We left Edinburgh on a short train ride that brought us to our next stop on the Great Britain, GB, Scotland, UK, British Isles tour- Glasgow.
Breweries and clouds in Glasgow.
Glasgow immediately felt sad to me. It was totally lacking the fun, fringe party wacky artsy people, street comic energy of Edinburgh. However, our first venture out to the city center rewarded us with strange happenings.
The Cenotaph War Memorial in Glasgow honoring the soldiers of WWI. It's located in the city center.
A lot of birds pooped on his head. Also PEOPLE MAKE GLASGOW.
We stumbled upon one of the world’s oldest surviving music halls, Britannia Panopticon, where they were celebrating the anniversary (120 years to the day!) by playing old silent films with live actor reenactments. The film they were recreating, called The Geisha, included a women as a goldfish, a women dressed as a man in love with the goldfish, and a man dressed as a women, in love with the man. There was live ukulele music played by a man that looked like Gandolf and someone hand cranking a bubble gun as well. So there were some interesting, weird experiences to be had in Glasgow.
A beautiful mural, probably the best one we saw in all of Scotland.
After we left the old silent picture drag show, we stopped in at Blackfriars Bar, a craft beer bar Ryan read about online. The beers were meh but the place was busy! In the UK more than anywhere else I think, we found ourselves drinking flavorless craft beer. Also, did you know they serve Guiness from two taps, one of which is labeled Extra Cold?
The food was decent and the volume was loud. It seemed in Glasgow even on a Thursday night, a lot of people were out together enjoying their pints. We stopped downstairs for a minute to hear some nerds talk about Internet stuff at a meet-up group, but then thought better of it and retreated back upstairs to the bar.
Sky, hills and clouds on the day we explored Stirling Castle.
The next day, by recommendation, we traveled out to Stirling Castle to see old stones and dead people from all the fighting that happened back in the day over rocks, land and beliefs. When those arguments paused it seems royalty looked towards themselves for conflict. Exciting! A brief train ride and we were off to walk around the town of Stirling. Lucky for us, the weather was nice and we had a great day for taking pictures and looking at stuff. In the afternoon, after a brief rain shower, we saw a rainbow!
Just another golden lion hanging out a window.
The unicorn is the national animal of Scotland and can be found hanging around on rooftops and doorways.
Stirling Castle had an interesting exhibit about the textile panels The Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn. The seven recently completed panels were created by textile artists over 14 years. They worked to recreate the originals held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The work was commissioned by Historic Scotland as part of a project to replicate the interior of palace for how it may have looked in the 1540s when Mary, Queen of Scots resided there. We saw the work hanging in the Queens room and visited the temporary gallery space located on the castle grounds that featured an exhibition and went into detail over the size, scale, cost and execution of the project. By halving the thread count and reducing the size of the overall pieces they reduced the timeline by 13 years. It’s hard to believe the originals may have taken 25 years to make!
The next day we walked to Glasgow Green and The People’s Palace. In The People’s Palace there was a caricature exhibition with pictures of Hillary and Trump. The Trump picture was already defaced and had only been placed in the exhibit a few days earlier. I wonder.
Unfortunately we couldn't walk around the glass house part because the glass ceilings are falling down. Hmm....
Later we walked to the Necropolis, Glasgow Cathedral and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum was really interesting building that had a fun mix of art and natural history weirdness, all free to view. We spent several hours admiring taxidermy animals and birds and Elvis, non-taxidermy.
Salvador Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross is located in a gallery upstairs with a video explaining how the painting was vandalized in 1961. Someone made a giant tear in it with their hands and the piece was painstakingly restored by gallery staff. Originally artist groups in town were mad the Director of the museum spent so much money acquiring the painting. Now, it's one of the biggest draws for the gallery.
The Kelvingrove building is very beautiful and full of lots of stuff!
Big churches! I mean the Glasgow Cathedral seen from the dead people hill, I mean the Necropolis.
We also took a ride on the newly refurbished and somewhat tiny subway line. Ryan and I laughed the entire time on the train because it just seemed silly, how small it was.
Back at our Airbnb, Ryan said hi to our hosts who didn't pause the Star Trek show they were watching. In total darkness. In their living room. He made a few Star Trek jokes to lay out his nerd credentials and, while they chuckled, they continued watching without much response. After five minutes, Ryan retreated back upstairs which he said was fine because he had his own show to watch - Mr. Robot.
Once again, we assembled our packs in preparation for the next part of our UK travels, Barnard Castle. Compared to the charm of Edinburgh, Glasgow seemed a little less interesting overall, but the visit to Stirling Castle and the countryside was very beautiful. It was time to leave the Scots behind and head south over Hadrian’s Wall for a visit with England.
Castle hill pano! With clouds.