Present Joys

Part of a series.

Today’s our last day in Scotland, and our only day in Glasgow. What were we thinking? I guess one day in Glasgow is better than no days. But sheesh. This place has so much to offer. Here goes nothing…

After a nice breakfast at Pret a Manger (I had a smoked salmon sandwich), we walked over to George Square to catch the first city sightseeing bus of the day. If you’ve been to any of the top 100 or so busiest cities on the planet, you’ve probably seen one of these things—open-top double-decker buses with hideous graphics on the side. Normally I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of them—but we only had one day here, and no way to get around, and the hop-on/hop-off bus seemed like our best option. Plus, Rick Steves said to do it.

So we rode the bus to our first destination, Glasgow Cathedral and the Necropolis (which, by the way, is the coolest word ever). The Cathedral was beautiful—yet another beautiful church, but this one was especially huge, with an expansive lower level. After another quick bus ride, we took a quick stop-off at the People’s Palace, a cultural museum of Glasgow on the east end of town. I appreciated some of the displays on the historic poor conditions of the city—I learned some crazy statistic like only two-thirds of Glaswegians had home plumbing in 1960. (Don’t quote me on that, internet.) There’s also a gigantic glasshouse connected to the building, filled with tropical plants, but it was closed for the season. I think we spent 45 minutes there before running (literally running) back to the bus stop to get back on. We’ve got a lot to see in this town!

Our next stop was the Riverside Museum, located on the banks of the Clyde on the west side of town. This is a very groovy contemporary structure which houses tons of vehicles throughout history (cars, trucks, RVs, trains) and other transportation artifacts. A lot to appreciate there. Just outside, floating in the river, is one of the last wooden Clyde-built ships, built in 1896 and used for 70 years in the Spanish navy before returning to Glasgow to be a floating museum. Minimal guard rails made it easy to walk all over the ship. Definitely worth the price of admission (a suggested donation)!

Ignoring a growing desire for lunch, we next got off our bus at Kelvingrove Park, a gorgeous patch of green space near Glasgow University and, most importantly, home to the Kelvingrove Museum, an absolutely dreamy palace of art. I could have spent six years in this place, both for its collection and the building itself, which overflowed with that sense of serenity and richness found in all great museums and libraries. The main hall of the museum boasts a pipe organ, and a recital is held there every day at 1 pm. An absolutely spectacular place.

I tore myself away after a few hours at the Kelvingrove, and we walked straight through Glasgow University (a lovely campus) over to see the Mackintosh House, a townhouse that Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife transformed with interior design and original furniture while they lived there in the early twentieth century. Though the original structure no longer stands, the entire home has been re-assembled inside the Hunterian Museum, and it’s lovely. Oh, wait! There’s tons more to see in the Hunterian Museum, and we don’t have time for any of it. We’ll have to come back to Glasgow.

Next, we raced over to the Glasgow School of Art for a tour. The major building for the school was designed by Mackintosh and is considered very architecturally significant; unfortunately, it was severely damaged by fire in 2014, so we couldn’t see it. The tour was still pleasant. We learned about the iconic building by looking at a detailed model and got to see a gallery full of original Mackintosh furniture.

Back outside, it was spitting rain, and we still haven’t had any lunch and are getting weary. There was just one thing on our must-see list: the Museum of Piping. Thankfully, this was within walking distance from the art school. We got there around 4:45 pm but the darkness outside made it feel like midnight. The museum consisted of about ten display cases containing tons of bagpipes and artifacts, all in one small room. I’ve always had a keen interest in the pipes, both musically and historically, so this was a real treat for me. But very inside baseball… it’s hard to imagine enough public interest in this esoteric presentation to keep it open. The museum is just one part of the handsome National Piping Centre, a handsome building that seemed to have lots of other pipe-related things going on. So neat to experience this vibrant community here in Glasgow.

At this point, we were so eager to get back to our Airbnb we don’t have the patience to find a bus stop. We walked back home, changed our shoes, and enjoyed dinner at a swanky Indian place overlooking the bustling BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra building. It’s difficult to leave Scotland! This one day in Glasgow has just reminded me how much there is we haven’t seen here. Tomorrow we fly to Dublin. Tonight we watch local news in our cozy Airbnb and try to figure out how to appropriately set the radiators in every room.

Part of a series.

We had a relaxed morning in Oban, with a rough idea of the day’s plans and a nice “continental” breakfast at our B&B. (Does “continental breakfast” here mean bagels and yogurt and tomatoes and meat? I was pleasantly surprised by the spread.) On the advice of the couple we met at dinner last night, we took a 10 am ferry to Craignure on the isle of Mull, a 45-minute trip.

I’d never been on a passenger ferry before. This one reminded me of a 1980s movie theater: kinda old and dirty, everything covered in multiple layers of paint. There were concession stands selling overpriced candy and snacks and lounge areas with vinyl-upholstered couches and even posters advertising ferry-related attractions. Since it was our first time in such a situation, Karen and I opted to sit on the open-air deck and look at the water along with all the other people for whom ferry travel was still interesting.

Mull was not what I expected. It was beautiful but pretty sleepy. It turns out the island is so big that you really need a car to get anywhere outside of Craignure, the town where our ferry landed. This is the kind of stuff you can figure out ahead of time if you have a way to look things up online! Ah well. We really wouldn’t have had time to drive across the island anyway. Next time we’ll plan better. We walked down the main road and into a thrift store, where I bought an old Anglican hymnal for £1. The lady in the store recommended a mountain hike just up the road, so we walked the other direction up the main road until we found a sign for Scallastle park. In contrast to yesterday’s popular nature destination, this park must have been one of Scotland’s least-visited. The path felt untouched. At one point we saw a sign explaining that a nature reclamation program was going on; invasive species of trees had been leveled to make way for indigenous conifers. It gave the park a spooky sort of graveyard feel. We took the “strenuous uphill option” which offered a wonderful view of the Sound of Mull.

We took the return ferry back in time for a 2 pm distillery tour at Oban Distillery. I wanted to do a distillery tour just to say I’d done it, and this one was very convenient—it’s right in the center of the town, just a few minutes walk from our B&B. The experience was about what I expected, but it was fun to see and smell all the steps of the whisky-making process. I helped Karen finish her free sample.

Then, back in the car for a few hours to Glasgow—our home base for the next day and a half—just in the nick of time to return our rental car before they closed at 6 pm. (We technically had the rental until noon the next day, but really did not want to be responsible for it a moment longer than we had to.) It felt so good to park that thing and walk away from it forever. We figured out the correct bus to take us near our new place, and went the rest of the way on foot. While we’re winding our way through Glasgow, I’m thinking wow, this place is nothing like Edinburgh. In fact, the glitz and drama of Glasgow at night makes Edinburgh feel like a legit medieval city. I can see why Glasgow supports a cool music scene, and it makes sense that there is an art school here. It almost doesn’t feel like the Scotland I’ve become used to. We have just one day to explore this place before our time in Scotland comes to an end. And there’s a lot to see!

Part of a series.

We awoke in our Glencoe B&B feeling much more optimistic. At 8:30 we had a fabulous breakfast of bacon, sausage, fried egg, tomato, and toast with home-made orange marmalade and a tiny glass of sparkling elderflower juice. Ann, our hostess, bustled in and out of the dining room. “It’s a beautiful morning!” she exclaimed at one point, and I realized she’d opened the windows. It couldn’t have been above 60° F. “Quaint” doesn’t begin to describe how cute this couple was—probably in their upper 70s, living in this adorable, cluttered little house on the misty edge of big mountains, with their windows open to enjoy the morning air, and their kitchen radio blaring a Glasgow radio program which feels like it’s coming from a planet a million lightyears away.

We left the car at our B&B and took a walk to Glencoe Lochan (apparently lochan means “a small loch”), a beautiful place for a morning excursion. Sadly, the Glencoe Folk Museum had just closed for the season, so after our walk we said goodbye to the village and hit the road to head north toward Fort William. The West Highland Museum there had some cool Jacobite artifacts and some examples of highland dress. I was parked illegally the whole time, though, so I had a hard time fully enjoying myself. (Have I mentioned I really hate driving here?) Oh—but the museum also had one particularly neat display about St Kilda, a remote Hebridean archipelago whose 36 inhabitants were evacuated to the Scottish mainland in 1930. It’s an interesting story.

From Fort William we headed east to Steall Waterfall in Glen Nevis, a park which Karen had wanted to visit. As I write this I see Ben Nevis, a mountain at the base of the park, is the British Isles’ tallest mountain, and Steall Waterfall its second-longest waterfall. No wonder it was so busy with visitors. It truly was a jaw-droppingly majestic place. We spent most of the afternoon there, just enjoying the massive scenery and the bleak Scottish weather. This sort of thing is Karen’s version of going to art galleries—she could hardly tear herself away.

We have only one night and one day left to explore the highlands before heading to Glasgow—in hindsight, I wish we’d left ourselves a few more days. Daylight is scarcer than I’d anticipated, and we hate to waste four or five hours daylight hours in the car. So instead of going north, we decided to head south toward Oban, to see some new parts of the country and to maximize our time out of the car. We’d called B&Bs this morning in Glencoe, so there was no drama there. Oban is a port city on the west coast, with a shipping and fishing heritage that make it feel different from any of the other places we’ve visited yet. The waterfront and harbor area, with shops, restaurants, and lots of boats, felt carnival-like with colored string lights reflecting in the dark water and McCaig’s Tower looking festive perched on the hill above the water.

This B&B was totally different from our last one. In Glencoe we’d been in somebody’s guest room, sharing a bathroom, and enjoying a made-for-us breakfast the next morning served in our hosts’ dining room. This place was a lot more like a hotel: six private rooms, each with en-suite bathrooms, and a breakfast buffet served in a dedicated space filled with 2-top restaurant-style tables.

After dropping off our bags, we walked around the harbor and enjoyed the new sights. For dinner, we ended up in a fish and chip shop on the waterfront. I finally broke down asked the lady at the next table what “Irn-Bru” was, after seeing it on restaurant menus for the past few days. She eagerly bragged that it was a Scottish soft drink—a phenomenon whose taste “could not be described”—turns out, it tastes like someone dissolved baby aspirin into cream soda. That’s not to say it was unpleasant. I liked it a lot! According to the internet, Irn-Bru outsells Coke in Scotland, which is an impressive feat. It’s imported into the US (I’ve never noticed it) but with a slightly different formula due to FDA restrictions. So I’m glad to have enjoyed the real thing in its home country.

Our next-table friend nodded approvingly as I consumed my Irn-Bru and mushy peas. “You’re an honorary Scot!” She also asked us what we planned to do in Oban, and when we told her we weren’t totally sure, she suggested taking the pedestrian ferry to the isle of Mull for the day. It sounded like a good plan to us, so tomorrow that’s what we’ll do.

Part of a series.

Today we bid farewell to Edinburgh and embark for the highlands. We got up at 6:30 with not nearly enough sleep and checked out of our Airbnb right away in order to pick up a rental car at Waverley Station. We’d originally planned to take a train to Stirling and pick up a car there, but it didn’t cost any more money to get the car in Edinburgh, and we figured if we did that, we could stop and see some more stuff on our way to Stirling. This immediately proved a wretched idea—I don’t know what in the world we were thinking when we decided to pick up a car in downtown Edinburgh during rush hour. Oh, and of course, the car has a manual transmission, and even though I knew that would be the case and did some meager preparation for it, I’m literally barely able to drive the thing.

While still within wifi, Karen had downloaded 200 mb of Google Maps data to her phone for offline viewing. We put in the address for Dunfermline and hit the road. This trip was certainly the worst 45 minutes of our trip, and a top contender for the worst 45 minutes of my life. Gear-shifting with my left hand sucks. Driving on the left side of the road sucks. Driving fast on roads with literally no shoulder sucks. Starting and stopping on hilly, incoherently-laid-out streets in rush hour traffic sucks. This was not a good time.

—

Dunfermline Abbey, when we finally got there after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, was absolutely lovely. After seeing the slick and refurbished historical sights of Edinburgh, it was refreshing to see ruins. Dunfermline Abbey is just so old there isn’t enough to restore or reconstruct—all you can do is make the ruins easily walkable and provide lots of interpretive information. The overall effect was very peaceful, natural, and meditative. A good break from driving. Then, back in the car to Stirling! This second attempt at Scottish driving went much better than the first, and we got to the castle without too much additional frustration.

Stirling Castle was cool. Okay but not spectacular. Especially in contrast to the untouched beauty of Dunfermline, Stirling Castle seemed over-modernized. Interiors of buildings were painted to look brand new, with brand-new-looking furnishings and even fake food. And the costumed interpreters were just too much for me.

By far the best part of the castle was seeing the Hunt of the Unicorn, a set of fifteenth-century tapestries painstakingly recreated as period-accurate furnishings for the palace. The finished pieces took 14 years to create and are only half the detail of the original tapestries. There’s an anachronistically modern building tucked just inside the castle wall which serves as an exhibition about the creation of these tapestries. Amazing, and makes me want to try my hand at weaving like this.

From Stirling, we decided to drive to Glencoe for the night. As we drove northwest, the roads got less busy, except for the occasional semi truck that was too wide for its lane. We were absolutely certain we’d be able to find a B&B in Glencoe for the night, and since it was still early afternoon, we didn’t think we had anything to worry about. But then it started raining, and the sun started setting at about 4:30, and everything began feeling ominous. Our 5:30 arrival in Glencoe felt like 11 pm due to the drizzling rain and utterly black darkness. We stopped at one of the B&Bs recommended in the Rick Steves book (they had a “vacancy” sign outside) but were turned away.

So we sorta drove around in circles. Not having cell service made all of it much harder. After a half hour of various difficulties, getting lost, making a few desperate phone calls, we finally ended up at a B&B just down the road from the first place we tried (go figure). I guess there’s just really one road in Glencoe village. Words cannot express how good it felt to know we’d found a place to sleep. In hindsight I guess it sounds melodramatic, but ahh what a night.

We were famished. On our host’s recommendation, we drove about 2.5 miles up a crazy narrow single-lane forest road to the Clahaig Inn (this whole episode felt like something from Twin Peaks) and had a hardy meal there. They had free wifi (the first time we’d had any connectivity all day), so we were able to do some research on our next day’s travels. Back at our B&B, the humble room was adorable and our hosts were lovely. Ann, the lady of the house, asked us whether we’d like “Would you like the Scottish breakfast tomorrow morning? Bacon, sausage, egg, toast, tomato?” And when we nodded her eyes sparked and she remarked, accurately, “Oh! You’d like that a lot!“ Phew. I had a good sleep that night.

• Before this trip, I had many people tell me it wouldn’t be a problem to drive around and find a B&B to stay in! Be spontaneous!, they said. But it turns out most B&Bs don’t actually want you staying there after the summer busy season. We drove past tons of B&Bs on our travels, but they almost all had “no vacancy” signs.
• Man, Glencoe village is really a tiny, remote place. I feel like I’m at the edge of the world—and I know I’m barely into Scotland’s highlands. There must be something about arriving in a place under cover of night that makes it feel remote and lonely…
• After seeing approximately 1000 more people wearing I finally broke down and looked up the Scottish poppy thing. Okay, so it’s a veterans’ charity donation (I gathered that much) with an annual promotion that ramps up for the weeks leading up to Remembrance Sunday in november. Now I understand why so many people are wearing poppies now. It certainly makes more sense as a seasonal trend than a permanent style thing.