In September Dana and I took advantage of an opportunity to
spend some serious time in Scotland – something we’ve always wanted to do. Coming at the end of a long, hot summer in
Saudi Arabia, I was ready for Scottish weather, which we expected to be cold,
cloudy, and wet. I was looking forward to playing in the rain!
Just to be clear, since a few people have asked me about
this, yes, when we’ve taken trips we take a good one. We aren’t extravagant, but
we don’t scrimp and penny-pinch either. If we see an opportunity to do
something fun, interesting, or just because, we very well may do it. When we
only get to see each other a few weeks a year, we’re interested in making every
bit of the time count.
We met at Heathrow airport in London after overnight
flights, which was nice because then we traveled together to Edinburgh airport.
Dana hates to fly, but she’s been a real trooper about flying to Europe to meet
up with me, and I appreciate her effort!
We arrived in Edinburgh around 2 p.m. and picked up a rental car – more detail
on this coming soon – and drove to Glasgow.
Yeah, I know, we could’ve flown straight to Glasgow, but we changed our
touring plans after we’d already booked the flights. It would’ve cost more to
change the flights than it cost to have the car for 10 days!
We typically stay in what are termed “vacation rentals,” and
we often book through TripAdvisor. We much prefer these to hotels, as it is much homier. We can go
to a market and get food and supplies for a few days, and not have to rely on
restaurants, plus we find locations with washer and dryer so we can clean our
clothes and not have to bring so many!
View from our flat
In Glasgow we stayed 3 nights in a stone building from the 1900s,
with a short walk to the train station and markets, and a beautiful view
(above). It was a great place to start the trip and get settled to the new time
zone. We took the train to city center each day and toured around from there.
We’ve never done this before, but we took the sightseeing bus, which turned out
to be a very good deal. You can hop on and off as you wish at 28 locations on a
45-minute tour, and it was only £2 more for a 2-day pass. We took advantage of
this and saw everything we wanted to see!
Flower train at station
Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city, and reminds me a bit of
Montreal – a bustling, modern city center with old, quiet, pleasant outlying
communities. It was green everywhere, which was lovely! We really expected it to
be more into fall. Here are a few
highlights from what we saw from the Hop On Hop Off bus tour.
The Clyde Arc – This lovely arch crosses over the road it
supports, giving it a very unique, angled look, and the locals call it the Squinty
Bridge.
Finnieston Crane – the River Clyde was a center of commerce
and industry, and hosted a massive ship building enterprise. This huge crane is
the only remaining one of 13 along the water, a stark reminder of the Clydeside
shipbuilding era.
Tunnel entrance – I know, it doesn’t look like a tunnel, but
it has a twin on the other side of the River Clyde. Build in the 1800s, each
holds a hydraulic lift that could raise and lower horses, wagons, and people to
and from a tunnel below the water. This system operated until the 1980s! Pretty
successful idea.
The Kelvingrove Museum – This magnificent structure was
built of red sandstone in 1901 on the banks of the Kelvin River at Kelvingrove
Park. It was refurbished and reopened in
2006 and admission is free! We highly recommend a visit. Full of art and
artifacts, exhibits range from old masters artwork to Scottish history to a
Spitfire hanging from the ceiling!
Glasgow Cathedral – Scotland’s only remaining medieval
cathedral, there has been a church of some kind at this site for over 1000
years, since the patron saint of Glasgow, Saint Mungo, built a church here.
Construction of the existing building began in the late 12th century
and it has survived redesign and rebuilding, reformation, and war. The
architecture is breathtaking! Pictures don’t do it justice, but here are a few. We spent way too long looking at this awesome
place, and almost missed the last bus of the day to get back to Central Station
to take the train back to our flat.
One note about the city is how clean it is. In the 1980s the
city began a program to sandblast the decades of soot and grime from the city's
many tenements and municipal buildings, revealing their magnificent Victorian
stonework. This was a coal-powered town for decades, but it is gleaming now.
Well done Glaswegians!
Glasgow was a good starting point for the trip, which over
the next two weeks took us to Scotland’s west coast, up the Caledonian Canal to Fort Augustus at Loch Ness, up to the most northeast point at John O’ Groats, south to Inverness, then down to
Edinburgh. More to come soon!
#Glasgow #Scotland #KelvingroveMuseum #GlasgowCathedral
No comments:
Post a Comment