Wednesday, May 23, 2007
« Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue | Main | A Gazillion Days Ago I mentioned the Gla... »
Visiting Glasgow
Another substantial delay, sorry about that! Work has been frantic lately: I've been centrally involved in setting up all sorts of new experiments with various different people. I'm feeling quite productive, but little time is left for frippery. Especially since I've also been fighting off a nasty cold/flu sort of thing (my immune system should really get in gear). Anyway.... back to Glasgow.

We took a morning train from London, somewhat loaded down with a bunch of posters/flyers/information sheets for my work presentation. The trip to Glasgow was pretty quick, less than 5 hours up the West Coast Main Line on a Pendolino train. Once we ditched the luggage, we scrambled up the hill for some quick touristic activities before closing time. First stop was Provand's Lordship, Glasgow's only surviving medieval house. But just across the street from Provand's Lordship stands Glasgow Cathedral, so we had to make a quick visit there as well. And of course its surrounding churchyard. We Dunces always seem to find ourselves wandering around churchyards, graveyards, cemeteries, and this was no exception. The graves surrounding the cathedral were quite substantial, and many were surrounded by iron cages (perhaps this was to protect the recently dead from the bodysnatching craze?). One of these cages also contained a Dunce.





But wait, there was more. Up on the hill above the cathedral was a the Glasgow Necropolis! Mrs. Dunce was almost uncontrollable with excitement:


But we were too late to explore the Necropolis (without scaling fences, tunneling or some other similar non-standard means of entrance, so we would have to wait. We took a detour back to the hotel (where I met with my Deaf colleague for a briefing about the next day's event), then made a beeline for the pub. The Babbity Bowster is quite well-regarded (and was quite near the hotel), so we made it our first stop. It's quite small, with fairly minimal decor & lots of hard surfaces which made it noisier than we might have liked. But we managed to get a small table which was no mean feat on a Friday night. Decent ale, and quite good pub food (including vegetarian haggis, neeps and tatties). After that it was a very short wander to another pub, the Blackfriars. This was a much larger place, with quite a mix of people and a larger range of beers (many of which we'd never heard of). There's a smoking ban in Scotland (unlike England, at least for the moment), so the pubs weren't smoky either. Everything was quite pleasant; we didn't see even a hint of trouble, much less the famed Glasgow kiss.

The next day our paths diverged: I spent the day working, and Mrs Dunce hit the museums. Our next joint venture was navigating the complicated and overcrowded Glasgow subway system.


St. Dunce: Patron Saint of the Glasgow Underground:


After a quick drink in a nice enough campus pub, we made our way to dinner. Much to Mrs Dunce's delight we were headed to the Ubiquitous Chip, a very highly-regarded restaurant. Or more accurately, restaurant-bar complex, as it's subdivided into various separate entities, including the Restaurant, the Upstairs, Big Pub, Wee Pub, and Corner Bar. We ate at the upstairs part, which had a sort of fancy gastropub menu, not as expensive (or as unusual) as the restaurant proper. Again vegetarian haggis made an appearance, but the highlight of the meal was probably Mrs. Dunce's smoked haddock salad.

After dinner it was back to the Blackfriar again (told you we liked it). This time we tried some of the unusual bottled beers. Most of them were from the historic ale range by Heather Ale and contained unusual (but historically accurate) ingredients like gooseberry, pine, seaweed, or heather (not all in the same product, thank goodness). We had a good window seat, so we were able to see the Saturday night street traffic. Loads and loads of people out on the town, but we saw nothing even remotely resembling carnage.

The next morning we headed over to the Necropolis, which probably deserves its own entry.

consume | travel
Wednesday, May 23, 2007 2:00:27 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [2]  |  Related posts:
Warm spiced wine keeps the mold away
Pinner Open House
A Gazillion Days Ago I mentioned the Glasgow Necropolis and I'm finally writing about it
Life ain't easy for a boy named Sue
Tottenham Cemetery and Hairy Beasts
Pizza Time?
Wednesday, May 23, 2007 11:34:13 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Sounds like fun. My throat seems dry after reading this.
The Noblesvillian
Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:22:22 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Ah, yes! I have partaken of the Heather Ale, and for obvious reasons kept the bottle for a long time. Though I believe I got the beer in Charlotte, not Scotland, so not quite as impressive of a souvenir.
Heather-in-law
Name
E-mail
Home page

Comment (HTML not allowed)  

Enter the code shown (prevents robots):