Scotland: Glasgow, Inverness and Stirling

Glasgow
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.

Glasgow Green was beautiful and so was the exterior of the People's Palace.  In front of the palace, there was a Victoria Fountain that reminded me a lot of the Victoria Fountain in front of Buckingham Palace.  Clearly, Victoria loved to have fountains made in her honor.

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 inside of the Wallace Monument was pretty cool.  They had a floor about William Wallace's life, including his sword, a floor about other heroes of Scotland, and a floor about building the Monument.  It was really interesting.

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.

pure dead brilliant

Pure dead brilliant:  A very Glaswegian phrase.  Used to enthusiastically describe something that is really great.

The past ten days ranged from chill to adventurous, but have certainly been pure dead brilliant.

Last week involved spending a lot of time, in the flat and out about Glasgow, with the flatmates.  My flatmates are a great, crazy, fun bunch of girls to be around. Our flat, though small, is wonderful.  The little, literally, kitchen is going to see a great deal of baking this term.  We've already lost track of how many batches of cookies we've made, but it's been quite a bit.  And, of course, last and this week involved the usual 12 Hour Tuesday adventure and time spent in the Union.

On Tuesday last week, I went to St Mungo's Museum of Religious Life and Art.  I confess that I am no museum expert, but St Mungo's is fantastic and my current favorite.  St Mungo's brings together religious art from a number of religions and lays them out comparatively.  For instance, the first art room had Buddhist, Egyptian, Greek, Christian, and Jewish art items.

The best section, hands down, is the religious life room.  The layout serves its purposes well.  You walk into the room and go down a row showcasing the phases of life as interpreted by different religions:  Birth, Childhood, Coming of Age, Sex and Marriage, and Death.  The space also exhibits the main world religions in depth:  Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism.

The second floor examined the idea of death--perspectives on what happens and the idea of the soul.  The top floor explored the evolution of religion in Scotland and the current religions represented.

On Wednesday last week, there was an internet loss spree throughout the flat.  At one point, Ashley, Jacquie, Cherie and my internet were all down.  Without internet on a quiet night in the flat, we had nothing to do but finally take out the approaching overflowing bathroom garbage.  Surprisingly, we came back to the flat to discover the internet returned.  Conclusion:  the flat gods decided that we needed to clean before we could have play time.

Last Thursday, the Strathclyde International Society held a welcome meeting.  We were able to bring up ideas of places we want to go during this term.  Some of the popular options that will hopefully happen are Loch Lomond, Inverness/Loch Ness, Ben Nevis, Edinburgh, Whisky Distillery, International Pub Crawl, and, of course, some castles.

On the academic side of things, I'm adjusting to classes here well.  It is still strange to only have class seven hours a week and to have huge classes.  Even if classes are kind of "meh," at least there's the intriguing aspect of the Scottish and British accents of the professors.  Also, one of my professors' looks like part of the Weasley family.

Jacquie and I went to a lovely café called Tinderbox.  It looks very cool inside and had delicious tea and cappuccino (I tried both).  I love having access to a number of coffee shops and tea rooms.  :)

On Saturday, I discovered the best clothing store ever, Primark.  Primark has a vast amount of inexpensive and nice clothing.  I've spent about $40 American and got three dresses, two tops, and a pair of shoes.  Well worth it.

Ashley, Andrea, Anna, Terance (our friend from Singapore), and I went to the club The Garage (pronounced "Gare-ige").  It was a pretty fun experience.  Although, the bouncer was questioning as to why the corner of my driver's license was clipped (I just renewed it), but they let me in anyway.  I think we're going to Garage again tomorrow for the Traffic Light Party.

I went to Glasgow Necropolis on Monday.  A necropolis is, essentially, a huge city-like cemetery.  It was absolutely beautiful!  The monuments, hill, sky, everything was beautiful on Monday.  I definitely plan to explore the Necropolis some more--especially since it is just down the street.

The most epic part of Tuesday was that Andrea, Jacquie, and I purchased tickets to see The Decemberists in concert IN GLASGOW on March 5!  There will be epic times had by all.  :D

Wednesday was one of my favorite days in Scotland so far.  Ashley, Andrea, Jacquie and I took a train to North Berwick because Jacquie had missed an architectural field trip to see some street.  We discovered that Dirleton Castle was only two miles from the quaint town of North Berwick.  Before heading to the castle, we ate in the splendid Tiffany's Tea Room.

After our two mile walk through the beautiful Scottish countryside with the North Sea in not far to the right of the road, we arrived at the beautiful, ancient Dirleton Castle.

The castle, though it has been eroded through time and battles, is a wonderful place to explore.  We were the only ones in the castle that day and we had a great time seeing everything it had to offer.  It had so much history--the oldest parts of the castle date back to the 13th century.

After over an hour of exploring/playing in the castle, we headed back to the train station.  On the train back to Glasgow, we met a nice guy, Dan, who attends the University of Glasgow.  He offered to introduce us to his friends and show us around the West End of Glasgow.  

Last night, Andrea, Jacquie, and I decided to go to The Scotia Bar, Glasgow's oldest pub, established in 1792.  The Scotia Bar was a quaint old pub, full of regulars and live music.  We sat in a lovely corner booth, chatting and enjoying the music.  We met a pair of older Scottish ladies who teach at a local school.  They were pretty fun to talk to and we had an enjoyable night.

My new thoughts on Glasgow (that I've managed to remember and write down) are numerous.  

• The Midwest snowstorms last week made me really appreciate the rains and winds of Glasgow.
• An interesting realization is that Glasgow, at all times, to some extent, smells like beer.  That can be quite startling in the morning.
• Because of the internet settings, my AVG Free Anti-Virus refuses to update.  If I get a virus, Strathclyde IT better kill it.
• At grocery stores, you are expected to bag your own groceries.  If you do not bring a reusable bag, you have to pay three pence for a plastic one.
• UK shoe sizes are, as Jacquie said, very friendly.  While in the US, I would wear a 9, I wear a 6-6 1/2 here.
• Clothing sizes, however, are less friendly.  I'm an 8 instead of a 5.

Until next week, laters!