We slept very well yesterday night and woke up late at around 8:30 am. I thought our bodies might have overcome the jetlag.
After eating the breakfast offered by the hotel, we asked a receptionist about way to go to Eurocar, the rental car company. The lady told us it may take about ten minutes by walking. Since we made the reservation for picking the car at 10am, to make sure we could arrive there in time, we took a taxi instead. It took less than 5 pounds.
After providing my international drivers’ license and simple basic information, the lady immediately gave us a key and a piece of paper for car instruction! She told us the car parked in the backend of parking lot and we could go straight to drive our own car.
Remembering that when we made car rental reservation by internet, our requirements included automatic transmission, air conditioning, and four doors. The reason of asking for automatic car was to reduce the variables of driving in UK. After all, this was the first time we drove in UK. After inputting our requirements to computers, we got the information that we would get a SAAB car or equivalents. At beginning, we had some concerns about SAAB cars as we heard that their fuel efficiency are not good.
On the way to taking our car in the parking lot, John suddenly pointed to the Audi logo on the key and said: Dad! Our car is Audi's model instead of SAAB! It drew our attention as we always thought that we might get a SAAB car. After double confirming the Audi logo on the car key, We were happy as we hadn’t had the chance to drive Audi's cars yet!
When we reached the parking lot and found a leased Audi A4. John was exciting and picked up the camera to shoot inside and outside of car. When I was prepared to start the car by key, I felt weird as I couldn’t find a keyhole in the car! We wonder if this car was designed to start by a sensor. However, where can we find the sensor point? Two pairs of eyes looked around the dashboard and steering wheel and tried to find a place that we could start the car! We started to get nervous!
The first thing come to our mind is looking for help. We quickly picked up the only piece of instructional paper and try to find the answer! The instructional paper indicated that the key hole was located on the right bottom of the steering wheel.
However, we couldn’t find the keyhole as indicated! We became more nervous and confused. After keeping search around the dashboard and steering wheel for a while, we finally found a keyhole on the left back side of the steering wheel. We felt released as next step we only need to put the key into the keyhole and make a turn to start the engine!
We thought to start a car was very simple! We only needed to turn the key clockwise and the engine will start right away! However, the weird thing happened again! I could only put the key into the key-hole but I couldn’t turn the key clockwise or anti-clockwise. We wondered that how can we start the car. We kept trying and found that we can press down the key! However, we are confused that the car has not yet been started?
We began to work on a variety of combinations to start the car! Accidentally, the hand brake was released during testing the effectiveness of starting a car! The car gradually and slowly slid forward to middle of the road! We were so nervous as the car was stuck in the middle of the road! We did not know how to start the car at this moment. Not even mentioned to reverse the car back to parking space! We were worried about any car was coming! Fortunately, no car passed by! I kept trying for all possibilities for starting the car! Erica was reading the instruction paper and tried to find some clue ! Unfortunately! No information was provided on the paper!
After a while, we finally discovered the only way to start the engine was, when the hand brake was on and transmission stayed on the parking gear, we stepped down the foot brake and pressed down the key.
The car’s engine had finally started! Since this was the first time to sit on the right side of car and drive on the left side of road, we decided to drive around the parking lot first to help myself adapt to the new driving habit. While we drove around the parking lot for about a half circle, we found the lady who gave us the car key came out and smoked for a break. Erica said with a guilty conscience: “she must be using the excuse of smoking to come out and check why this family still stayed in the parking lot after getting a car for such a long period.
Anyway! We can drive the car and go to our first destination - Loch Ness now. When I left the parking lot and by the way check the time. It is eleven o'clock in the morning. We already spent almost an hour in the parking lot!
First Edition 2011-08-27
Next notice: the third day in UK- 3 Visiting Loch Ness
No comments:
Post a Comment