bus. I tend to request window seats on flights, as they can be more helpful if you want to try to sleep (something I am still quite rubbish at). A happy coincidence is that you also occasionally get the most fantastic views. The second leg of my flight was from Atlanta to San Francisco, and as we got to about one hour out of SFO, I took a peek out the window. For anyone who has not had a chance to fly over the western US, I’d highly recommend aiming for a window seat if you can, as I was greeted by the spectacular sights of stark desert and treeless ridges of mountains. The setting sun cast an orange light over the hills at the far edge of San Francisco Bay, and it was one of the more amazing flights I’ve had in some time.

Jet lag heading west is, in my opinion, easier than heading east and I was up early to visit my first school in a neighbourhood where the omnipresent San Francisco mist was just lifting as the sun rose.

The following morning, I woke up to a bit of a surprise: I had parked my car under a tree at the hotel thinking that it might keep some sun off. It did, but it also encouraged the invasion by a colony of ants. I opened the car door to find them all over the rubber lining, on the dashboard, in the cup holders, and – though I didn’t realise it right away – in the boot/trunk where I had stashed my materials for the day.

Cursing the less-than-clean interior of my newly collected car, I wiped everything down with some grapefruit-scented face wipes I had once picked up in an airport; they were just astringent enough to do the job well, though for the rest of the week I would find rogue ants scrambling across the dashboard.

Having dealt with this infestation I headed off for a school on the north side of the city, requiring a drive through the Presidio park – one of the better drives of my life, winding through stands of pine and cypress trees and beautiful homes, finally emerging to a large parking area alongside the Main Parade Lawn. Have arrived a bit early, I decided that I would walk down to the park briefly before my appointment.

The Presidio is a park and formerly – as the name indicates – US Army post that is now part of the Golden Gate National Park. The area where I parked was newly renovated, with pristine grass and pathways, all very clean and with phenomenal views of the Golden Gate Bridge, out into the bay to Alcatraz island, as well as back towards the sloping city centre. Even carrying all of my materials I managed to get a few good pictures, which I then had to re-take after my appointment once the sun had completely emerged from the clouds. It was a breath-taking way to start my week in the Bay Area.

Returning to my hotel that evening, I was looking forward to the second half of the take-away meal I had bought the night before. I had, when leaving that morning, asked reception if housekeeping could look at the fridge in my room as it seemed to be very cold, and I had searched as much as I could for a dial. Having been assured it would be dealt with, I came home and noticed that the fridge door was ajar – a bit extreme I thought, but I figured housekeeping had done it on purpose. Not so much. Instead, I quickly realised that the temperature was as cold as ever and instead one of the cans of seltzer water I was storing had exploded, spreading now-melting shrapnel around the interior of the fridge and my room floor. My dinner was frozen solid, and the remaining cans of seltzer were slush, with one more can so badly deformed that it was clearly not far from also exploding. Excellent. Clean-up and new dinner required.

I spent the rest of the week covering as much of the Bay Area as I could, driving more than 500 miles up and down around the bay, before finally reaching Friday afternoon. This was the day I was changing hotels, and I had been invited to dinner at the home of my friend’s parents – as mentioned above, this was one of my best friends from high school who I had not seen in almost 20 years, but we had always been lucky enough to enjoy one of those friendships that years do not alter. We fell into conversation immediately and spent time reminiscing as well as catching up on what the intervening years had held – or at least scratching the surface.

Prior to meeting her for dinner, I had decided to spend an hour exploring the city a bit. So, upon leaving my car and luggage safely in my new hotel, I ventured onto the BART train – not that different really to Boston’s MBTA though perhaps newer – and stepped out at Embarcadero station. Here, I was only steps away from the Ferry Building Marketplace, and so I headed for the tall clock tower and, once across the busy Embarcadero street, turned left to follow the coast.

The further I walked, the busier the sidewalk became, and gradually I reached the tourist centre of Fisherman’s Wharf. I took a short walk out through the arcade-style shops and cafés before cutting through to the most important part of the wharf: the sea lions. It was incredibly busy, but I managed to fight my way to the edge of the railing to get a few pictures of the incredibly loud sea lions, as well as the view back towards the city.

While this is not a place I wanted to spend an enormous amount of time, I felt like I couldn’t miss it, and I am glad I forced myself to brave the crowds. And it was only another ten minutes or so to the real goal of this walk, one of the only places I remembered clearly from my last trip to San Francisco about 30 years ago – Ghirardelli Square.

Sure enough, the sign was very clear from a distance, sitting high up above the red brick industrial buildings so typical of the 19th century. I approached from below, and paused to watch for a minute or two as tourists walked up the rainbow-painted steps to enter the square proper.

I’m not really sure what I expected, but the area was a touch underwhelming, so I made a quick stop at the chocolate shop to pick up some gifts before finding a bus to take me back towards the centre of the city. The whole walk was about 2.5 miles, so I felt like I had earned my dinner.

The following day was my day off, so I arranged to visit Muir Woods, the redwood forest just north of the city, and the other clear memory from the 1990s. I will have to write a separate post about that trip as it was absolutely breath-taking – I definitely recommend making the effort to visit if you are in the area. And, as I learned, you can get a shuttle from the Sausalito area, meaning that you do not have to brave the winding roads yourself.

On Sunday, I attended an event that meant I had one last chance to enjoy the weird and wonderful architecture that San Francisco is known for. (Back when we visited in the 90s, I was planning to be an architect, how times have changed, and I dragged my mother all over the city in search of the areas I wanted to see).

Specifically, I walked up Fulton Street from the University of San Francisco to Alamo Square, which is a lovely park at the peak of a hill with amazing views over the city centre. This was also the location, I knew, of the houses filmed at the start of the credits for Full House, the San Francisco-based TV show I had grown up watching. I could not resist taking a quick look. Fellow Millennials will recognise it, I am sure…

Fog was still sitting over the taller city buildings as I walked through the park, and it struck me as just such a typical San Francisco view. Fulton Street was fascinating, as so many homes have intricate carvings on their fronts and around the windows, and I found myself taking pictures of many of them.

The Bay Area – beyond San Francisco

There is plenty more to the Bay Area than just the city itself, of course, and on one of my last nights, I attended an event in Lafayette, which is closer to Berkeley but inland. As usual I was early, and so I pulled in at a local park, where I took a short walk up a hill. A steep, short walk. The mountains here reminded me more of what I saw in Southern California, though there was far more residential spread here.

Not home time yet!

It had been a busy 10 days or so in the Bay Area with more than 700 miles under my belt, but my trip wasn’t quite over. Instead, I was attending a conference in Columbus, Ohio, a city of which I really had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be a really pleasant mid-west city, clean and central with plenty of good restaurants and bars in close proximity to the convention centre. Parks and the residential neighbourhood where we stayed in an Air B&B were easy to walk to, and I can see why it would be a good spot for a large convention.

We also discovered, close by, the North Market, a large industrial space that has been turned into an indoor food market slightly reminiscent of Quincy Market in Boston. However, it was far less expensive and not as busy, meaning that you could take your time in deciding on pasta, salad, Asian food, and bakery items (plus a lot more I am sure that I didn’t see).

Like in Boston, this market offers seats on the upper level, meaning that you can enjoy your meal while looking down at the patrons and shops, which I really enjoyed. Absolutely worth investigating if you are ever in Columbus! As I said, I really didn’t have any expectation of the city but the residential areas reminded me a touch of parts of South Bend, while downtown could have been almost any small city in the US. Pleasantly every-city, very mid-west and just generally a nice place.

Coming home, but not quite…a long layover in Boston

My trip home from Columbus included a long layover in Boston, which I had intended as an opportunity hopefully to see my mum. For various reasons this did not come to pass, but I enjoyed my flight in on a beautiful clear morning, and because I had more than enough time, I took the elevator to the top of the airport parking structure to take in the view of the city. It was emotionally hard to be so close and not have a chance to explore or visit home, but it still felt good to be in Boston, even briefly. The international terminal was nice and quiet during the day, so I was able to get some work done and enjoy some peace after three days of conference busy-ness.

Coming home, but really this time.

My flight from Boston to Edinburgh was delightfully quiet, or at least it was at the back of the plane where I was sitting – I in fact managed two seats to myself, which were unfortunately just a touch too small to allow me to properly spread out and sleep. I find the night flights hard anyway, as we landed in Edinburgh around the time I would be looking to go to sleep, so could not make myself doze off before. I tried, but no luck – instead I watched a few old movies and was awake to realise, about 30 minutes out, that we were flying towards the rising sun. For the third time, I had a fantastic view from the window seat as the plane approached Edinburgh from the west, passing the city of Stirling (it’s impossible not to recognise that dramatic bend in the river), then Loch Leven (the castle is just a bit too small to see), and finally the coastline of Fife.

It was a very pleasant welcome home!

Overall a very busy month, and a time to explore two parts of the US I had never seen, or not as an adult. I felt I only scratched the very surface of San Fransisco but I know I am likely to be back; it is a quirky, funky city that is like few others. It tumbles over hills that in snow-based climates could not be built on in the same way, and offers a different fascinating view every time you turn a corner or cross a street. I look forward to my next visit!

As for October, it will be another busy month, and I imagine it will be one for the record books in terms of miles driven, but I am excited to see where more new cities will take me. I’ll be sure to keep you updated, when I can find some spare moments…