The Benderz' Vacation Adventures

Welcome to the 2018 edition of my blog! Yay! I can’t tell you how excited I am to be blogging again! Woot!

This year is unique - Zoe is in Jacksonville, and Chris, Zack and I are traveling with his soccer team, Coach John, some team parents and siblings, and our guides from XL Tours. Aside from the XL guys (who are fabulous!), the rest of us spend a lot of time together. Most of the boys have been playing together for 3 or more years and have taken trips this year alone to San Diego, Tennessee, Boston...and more than we can count to Orlando/Atlanta. I include this info because it’s important to know, I love these peeps. I love the boys, I love their parents and siblings, I love wearing Volt. We’ve (ok, mostly Bender) been planning this trip for 3 years now, and I said “I can’t believe we’re actually here” out loud many times today

Alrighty...now that you have the background deets...

Day 1 certainly didn’t disappoint! It’s impossible to believe that 24 hours ago we were in the Orlando airport. Impossible. Lights out tonight was at 9, but I’m not sure many of the boys made it that long...most have not really slept in the last 30 hours (aside from some quick naps on the plane, bus or table). Joey was actually falling asleep standing up (until we made him sit) at the team meeting tonight. But good gosh they were troopers. They just kept plugging.

Most of the team was on a direct flight from Orlando to Glasgow. You can’t miss our boys when they travel.

Like I said, a few short naps...

They really have become excellent travelers.

We picked up our sweet ride at the airport and met our XL guides. We discovered that our tour leader Jamie, worked for GPS in Orlando. Coach John let him know in standard Coach John style that we took care of GPS handily. Gotta put all your cards on the table right? Shortly after that, we inquired about hitting our first pub...our guides have their work cut out for them.

We stopped and picked up the Basham and Brunner crew (who started their trips a little earlier in London), and then headed directly to the boys first training session. The bus ride to training was pretty quiet...I mean their bodies thought it was 4:30am!

Today’s session was with Thistle Weir’s U16 Coach, Joe Malcolmson at their Academy training ground. The parents got to watch some of training from the old clubhouse. It’s not in use anymore (except for the changing rooms and bathrooms, but it reminded me of a golf clubhouse) but we were thankful to get out of the drizzle and cold. Boys handled it just fine...parents were cold!

The boys quickly changed back into their plane clothes and headed to lunch. Bus ride was definitely a more normal one...noisy, happy, excited boys. The restaurant was overlooking the pitch at Ibrox, home stadium to Rangers - where Coach John played! Such a cool experience!

They took incredible care of us! Lunch was delicious...but definitely brought on food coma...for approximately 10 minutes. Then it was time to explore!

On the way to park the bus, Coach John yelled, “that’s my parents!!” Like his actual parents...walking on the street we were driving on. They couldn’t see in the bus, and his mom had no idea he was coming to Scotland. We got off the bus and followed them to the Cathedral House Hotel Beer Garden - the local pub.

Where we got to meet Coach John’s parents...

Do a little manual labor....

And have our first pints in Scotland!

Then it was really off to explore!

The Cathedral was incredible! Built starting in 1179!

Lynn and I thought it was interesting that even in the UK, you have to keep a close watch on those Dawgs 🤣

One of the most bizarre parts of my day was finding a whole bottom floor of the cathedral full of LEGO exhibits! Crazy complicated ones...but why there?

As we were leaving we saw our first kilts!

Then we were off for a walking tour of Glasgow! With Coach John as our tour guide, we got awesome history, fun personal snapshots of his life, and great recommendations. We saw what streets not to go down, where he bought his first 6 pack for his dad, and saw some incredible street art!