DAY 9 – EDINBURGH/GLASGOW
An unusually early start this morning got us on a bus to Glasgow. We decided to go and check out the 'other' Scottish city since we had time to spare. It has a completely different feel to Edinburgh. Everything in Edinburgh feels comfortably spread out, small, human-scale, and it feels much older than Glasgow. Glasgow seems more like a 'normal' city, with more modern architecture, taller buildings, and generally more hustle and bustle. It was enjoyable for its difference, but I'm glad we're in Edinburgh. Anyways, on a very cold and frosty day we headed east to Glasgow Cathedral, the oldest surviving Cathedral in Scotland (and/or UK?). It's stunning, 800 years of severe stone, incredible vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows, smaller chapels underneath the main one, and surprisingly a lot of battle references and memorials to soldiers. Trekking back to the city centre, we noticed how well Glasgow handles visitors – every few hundred metres there is a big poster map of the CBD with attractions conveniently located, and they play on their architectural history in very overt fashion. It's kind of like they're trying to make up for the way their ancestors basically ignored Charles Rennie Mackintosh during his lifetime. I'm glad the public transport is so good here though – the city is almost exclusively made up of one-way streets, and would be terrible to try and navigate in a car unless you knew what you were doing.
We then jumped on a bus to the west end of Glasgow to see the transport museum. It was incredible how many artefacts they had on display, and across such a broad range. There were steam locomotives, the evolution of the car, dozens of bicycles, boats, metal detectors (re: aviation, following the destruction of a 747 over a small Scottish town due to a timed explosive in a suitcase), trams, motorcycles, fire engines, you name it. Each exhibit was well presented, but it felt a little incoherent and will benefit greatly from the imminent move to a much larger, Zaha Hadid-designed building. We grabbed some overpriced lunch (a necessity as our cheese and ham to make sandwiches was stolen and presumably eaten by drunk residents last night… grr) and headed across the road to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. That was truly a fantastic setup – very informative, easy to understand, a huge variety of stuff (including some very cool medieval swords and other weapons) and most impressively a section dedicated to explaining art to novices like us. It was really good.
I really liked Glasgow, although it doesn't have Edinburgh's character it does what it does very well.
DAY 10 – EDINBURGH
Our plans to see the Writers Museum were foiled for the second time today (it was closed on Boxing Day, and also apparently on Sundays), so we did a few housekeeping things like food shopping and booking our Loch Ness tour for tomorrow. Following a tip from a notice in the kitchen of the hostel we wandered to a nice little bar called the Brass Monkey. Before you judge us for going to the bar at 2:30 in the afternoon, this one is different. Every day they show a DVD on a projector in the back room, which is basically one giant mattress with cushions everywhere and cool little tables with holes in them to support your drinks while people walk past rocking the mattress. The best part is that the cost of the movie is only a drink from the bar. The drinks are good too – our coffees were among the best we have ever tasted and were huge for the price. We saw Leon – an excellent film that, surprisingly, we both enjoyed. It's a cool idea and perfect in a uni town like this, a good way to attract people to your bar and a nice way of escaping the cold. Keeley has already announced plans to open one in Melbourne. It would work really well in the CBD I think. Edinburgh and Melbourne are similar in that regard.
There are things you notice when travelling that aren't so similar though – cultural differences that stand out. For example, this morning a guy was shaving in the bathroom with both the hot and cold taps turned on full bore the whole time. I can't imagine anyone in Australia wasting water like that. Also, here people blatantly ignore pedestrian signals at traffic lights. Seriously, most people don't even look for the little man – they just check for traffic and run across. And everyone here smokes. It must be a way of escaping the cold (although you have to go outside to do it, so I'm not sure if that theory is dodgy). It's much more socially accepted, although illegal indoors.
The streets of the city are getting busier every day in preparation for Hogmanay. The carnival has doubled in size, and there seemed to be more people roaming around. We met more Aussies today too. Hopefully there will be fewer of them on the continent.
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