Glasgow

O and I returned this afternoon from long-November-weekend number one. We had a wonderful time in Glasgow, it's a quite lively city, especially since we were staying in the area near the University of Glasgow, the West End, so there were lots of students and places that cater to them. That area of the city is also quite beautiful with a lot of small residential streets full of old houses. I wish we had had the time and energy to explore more.

So, a trying-to-be-brief rundown on the trip...

It's a miracle we arrived in Glasgow on time because we were flying there on Easyjet, but via London, and since Easyjet doesn't do normal airline things, you can't check in ahead of time for another flight (we're probably the only ones mad enough to try transferring with Easyjet, but hey, they're the ones who dropped the direct flight. Which was pointed out to us in a lovely way by the Dutch woman checking us in on the way there. She asked why we were doing it in such a difficult way, "why don't you just fly direct? Oh wait, you can't, the Glasgow route ended last week..." Yes. Thank you.) Things already were not off to a good start on the train ride to the airport. We bought discounted tickets because I have a voordeelurenkaart, but they weren't actually valid because it was before 9 am on a weekday. I completely forgot that though, and then we get on the train and were immediately checked by the conductors. O actually was given the ok even though that conductor didn't even ask to see the discount card, but then the guy checking my ticket said it wasn't good, it was before 9, and told me to get off at the next stop and buy a full price ticket. I said "ok, fine" but was thinking, "yeah right, we don't have much time to check in, I'm not getting off the train." We couldn't get away with it though, at the next stop the conductor came back to the door we were standing at and he told us to get off. O pleaded with him saying we'd miss our fight, but he said get off and buy a ticket or pay the 35 eur fine for not having a ticket on the train. So we got off. But didn't buy a new ticket. We waited nervously for 10 minutes for the next train, made it to the airport, and were lucky enough to find no line at check in. Everything went smoothly until we were on the plane, waiting to leave, and there was some fuel pressure problem and we ended up sitting there for almost an hour. (There was also the lovely announcement that we should leave our seatbelts unbuckled because they were refueling the plane. So in case of an explosion, we'd have a better chance of survival by being able to get up faster to run through a packed airplane's narrow aisle.) To make an already-long story short, we made it through the London airport fine, thanks to a short line at immigration and no line again at the Easyjet check in. So, though we felt rushed and had barely any time to grab food even, we arrived at the expected time in Glasgow.

We checked into our B&B (which was on a small side street that the taxi driver couldn't find, leading him to pull over at one point to consult the A-Z) and found an ok room that was certainly not the worst I'd seen, but it wasn't what I'd hoped for from the impression I got on their website. The room was just a bit rough around the edges and the bed (which was really two twin beds pushed together) was pushed into the corner so you could only get in on one side or at the end. Yes, the rooms were equipped with nice new LCD tv/DVD players, but it seemed incongruous with the rest of the room. And there was a DVD library of sorts, as advertised on their site, but it mostly consisted of very obviously pirated DVDs, in a pile next to a computer that had stacks of blank DVD-Rs sitting around it. Could they make it any more obvious? Breakfast was also quite disappointing and we ate a cafe the 2nd morning, especially since breakfast in the B&B, in typical fashion, was served way too early for us to handle. But I thought, well, the hotel's in a great location, it's clean, the owner is nice, and it's quiet. That is until last night, when we went to bed early to get up at 7:30 to fly home. We were woken up at 11:40 pm by what I later figured out to be some people only just arriving and being shown into the room next to ours. There was a lot of noisy talking and I couldn't really figure out what was going on. I did hear some Asian language at one point, which, with my groggy mind combined with reading quite a few chapters of my current book before bed, lead me to think that someone was arriving with some Asian people that they were going to exhibit at a fair, or perhaps a circus, and they were passing through Glasgow and quickly needed a place to stay for the night, thus the late arrival. Well, obviously. In reality, the guests were a Chinese or Japanese or something couple who I guess weren't very tired because they then proceeded to go in and out of their room to the bathroom down the hall and clean things and talk as if they were the only ones in the place. For about an hour I would dose off, only to be woken up by them talking or shutting their door loudly again. Finally at 1 I went out there and told them to please be quiet. When I went out into the hall, their door was already open, I caught sight of some socks or other clothes lying on the heater drying, the woman came to the door fully dressed with a bowl in her hand, and she had been saying some stuff to the man, with the door open, presumably as she was on her way to the bathroom. At 1 am. I mean, geez. I can understand being a bit thrown by the time difference, but you might expect others are sleeping at that time. So then I couldn't get back to sleep for an hour and ended up waking up just before the alarm, so I didn't get much sleep. O uncharacteristically slept through the whole thing and didn't even know I had left the room to tell them to be quiet. The bastard.

The weather while we were in Glasgow was about what you'd expect for Scotland in November. It wasn't too cold when we got there, but we had to battle with wind and rain on Thursday and Friday. Saturday was dry, but gray, but at dusk the clouds broke up and there was an amazing sunset. Which then produced a clear and cold night so that it was freezing this morning when we left. The predicted high for today was 5 C. But we survived, though the wind really got to me.

Our hotel was just off Great Western Road, which runs east/west through the West End. We were about halfway between the nearest subway stop and Byres Road, which was the other main street we wandered in and hung around. It was very studenty, but not as cool as I expected from the descriptions in travel guides. Still, it had loads of sandwich shops and cafes and coffee shops and pubs. Our first night we ate at an Indian place called Ashoka just off Bryes Road. The 2nd night we ate at a nice little cafe called Whistler's Mother. As we sat there waiting for our dinner, I noticed a big poster on the ceiling that was talking about acid rain - in Dutch. And another poster next to it that was in Dutch, and another one in Dutch under it.... The whole ceiling was covered with all of these Dutch ads and public service posters. It was really weird, especially since, as far as I could remember, Whistler was American, so how did Dutch posters fit in? So we asked the waitress and it turned out that the cafe, in its previous incarnation about 15 years ago, was owned by a Dutch guy and he put up those posters and they were left there. It made sense especially to O since he recognized the posters as being from the 80s or so. I highly recommend the cafe, by the way - the staff were really nice, the food was good, and it was a nice, laidback atmosphere.

As for things we saw, on Friday we ventured into the centre for a little bit. We walked along the River Clyde briefly and wandered through a nice little market that was next to the St Enoch subway station. It started raining more, so we took our soggy butts back to the hotel.

A little bit later we met up with Steven, who had also made plans to come to Glasow to see Sleater-Kinney but couldn't cancel his travel plans after they cancelled the tour. At least Glasgow is his hometown, so he didn't have to pay for a hotel. He showed us around the university and we went to the Hunterian Museum. We then saw our first sun in Scotland as it cleared up a bit. We went up to the Botanic Gardens and puttered around, though, while it was dry then, it was really windy and I was getting sick of it. The cold makes my ears hurt and I was just tired. Steven showed us a cool area though in the Gardens where there used to be an underground railway, but it closed in the 60s. You can look down on it and see the platforms still. I would love to see what other old stuff might be hiding down there.

On Saturday we went to the east part of town to go to the cathedral. What I was mostly interested in there really was the necropolis, a cemetery around the cathedral that was opened in 1833 and is filled with thousands of graves and memorials and tombs. I definitely wanted to visit it. It was quite interesting to walk around, plus it's on a hill so you get some good views of the city. I think we got a lot of good photos from there, especially since it was a gray, gloomy afternoon, so it was the right atmosphere for it.

Later in the afternoon there was a friendly football game between Scotland and the US, so we went to a pub to watch it, me being careful not to talk to loudly. I figured if anyone asked if I was an American, I'd say "hell no! I'm Canadian!" in a very convincing manner and we could all take a good piss out of Americans and sing Scottish songs together. Fortunately it was a very big, very loud pub, so I don't think anyone noticed when I was yelling my drinks order across the bar, or they were too drunk to notice my accent. Watching football in a Scottish pub though was brilliant. O and I kept giggling at each other over things we'd overhear people around us yell. I'm sorry to any Scots reading this, but the accent and the phrases and everything, it was all very "they really do say that and sound like that!" A guy in front of me kept yelling "go on! Go on, son!" every time Scotland got close to the goal, just like O says his Scottish co-worker does (and which O does a pretty good impression of). The game got a bit boring, tied at 1-1 most of the game and with no real push later on, but around the 91st minute, Scotland landed a goal. Except they didn't because the guy was off sides. So the whole pub was all "Yeaaaahhhhh! Nooooooo!" Heh. It was funny and not just because I was meant to be cheering for the other side.

This morning we discussed the game with the guy driving us back out to the airport. He was brilliant to listen to. He first commended the English on their win against Argentina and said they have a great team, but when O told him how the pub we were in would cheer when Argentina scored (they had many a tv in this pub, and 2 football games and some rugby were on at once), the driver said "Aye, we don't like the English. No one likes the English." Later we were talking about how difficult it is to find the hotel we were at and that the streets don't make much sense. The driver told us "if you want things that don't make much sense, all you have to do is look at the Glasgow City Council. Some of these roads... I think they were smoking some wacky backy when they were planning 'em." Ah, I wish I could tape conversations sometimes...

I think that the impression people have of the English being polite goes double for the Scottish. People in shops and restaurants, even strangers, are in general so kind and helpful and sweet. Sometimes it can feel a bit overboard, like when I was purchasing some stuff at Marks & Spencers and I swear the cashier must have managed to say thank you to me about 10 times in just our little interaction. But then there was our first morning when a woman passed by as O was taking a photo of some graffiti. She asked if we were design students and when we said we were just tourists, she told us about the graffiti artists in the neighbourhood and how they do art, not just tagging stuff, and she's tried to get in touch with some of them. We had this nice little conversation with her, and then we went on our way. It makes me think how, yeah, I get random people talking to me here sometimes, especially at the bus stop, but when I think about it, it's usually to complain: "This weather, it's been so cold/wet/windy." "The bus, it's always late, especially when I really need to get to work." "The bus driver was so rude to me yesterday..." Glasgow in that respect was a breath of fresh air. Cold, soggy air, but the people made it worth it.