I was sick and tired of everything
A couple of weekends ago, I skipped out of work slightly early and caught the 17:30 to Glasgow. ChrisC spotted, months ago, that there were cheap tickets on one of the Virgin West Coast lightning sales, and we thought hey, why not? Glasgow is, after all, one of the biggest cities in the UK and neither of us really knows it.
We hadn't really got around to making any proper plans for what to do, so scavenged up odds and ends from friends and from TripAdvisor, and generally worked on the basis that we'd make it up as we went along. It seemed to turn our pretty well :)
We arrived at 10pm on Friday (in the rain, natch) and trundled to our hotel. We had vague plans to go out for a drink, but actually conceded we are old, and boring, and headed to bed instead. It'd been a long week.
Saturday started off in a leisurely manner with brunch at a nearby cafe. I nearly ordered a full English, then realised I might be about to get chucked out and hastily changed to a full breakfast. Which came with two forms of potato (hash brown and potato scone), which is my measure of a splendid fry-up. Also Lorne sausage, which appears to be the lovechild of a sausage and a meatloaf.
We thought we'd have a bit of a potter around to get our bearings, so strolled along Sauchiehall Street and Buchannon Street. They're both wide, pedestrianised roads which are positively riddled with buskers and street entertainers. It's a really nice experience if you're used to dodging buses down Oxford Street. There was a bit of a Christmas market going on, too, and I accidentally bought a large amount of tablet. (Incidentally: Glasgow tablet, not as good as Edinburgh tablet. Also I must try making tablet. Type II diabetes in 3... 2... )
The sun was shining, so I demanded to go to the Necropolis before it started raining again. Which we did by heading kind of vaguely in the right direction, along the river, and finding various murals, taking in Glasgow Green, and pausing to wander its winter garden. And then getting distracted by finding the Barrowland Ballroom (one of those places we both know only from gig listings). And then the little market stalls of the Barras, and then the slightly strange stalls selling vintage porn, and then... wait, weren't we supposed to be going to the Necropolis?
We wound up the hill, and admired the fancy monuments - was there a bit of a competition going on there? I don't mind what my memorial says, but make sure it's taller than the next guy's... The view over the city is worth the short climb.
When in Glasgow, a little bit of Charles Rennie Mackintosh appears to be compulsory, so we thought we'd go to the Mackintosh House. Which was a little way west of the city centre and, wait a minute, it's a whole hour's walk away? Yup, we went to Glasgow because it is one of the UK's biggest cities, and were then surprised because it is quite big.
Never mind, we trundled over and paid our money and viewed the house. It's interesting, and some of the room interiors are lovely - but it seemed quite small, and strangely overpriced compared to other museums. We headed over the road to go to the Hunterian, and then discovered a surprising thing. I expect every museum, of any size, to have a cafe for the purpose of fleecing passing tourists. After a lot of poking and prodding round the university campus, and asking people, and prodding some more we eventually ran down an opportunity to purchase a drink (in a cafe which is really aimed at students, but is happy to server regular passersby too). And then we wandered around the curious scientific instruments in one of the many bits of the Hunterian until they threw us out. (It was closing time; we weren't bad, or anything.)
We had somewhat incompetently booked ourselves a place for dinner which was... right by the Necropolis. So we headed back to our hotel and chilled out for a bit before walking back over there again. Drygate Brewery turned out to be an excellent choice, and I cheerfully tucked into belly pork while drinking a flight of four one-third-of-a-pint measures of cask beer. Hurrah.
We had reserved Sunday for nosing our way around Kelvingrove. As we checked out of our hotel, the staff member took our bags into safe custody and asked what we had planned for the day. She was absolutely horrified that we were planning to walk to Kelvingrove, and instead suggested we took the subway. She gave us instructions as to which stations we needed, and we nodded politely, and then walked anyway. I guess we just like walking about.
Kelvingrove is a fabulous museum, by the way, and we spent the rest of the day there. It has not one but two cafes (both nice, we tried both) and really well planned galleries of art, and general museumness. Some of the displays are laid out with a real sense of fun - like the diaorama of taxidermised Scottish wildlife which thoughtfully includes both a bottle of Famous Grouse and a tin of Campbell's Royal Game soup. Up in the pointy death section armoury, more taxidermised animals had crept into the displays. Pangolins and aardvarks hung out with jointed plate armour; a bat demostrated where the maker of the thin, ribbed breastplate might have got the idea; a sparrowhawk helmet stared directly at an actual sparrowhawk. This was actually a great idea, and brought up parallels I'd never thought of before.
My only real gripe with Kelvingrove is that I'd been looking forward to seeing Dali's Christ of St John on the Cross, and they'd rather inconveniently lent it to the RA in London for an exhibition. Fortunately I'd only remembered on arrival that they actually had it, so it wasn't like I'd made a special trip.
Drifting about from natural history to art conservation to Glasgow's heritage and the Glasgow boys, we eventually conceded it was about time to head off. Back to the hotel to pick up bags, and down to the railway. At which point ChrisC decided that having subsisted most of the previous day on porridge and tablet, he needed to complete his Glasgown Comestible Trinity by seeking out deep-fried pizza. He somewhat overdelivered, managing to find a chip shop by the station which sold pizza not only deep-fried, but battered.
It was... an experience.
Overall, Glasgow is lovely. Its centre was largely built in the period best described as Victorian Twiddly, which means it has (like Edinburgh and large chunks of West Yorkshire) a rather pleasantly grand air. It's got a nice big river (unlike Edinburgh which has a weird fake valley), and it's got Big Art all over the place. Some cracking museums, and some really good places to eat.
[Originally posted at https://venta.dreamwidth.org/533002.html]
We hadn't really got around to making any proper plans for what to do, so scavenged up odds and ends from friends and from TripAdvisor, and generally worked on the basis that we'd make it up as we went along. It seemed to turn our pretty well :)
We arrived at 10pm on Friday (in the rain, natch) and trundled to our hotel. We had vague plans to go out for a drink, but actually conceded we are old, and boring, and headed to bed instead. It'd been a long week.
Saturday started off in a leisurely manner with brunch at a nearby cafe. I nearly ordered a full English, then realised I might be about to get chucked out and hastily changed to a full breakfast. Which came with two forms of potato (hash brown and potato scone), which is my measure of a splendid fry-up. Also Lorne sausage, which appears to be the lovechild of a sausage and a meatloaf.
We thought we'd have a bit of a potter around to get our bearings, so strolled along Sauchiehall Street and Buchannon Street. They're both wide, pedestrianised roads which are positively riddled with buskers and street entertainers. It's a really nice experience if you're used to dodging buses down Oxford Street. There was a bit of a Christmas market going on, too, and I accidentally bought a large amount of tablet. (Incidentally: Glasgow tablet, not as good as Edinburgh tablet. Also I must try making tablet. Type II diabetes in 3... 2... )
The sun was shining, so I demanded to go to the Necropolis before it started raining again. Which we did by heading kind of vaguely in the right direction, along the river, and finding various murals, taking in Glasgow Green, and pausing to wander its winter garden. And then getting distracted by finding the Barrowland Ballroom (one of those places we both know only from gig listings). And then the little market stalls of the Barras, and then the slightly strange stalls selling vintage porn, and then... wait, weren't we supposed to be going to the Necropolis?
We wound up the hill, and admired the fancy monuments - was there a bit of a competition going on there? I don't mind what my memorial says, but make sure it's taller than the next guy's... The view over the city is worth the short climb.
When in Glasgow, a little bit of Charles Rennie Mackintosh appears to be compulsory, so we thought we'd go to the Mackintosh House. Which was a little way west of the city centre and, wait a minute, it's a whole hour's walk away? Yup, we went to Glasgow because it is one of the UK's biggest cities, and were then surprised because it is quite big.
Never mind, we trundled over and paid our money and viewed the house. It's interesting, and some of the room interiors are lovely - but it seemed quite small, and strangely overpriced compared to other museums. We headed over the road to go to the Hunterian, and then discovered a surprising thing. I expect every museum, of any size, to have a cafe for the purpose of fleecing passing tourists. After a lot of poking and prodding round the university campus, and asking people, and prodding some more we eventually ran down an opportunity to purchase a drink (in a cafe which is really aimed at students, but is happy to server regular passersby too). And then we wandered around the curious scientific instruments in one of the many bits of the Hunterian until they threw us out. (It was closing time; we weren't bad, or anything.)
We had somewhat incompetently booked ourselves a place for dinner which was... right by the Necropolis. So we headed back to our hotel and chilled out for a bit before walking back over there again. Drygate Brewery turned out to be an excellent choice, and I cheerfully tucked into belly pork while drinking a flight of four one-third-of-a-pint measures of cask beer. Hurrah.
We had reserved Sunday for nosing our way around Kelvingrove. As we checked out of our hotel, the staff member took our bags into safe custody and asked what we had planned for the day. She was absolutely horrified that we were planning to walk to Kelvingrove, and instead suggested we took the subway. She gave us instructions as to which stations we needed, and we nodded politely, and then walked anyway. I guess we just like walking about.
Kelvingrove is a fabulous museum, by the way, and we spent the rest of the day there. It has not one but two cafes (both nice, we tried both) and really well planned galleries of art, and general museumness. Some of the displays are laid out with a real sense of fun - like the diaorama of taxidermised Scottish wildlife which thoughtfully includes both a bottle of Famous Grouse and a tin of Campbell's Royal Game soup. Up in the pointy death section armoury, more taxidermised animals had crept into the displays. Pangolins and aardvarks hung out with jointed plate armour; a bat demostrated where the maker of the thin, ribbed breastplate might have got the idea; a sparrowhawk helmet stared directly at an actual sparrowhawk. This was actually a great idea, and brought up parallels I'd never thought of before.
My only real gripe with Kelvingrove is that I'd been looking forward to seeing Dali's Christ of St John on the Cross, and they'd rather inconveniently lent it to the RA in London for an exhibition. Fortunately I'd only remembered on arrival that they actually had it, so it wasn't like I'd made a special trip.
Drifting about from natural history to art conservation to Glasgow's heritage and the Glasgow boys, we eventually conceded it was about time to head off. Back to the hotel to pick up bags, and down to the railway. At which point ChrisC decided that having subsisted most of the previous day on porridge and tablet, he needed to complete his Glasgown Comestible Trinity by seeking out deep-fried pizza. He somewhat overdelivered, managing to find a chip shop by the station which sold pizza not only deep-fried, but battered.
It was... an experience.
Overall, Glasgow is lovely. Its centre was largely built in the period best described as Victorian Twiddly, which means it has (like Edinburgh and large chunks of West Yorkshire) a rather pleasantly grand air. It's got a nice big river (unlike Edinburgh which has a weird fake valley), and it's got Big Art all over the place. Some cracking museums, and some really good places to eat.
[Originally posted at https://venta.dreamwidth.org/533002.html]