Glasgow

The morning started off meeting at 8:30 and walking to the bus station. We got there on time and without too much trouble so that was good. The bus ride took about an hour and 15 minutes, and it was through some beautiful scenery- mountains, green grass, and sheep. Fog started to roll in which gave it a very ethereal feeling.We arrived at 9:15, and made our way to George Square, the main square in the city:

The tourist office is on that square so we stopped in there to get some information, then we went to the City Chambers, but that was closed (it was Saturday). We were really sad about that because apparently the inside looks awesome (google "Glasgow City Chambers"). There was a general consensus that we needed coffee (or hot chocolate in Semmes and my case), so we went searching for a place. Eventually we settled on Costa Coffee, which yes, is a chain, but it looked popular and we were tired of looking.

We decided not to go into the Museum of Modern Art, thinking we would return to it later, but we didn't. I don't think anybody was too upset about that.

We passed through Merchant City on our way south to the river. Merchant City is a bustling, urban shopping street. Pretty cool. Eventually we managed to find the River Clyde, and we walked along that on our way to the Glasgow Green.

The Glasgow Green is exactly what it sounds like: a big green park (located in Glasgow...). I'm always surprised by how green the grass is here this time of year.

So we walked through that, then on the other side was the People's Palace, a museum of Glasgow. That was a cool building, and we spent some time in there. On our way out we took pictures of the cool fountain, then headed north to the Barras (getting only a little lost along the way).

The Barras is a big flea market that takes place on weekends. There are stalls outside and inside, and it was a pretty busy place. We looked around for a while, then got lunch at a sketchy little place. We all got Scottish meals and felt our life expectancies drop by 5 years.

After that we walked through the Barras some more, then went north again to the Necropolis. The Necropolis is a big hill with an awesome graveyard on it. At the base of the Necropolis is the Glasgow Cathedral, St. Mungo's Museum, and Provand's Lordship.

We went to the Necropolis first. It was a very beautiful graveyard, and had some famous Scottish people buried in it. We could see blue skies and a beautiful sunset in the distance, but not over the graveyard. It was huge, so we spent a lot of time walking around that, then we headed back down the hill to the Cathedral.

The Cathedral was awesome. So beautiful. Apparently it was the only cathedral in Scotland to survive the Reformation. It was amazing, definitely stands up to some of the cathedrals in Italy and France. I thought the downstairs was the coolest part though. It had St. Mungo's tomb, and the whole corridor just looked so cool with the arches.

Upstairs:

Downstairs:

After the cathedral we went next door to St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Life and Art, and wandered around that for a while. There were a lot of cool artifacts in there but here's one of them:

It was 4:00 by that time and all the museums closed at 5 so we quickly went next door and wandered around Provand's Lordship, the oldest house in Glasgow. It was a neat house, I thought the layout was intriguing. Low ceilings, all stone, very cool.

At 4:30 we started walking back towards George Square, then a little more north of that to the Royal Concert Hall for some free music. Glasgow is having their Celtic Connections Festival this week so we went to this free event where some bands played music. We saw 2 groups. The first group was a brother and sister; neither of them could have been over 15. They were a big crowd pleaser. After them were this other group and they were pretty terrible, so Maeghan and I left to look at the booths outside the exhibition hall.

At about 6 we went on a search for a place to eat dinner. We wandered around for a while, finding places then deciding not to eat there.

We found this pub but some people didnt want to eat at a pub. Then we found an Italian place and got as far as through the doors, then some people decided they didn't want to eat there. Then we found another pub that was the same kind of thing as the first pub, but more expensive. So we went back to the first place we found, but it was full. So we went back to the more expensive pub. Phew. We all felt better when we finally sat down and got some food. It was good food, and that was the end of our tour of Glasgow.

We got back to the bus station with no problems. I dozed for most of the bus ride back, but I remember one of the passengers singing a few times... We arrived back in good ol' Edinburgh around 9:30. It was good to be home!

As always, there are tons of pictures on my facebook.

I probably won't update again tonight because I'm not anticipating anything unusual happening today. I'll probably just work on homework and go to church. The rest of this week will be spent planning my trip to London (leaving on Thursday, coming back Monday), and finalizing a trip to Spain (Barcelona and Madrid).

My weekend schedule has changed a surprising amount since I posted it 2 days ago so here's the updated one:

Jan. 28-Feb. 1: London (and Stonehenge)

Feb. 6- Feb. 7: Pony trekking and maybe Rosslyn Chapel?

Feb. 13- Feb. 14: 2-day tour of Scotland

Feb. 19-Feb. 22: Sarah and Alex visiting

Feb. 25- March 1: Spain (Barcelona and Madrid)

March 5- March 8: Family visiting

March 11- March 15: Alex visiting?

March 19- March 26: Dillon visiting

Then a few weeks of traveling around Europe for Spring Break!