Tuesday in Glasgow, Scotland

And here's the stuff for Tuesday in Glasgow...

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Today, I was very lackadaisical and slept in till about 11 am. Marc had told me last night that Glasgow is not a really big tourist spot and there’s not that much here aside from some historical places and museums. He highly recommended that I go to Edinburgh (the capital of Scotland) while I was here as it was more suited for tourists and sight-seeing as there was the castle there and everything. I figured I’d look into heading over there for a day trip on Wednesday. So knowing this, as well as being tired and being on vacation – I slept in a little bit!

When I got up and was getting ready, two other guys in my room were doing the same so naturally we started talking. They’re French as well but from the Eastern part near Germany and were visiting for the week. We introduced ourselves; their names are Anthony and Thomas. We started talking about what we were doing here and all that stuff usual of traveler’s talking. They told me they were going on a day trip up to Loch Ness and the Highlands tomorrow and it was only £31 which is rather cheap! So we kept talking and figured might as well head on out together and I definitely wanted to join them on that bus tour! I had looked at the possibilities of getting up to Loch Ness but I couldn’t find anything online that worked with my schedule here in Glasgow. So we walked up through the city center, stopping at a place that was a cross between a mall and an indoor market for a cheap lunch – I got a cheeseburger with fries but Thomas got a hamburger and it came out just a patty deep-fried with no bun – but that’s what they call a hamburger at that place. There was a good Scottish goods store there that I aim to stop back at for souvenirs. We then kept walking to George Square where the tourist center was so I could get a ticket for that bus tour tomorrow. After that was all paid for and settled, we decided to head over to the Science Center and walked down towards the river. However, we opted to stop at the Modern Art Museum we passed as it was free to get in. It was rather small but the building it was in was gorgeous and old but I couldn’t find any information about the building itself which was a pity!

We then walked down to the River Clyde and headed out towards the Science Center. It was a rather quite and peaceful walk with almost no one around – granted there was also a lot of construction going on trying to fix the riverfront up and give it a facelift. But we got to the new conference center which had an “Armadillo” concert hall. We crossed over the river on a rather interesting foot bridge which took us past the BBC Scotland building and over to the Science Center and the Observation Tower. We opted to go in, and paid the £5 but unfortunately the Observation Tower was closed still for the winter season. We spent a decent amount of time in there but I really thought it was childish and would’ve rather done other things – not that there was much to do in Glasgow anyways.

But after a while, we left there and walked across an even tinier bridge to the other side of the river and kept walking towards the other museums and the Glasgow University. However, I noted that in the one pamphlet it showed the museums closing at 5 pm – this being at 4:30 and we were still walking over there. So we figured we’d just head back to the hostel and have dinner, then go out for drinks later. To get there, however, we had to cross a very interesting footbridge over the roadway and walk through an apartment complex area. But we got to some more main streets and stopped at a small grocery store to buy dinner to cook in the microwave as the kitchen was really dirty! We ended up getting microwave lasagnas, a baguette, some brie (a kind of cheese), chips, and I got a container of real milk! What was cool is that it only cost us £6 plus a little for it all – so it was dirt cheap dinner!

We got back to the hostel, and just hung out for a bit in the kitchen as it was only 5:30 and still early for dinner. (The French eat dinner around 7 usually and I’ve gotten into that habit as well.) So after a cup of tea and chatting, we headed into the lounge to watch some TV. I got out my laptop and started typing all this up while we watched The Simpson’s. After that we were hungry and it was about 7 pm so we heated up our dinner. At the same time, the other group of French students were there making dinner (they were from Lyons) so it felt like I was back in France as most of us talked in French. It was funny b/c the made rice and had a chile con corne sauce to pour on it… well they bought the extra hot kinda so most of them had to dilute it with more rice and then ate the loaf of bread sitting out too!

After that, we headed into the lounge to watch more TV but there was some older guy in there that had a documentary thing on and was rather rude, so we left. We had walked upstairs to figure out what to do, when a new group of students went into the kitchen – so we headed back down there for more tea! They were mostly from Canada, Ontario region, and they were cooking up pasta and actually had a pretty large group there and coming over for dinner. But it was kinda boring for the three of us so we figured we’d check out what to do and headed back to the lounge to see if the TV was free. It was so we sat down, and Anthony ran back up to the room for something… meanwhile Collin came down to the lounge and started talking to us. He was already a bit too tipsy and perhaps on something else as well! But he said he had to show us the French – Scottish history thing he had. Not wanting to be rude and because it seemed better than doing nothing we followed him up. On the upper set of stairs he showed us a poster of all the Scottish clan’s plaid patters (they have another name but I forget it!) then kept going up stairs into the hallway.

He started off by welcoming us to the Palace of Versailles as he had about 5 dressing mirrors hanging up on all the walls in the hallway! That made us laugh a bit! Then he showed us part of a history text he had copied and framed along with pictures of significant events in the history of Scotland and the French ties. Basically how Mary, Queen of Scots, married the French king but was later kicked out of France, etc, etc. However, he got us laughing more because he made a parallel between Mary and Princess Diana – which was rather funny! Afterwards he said we could look at it on our own, but on our way back downstairs to the gather he was having in his office again, he started talking about how one of the other French guys was too “preoccupied with himself” to go after the Canadian girls he was always talking about. Collin was quite blunt about it and that cracked us up even more! But after that, the three of us headed back to our room to figure out what to do. We didn’t want it to be a late night as we had to get on the bus at 8 am… while not only walking over there but picking up sandwiches and breakfast on the way. So we figured we’d go out to a bar for a drink or so and be back by midnight in order to be up by 6 am. So we headed to a bar not far from the hostel – I’m not sure what the name is though but I’ll figure it out! After a few drinks and a conversation about music and slang words in both English and French, we came back to the hostel and got ready for bed. As our other roommate, Marc, was there – I met him when I first got here – we all started talking about various things for a bit while getting ready for bed. Thus that leads me to here where I’m just typing this all up so I don’t forget it! Well, I’m off as I need my sleep for tomorrow and will try to dream of seeing Nelly! Hope things are going great back there with everyone. Laterz!