Glasgow

I only dedicated about a day and a half total to seeing Glasgow itself, so figured I'd cram the whole thing into one post.

I woke up late on Wednesday (the 20th), taking advantage of one of the few days where I didn't have a tour or train or flight to catch. Like I said earlier, trains between Edinburgh and Glasgow run about every 15 minutes so I was mostly improvising my schedule.  I'd grabbed a couple souvenirs (...okay, mainly scarves) while out and about in Edinburgh, but had a couple more I wanted to grab, so I figured I'd spend the morning grabbing some last minute goodies, then grab the train to Glasgow around lunchtime. I grabbed one last scarf, a couple little goodies for folks, and a slice of cake and tea, then bought my ticket to Glasgow and was off. 

Buchannan Street.

After arriving, hauling my stuff to the hotel, and checking in, I checked out the Buchanan Street section of the city, which is the core shopping district of City Center. I drooled over a few watches that I one day hope to afford, then bought a hand-sized pie containing God knows what and kept wandering. I eventually ended up heading towards the river (the River Clyde), and thanks to the weather being oddly warm and sunny, half the city was either shopping on Buchanan or stretched out in little patches of grass along the riverbank.

I explored the city center a bit more, then headed back to the hotel to kick back for a while and book a dinner reservation for Rogano's, which I'd gotten recommendations for from Duffy, Anthony Bourdain, and Trip Advisor. It's basically to Glasgow what Gallatoire's is to New Orleans: an Art Deco era restaurant, pleasantly stuck in the days of Downton Abbey. I got langoustines in butter and salmon in crawfish sauce, all served by people in entirely too fancy get-ups. It was tasty, but to be honest it was a bit much. They brought me a set of crab crackers and a finger bowl for the the shrimp. Have you ever cracked open a shrimp's claws? There's not a whole lot of meat there. Dessert was tasty though, and I finally figured out that 'Honeycomb' is Scot-speak

Rogano's was 'soup in a demitasse' level of fancy. 

for 'nut-free peanut brittle.' I'd had a couple desserts advertising they came with it, and was always confused when it didn't have a hunk of beeswax on the side.

Dinner done, I stopped at another Glasgow landmark, The Pot Still. It's a low-key whisky pub that prides itself on having an obscene collection to choose from. The waitresses running the bar were friendly and knew their stuff, so I tried a few things they recommended, then found myself talking to a guy named Graham from Birgmingham (England, not Alabama). He was a super nice dude who travels the country working for an insurance claims company, and uses that to visit as many whisky distilleries around the country as he can. We bought each other a couple rounds and swapped some travel stories before heading our separate ways to crash for the night.

The next morning I again took advantage of the break from, "Oh crap I need to set an alarm for tomorrow's tour," and slept in until ten or so before setting out. Today's goal was to explore the West End (Glasgow's younger, artsier, universitier neighborhood) a bit. I hopped off the metro and wandered through Kelvingrove park, dodging and weaving through the swarm of kids and pets out enjoying the sunshine with their parents. My ultimate goal was the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, but I stopped by a brewpub across the street from it for lunch first. I ordered a burger, then found a sunny spot on their patio.

And promptly got crapped on by a pigeon.

Pictured: Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Not pictured: pigeon poop.

Filing a mental note to eat more fowl the rest of the trip, I postponed basking in the sun for a bit to go rinse the poop out of my hair in the bathroom. Once that was done, I ate my burger, grabbed a coffee,

They also had this thing.

and headed to the museum to poke about for a bit. The museum had a surprisingly good collection, particularly of the big name Impressionists and post-Impressionists, and had a great exhibit on Charles Mackintosh, who was to Glasgow what Gaudi was to Barcelona. Mackintosh was a pioneer of Art Deco in design and architecture a few years before it took off elsewhere, and a lot of Glasgow's biggest sights revolve around his work. Given the short nature of my stay, though, I wasn't planning on seeing the big ones, so I was happy to see at least some of it to get a feel for what he did.

My favorite part though was definitely Dali's Christ of St. John of the Cross. The painting itself is amazing (Dali's religious pieces always wow me; apparently equal portions surrealist painter and devout Catholic make for some amazing ideas), but the history of it is fascinating as well. The gallery purchased it for 8200 pounds in the 1950s, which caused outrage among local Glaswegian artists. Why should the government spend that much money on a foreign artist's work, when the Glasgow School of Art was less than a mile away, with hundreds of budding students just getting started? It turned out to be a smart move, however, as the Spanish government recently made an offer for 80 million pounds for the painting. The gallery turned it down. Another interesting note in the painting's history is that a few years after the purchase, a man had a fit in the gallery, and, believing himself to be Jesus, tore hunks of the canvas out, saying it was because, "It doesn't look like me, it's not what it was like." The gallery spent a few months repairing the painting, and now the only really noticeable indication that it was damaged is a pattern of stress lines in the paint you can see when standing off to the side.

You can see on the of the main tears just to the left of the boat. One of the main points is to de-emphasize the typical depiction of the suffering of the crucifixion (note the lack of wounds and nails) and focus more on Christ as God, ascendant over the world and shining in the darkness.

Thoroughly arted up for the day, I swung by Oran Mor, another Scottish church given a second life after a dwindling congregation had to sell it. This one was turned into a pub, music venue, and art space. This is definitely becoming a theme of the trip, which I'll discuss more in my next post. I walked back down the main drag of the West End, past hundreds of Glaswegians enjoying beer, tea, or coffee in the sunshine, and headed back to the hotel for a bit before dinner. On the way down, I nearly got stuck in the elevator, and rode it up and down a couple times before giving up and when it stopped on the ground floor just grabbed the door with both hands and pulled it open. The manager looked a little...shocked at that, then promptly called the repair guys.

As for dinner itself I took another Duffy suggestion for and went to Two Fat Ladies, a toned down version of Rogano's. Focus was still on Glawegian and Scottish seafood, but was much less overwhelmingly swanky. I scarfed down some scallops and sole, then headed back to bed.

Scallops, black pudding, and parsnips. A just reward for Hulk Smashing open an elevator door.