We landed in Glasgow at 8am on a Thursday after a one hour flight from Dublin preceded by a seven hour flight from Chicago. The Glasgow Airport Express is an easy way to get from the airport to several stops downtown for about $8 one way. We got off the bus at George Square and walked 10 minutes through the city to our Airbnb on the corner of Howard and Stockwell Streets. Our main problem at that moment (9am) was that our check in time was at 3pm. We dropped off our bags and dragged our exhausted butts around town for the next 6 hours.
We walked a couple blocks north up Stockwell and had breakfast at Tiffany’s Cafe. Breakfast at Tiffanys, get it? This is a friendly place with some local flavor. Then we wandered southeast towards Glasgow Green, a huge open park with some statues and sculptures. The Glasgow sculpture above is in this park. As we walked through the park, I noticed three guys a block or so behind us. As we were admiring one of statues, they suddenly appeared next to us; very drunk, somewhat intrusive, but very friendly. We told them that we were from Wisconsin, and they proudly offered that they are from the East End which didn’t mean much until we later learned that this is a rather undesirable part of town. After some brief banter, we went our own way, grateful that they didn’t follow us! We finished up in Glasgow Green at a fascinating free museum, the Peoples’ Palace. We asked a guy at the Palace how to get to the Botanic Gardens across town. He directed us to a subway station half a mile away, and we walked there.
We got to the subway station, and said to the guy in booth, “We have not taken the subway before. How do we do this?” He smiled and said, “You’re at the train station, so the first thing you should do is go to the subway station.” You can see here how helpful the Scottish are. I said, “You see now how much help we need!” We all had a good laugh and walked another block to the subway. For those of you who want to avoid this mistake, this is what the subway station looks like below. In particular, it’s the S in the multicolor circle that distinguishes this from the train that serves a more regional area.
A quick aside: the Glasgow subway system is very cool. It is an oval track serving 15 stops, and it runs under the city. There’s an inner track that runs counterclockwise and an outer track that runs clockwise, and the subway trains all just keep going around the track. It’s very hard to get lost or to get on the wrong train because they all go to all the stops! The subway is more commonly known as Clockwork Orange. It’s the most interesting subway system I’ve seen.
We got off in the hip Kelvinbridge neighborhood and walked to the Botanic Gardens. The free gardens have extensive outdoor and indoor areas with every kind of ecosystem you can imagine. After a while, we walked back towards the subway and stopped for some great coffee and pastries at the Papercup Coffee Company. These are the friendliest, happiest staff running a great little cafe. That’s them over there on the left. This pleasant little recharge fueled us enough to make it back to the subway station and take the Inner circle back downtown.
We finally were able to get into our Airbnb and rest for a little bit but not too long. We headed across the street to The Scotia, a lovely little pub. We had a pint and discovered that The Scotia does not serve food which led us a block towards the River Clyde to La Clutha. It’s a very bright, cheery place that serves incredible thin crust pizza and has bands on a regular basis. We also heard the traumatic story of police helicopter crashing through the roof six years ago, killing ten people. It’s an eerie place to be after you learn about that!
After pizza and pints, we were back to The Scotia to see some traditional music, played by drop in musicians sitting around a table. It’s quite a treat to see music played like this by people who are just getting together because they love to do it. Our exhaustion caught up to us band we were back to our beds by 8pm.
The next morning we caught a flight to Islay. After returning from Islay later that evening, we ate at Merchant’s Square, a collection of restaurants that reminded me of Applebee’s or Olive Garden. Then back to The Scotia where we listened to a great blues band, had a couple pints, and Tony kicked my butt playing Rummy. The next morning we were off to York, England. We got the train at Glasgow Queen Street Station (after going to Glasgow Central Station, buying tickets, and learning we had to walk to another station 10 minutes away to catch the train).
When the train stopped in Edinburgh, a group of six women got on and sat near us. They were drinking wine coolers and snacking. After a while, one of them asked me to take a picture of the group which I did. Then we started chatting and learned that they were on their way to Newcastle to have a “Hen Party,” the equivalent of a bachelorette party in the US. They quite entertaining and we learned a lot about how Scottish women can party!
Glasgow is part of a 10 day trip to the British Isles