Glasgow
Travel Location: Glasgow,United-Kingdom
Getting up at (approx) 7:30am for breakfast wasn’t that bad. We got coupons for breakfast, which would normally cost around 10 euro (I guess). Really nice buffet with mostly everything you could think of for a European breakfast. Took my time working in a few croissants, some bread, a boiled egg and some fruit.
Got my bag from the cabin and headed back up to the 7th deck before 9am, when we were supposed to arrive, and we did. It took ages to get off the boat as they had just tightened up the security at the borders; 2 days before there was a bombing at Glasgow Airport, so they checked every passport carefully.
This meant we could relax until nearly everyone had left and then get to the exit!
Driving up from Newcastle to Carlisle to Glasgow was pretty nice. Some hills here and there, and at least Newcastle had a through road coming from the port. Practising my tour that I was going to have to do in Glasgow the next day, and sleeping off the little hangover that was there and the nice views on the bus was a perfect start of the day.
Once arrived in Glasgow we drove through the city to get to the hostel. Glasgow seems to be quite a large city as it took us a while to get there. We were happy to finally arrive at the Eurohostel, and checking in with the whole group was okay. Stayed with the boys and some girls in a big room with 12 or 16 beds on the 3rd floor. We had a nice view on the huge glasswork of St. Enoch shopping centre and some of Glasgow’s Downtown area.
Bernard, Tymon and I had a quick stroll through St Enoch and a couple of other streets to find a cap for Bernard. The hat he was wearing was a bit too warm, and he wanted a few cap, so we went looking for one, but alas, we couldn’t find one in the time that we had (was just 45mins). Brought my camera out though, so I enjoyed Glasgows architecture and took a few shots. I thought Glasgow, the city that grew during the industrial times, would be a quite modern and maybe a little boring city to visit. Nothing like it – I loved it and you’ll see why in the pictures!
At 3pm we had to gather in front of the hostel for our first museum tour in Glasgow: People’s Palace and Winter Gardens. While walking over to People’s Palace through Glasgow Green it started raining. Not a very nice start of our ‘vacation’, but what could you expect from Scotland? Luckily it stayed dry most of the other days in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
I’m not really a museum person, but it wasn’t that bad. I liked the paintings on the ceiling and the ‘tour guides’ weren’t too bad. I think half of them passed ha.
The Wintergardens were a LOT smaller than I thought they would be, and not as pretty. I thought it would be a spectacular thing, I guess I didn’t look it up carefully enough.
After the museum tour we decided to walk our own tour. We had already walked a part of it anyways, up to the winter gardens. This would be a great idea to snap a few pictures too, as we wouldn’t be able to do so tomorrow morning when we were going to do the tour.
The first sight we came across was Templeton’s Carpet Factory, which I had imagined to be quite an ugly, gigantic red building. I actually quite liked it when I saw it, with the great texture of stones. Amazing to see the building turn out nice after all haha.
Not being able to find some things we asked a passerby or a police officer where a certain sight would be, but most of the time my memory would be enough to guide us through the tour. Couldn’t find the Old fruitmarket and the police officer didn’t have a clue either. Seems the it’s really old and the last one market they had in that street was a longggg time ago! So don’t go looking for the Old Fruitmarket!
Glasgow’s got (and probably more buildings in the UK, don’t know about that) some nice, different buildings with blue clocks on them. Don’t remember clearly the names of them but I could look them up if you want.
Going from Hutcheson’s Hall on Ingram Street to the Italian Centre, which is definitely worth visiting (inside). We were getting up to the big George Square, where the City Chambers are located at. The City Chambers is a huge building, built in the high point of the city’s wealth, and it’s supposed to be very impressive on the inside too. We unfortunately didn’t a chance to go inside, but I could really recommend it.
From George Square we walked northwest up to Buchanan Street, towards the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. We wanted to visit the Buchanan Galleries, big shopping mall, but we were too late – closed at 6pm!
The Royal Concert Hall is a nice modern building located at the end of Buchanan St, where you have an excellent view back down the street. Around the corner is the tallest cinema in the world, if you’re interested (UGC CineWorld). It’s just a big glass building with 18 screens.
Back on Buchanan St. take a left after 400m towards the Gallery of Modern Art. Quite an impressive building too, with a nice colourful triangle in the top.
Getting nearly to the end of our tour we decided to get a pizza, my feet were killing me - I was wearing the wrong shoes for lots of walking! Getting blisters on my feet so I had to walk carefully and slowly. Good thing the day had almost come to an end.
Just studied and rewrote and studied some more for the tour the next morning. The boys all wanted to go out and have a blast, but I had to concentrate (with still half the hangover from the boat and being pretty tired from the 3-hour walking today). So I laid down on one of the nice couches at the hostel and relaxed there while studying.
When I got back upstairs to the room to sleep, everyone was still there getting ready to go out. I didn’t like the fact that they were smoking on the room, but they were just leaving so I left it. Niek stayed and I asked him to quit smoking, and he respected that and did so. The ladies weren’t too nice when they got back from going out later that night and complained they had to go smoke in the hall. Tough shit! They weren’t even allowed to smoke inside anyways.
