May 19
On Thursday, Joe and I flew from London back to Glasgow. Since I needed to do laundry, grocery shop and study for my exam the next day, we kept to the flat for the night.
May 20
After my morning exam, we did some Glasgow sightseeing. We walked from my flat in the city centre to Glasgow Green, a park by the River Clyde, and visited the People's Palace and Winter Gardens.
However, the inside of the People's Palace was disappointing. There was an interesting section on tenement housing in Glasgow, but overall the museum felt like it was really random and targeted towards children. The Winter Gardens were also strange. Somehow palm trees in a Glasgow Winter Garden make sense?
On our way through Glasgow Green to the subway, the clockwork orange, we spent some time along the River Clyde. Strangely, it is a much cleaner river than the Thames.
We took the clockwork orange to the Kelvingrove Museum. Along the way, I finally got my reading A Clockwork Orange on the clockwork orange picture.
We went through the Kelvingrove Museum, which is really massive, pretty quickly. Some of the exhibits, like the one of armor and weaponry, are really cool, while the rooms filled with painting after painting really lose my interest.
After we finished at the Kelvingrove and walked through the West End, we took the clockwork orange back to the city centre. We went to the Lighthouse and up the spiral staircase to get the near 360 degree views of Glasgow.
After the Lighthouse, we spent some time in George Square. I did not realize until then that the super tall statue in the center of the square is not of George, as I had assumed, but Sir Walter Scott. Why exactly it is called George Square, I do not know.
On the way back to my flat, we stopped at Tinderbox for some of the best coffee in Glasgow. We had dinner in my flat and then went out to a few Scottish pubs--The Scotia, The Piper and The Ark.
May 21
It turned out to be quite a rainy day on Saturday. Since we knew it was going to be rainier as the day went on, we decided to get the interviews for Joe's Joe Goes... pieces before doing any sightseeing stuff. We spent most of the morning and half the afternoon on Buchanan and Sauchiehall Streets.
We took a break to get lunch at the Willow Tea Rooms, which I had been meaning to go to for months. The tea was delicious! We had Scottish Breakfast Blend. And, Joe got to try haggis.
After we finished filming, we went to St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Life and Art, my favorite museum in Glasgow. From there, we went to the nearby Glasgow Cathedral, another favorite Glasgow spot of mine.
Inverness
We went back to my flat for dinner and to pack up to take the evening train to Inverness. When we arrived at 11:30 p.m., to my surprise, my flatmate Andrea was staying in the same hostel as us! Crazy!
May 22
Our day started pretty early and with some disappointment. It turns out the bus service is infrequent between Inverness and Loch Ness on Sundays. The information lady said that the bus schedule we found that did list bus services started "tomorrow." Lame.
So, we were forced to take a Jacobite tour of Loch Ness, which included the bus to/from the loch, a 30 minute boat tour of the loch, and two hours at Urquhart Castle. And, we ended up on the same tour as Andrea.
Loch Ness is huge! As a result of its size, I think, it is really wavy. We sat up on deck for a while, but it got a little too rainy and cold to stay up there for long, so we spent most of the boat tour looking through the windows below deck.
My favorite part was probably the castle. It was pretty much ruins, with a few rooms and a tour still intact. The setting is probably my favorite setting of all Scottish Castles--both in the highlands and on a loch. How much more Scottish can it get?
The interior of the castle wasn't quite as awesome as Dirleton Castle because there wasn't as much of it. But, overall, the castle was pretty awesome.
After the tour was over and we were back in Inverness, we still had three hours until our train left for Glasgow. Joe and I went to a pub for lunch and then walked around Inverness for a while. We walked along the River Ness and saw Inverness Castle, and then roamed around Inverness for a while.
Glasgow
May 23
Our first stop on Monday was the Necropolis, one of the coolest places in Glasgow. We walked up the hill and around the various graves of the Necropolis for a while.
Stirling
After the Necropolis, we took a train to Stirling to see Stirling Castle and the Wallace Monument. It was a super rainy, windy and overall cold day.
Stirling was a lovely town, though. We walked to the Old Town district where we found Stirling Castle. Since we were just in Urquhart Castle the day before, we decided to just walk around the outside and grounds of Stirling Castle. However, it was hard to find a good view of the castle.
We ended up going on a bit of a hike behind Stirling Castle in a woodsy area. After following the path for a while, we decided to take it down to a field that doubles as a public footpath to see if the view was better from there.
It was, but the view of the castle was not all that impressive.
We decided that while we were down in the field, we might as well try to find a field of sheep. Unfortunately, there wasn't any fields like those in Hatton that doubled as footpaths. By the time we were back to our Stirling Castle path, it was starting to get pretty rainy.
So, we walked to the Wallace Monument. It was a kind of long walk, and the rain sure didn't help. When we made it to the Monument, we found out that the viewing platform was closed due to the severe winds. But, we could still see the other three floors.
We decided to hike rather than take the shuttle to the top of the hill. It was a bit of a hike, but the trees sheltered us from the rain pretty well. It was pretty windy when we reached the top of the hill. There were some pretty awesome views of Stirling from the top of the hill.
The staircase going up the Monument was another one of those stone spiral staircases. There were also window slits along the way up, and the wind definitely got worse the further we went up.
When we came down and were about to leave the Monument, the wind had really picked up. It was nearly blowing me away and was almost pushing Joe a few steps, too. Since the wind strengthened, we decided to take the shuttle down the hill.
The walk back to the train station was pretty miserable because it was pretty rainy. When we got to the station, we got on a train to Glasgow pretty quickly. However, we were only five minutes away from Stirling when a tree fell onto the track, stalling us for an hour, when they told us that they were suspending all train services and taking us back to Stirling.
We ended up getting a refund and waiting for nearly an hour for a very packed bus to Glasgow.
Glasgow
After we finally got back to Glasgow and made dinner, we went to The Ark for what we thought was Joe's last night.
May 24
However, when we woke up the next day, it turns out that the Iceland volcano that erupted over the weekend had an ash cloud hovering over Scotland, cancelling all flights to and from. After going to O2 where the manager kindly let us use their phone after my O2 cell ran out of minutes, Joe got a place on a new flight on Thursday.
Since Joe now had some more time in Glasgow, we decided to visit Provand's Lordship, the oldest house in Glasgow.
Later on in the day, we went to the Barony Bar in the Union, where we hung out for a while.
May 25
Since I had an exam the next day, I spent part of Wednesday studying.
After I finished studying, Joe and I went for a walk around Merchant City/City Centre. We also visited the Gallery of Modern Art. Unfortunately, we caught it at a bad time. Two-thirds of the museum was closed for (un)installment of exhibits.
That night, we went to a pub I hadn't visited before called Blackfriars.
May 26
Joe left in the morning. I had my exam in the afternoon and spent most of the rest of the day enjoying being done with school work for the semester.
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