Part One: Glasgow Day 1.
I awoke this morning from what was a horrible nightmare. I dreamt that we were still in Belfast and had to stay there for the remainder of the trip because we had our passports stolen. Thankfully it was only a dream, and we were in Glasgow now, and everything was going to be ok.
We got our breakfast from level one of the hostel – the usual cereal and stuff. But what was really cool was that SOMEONE ACTUALLY CLEANED UP OUR BOWLS. We were surprised. We had our own lunch lady. Lunch lady Doris I’ll call her. Anyway Doris was fat and had cigarette breath that wilted any flowers within a 3 kilometre radius. After we had breakfast we walked around the brilliant city, taking our guidance from Lonely Planet’s ‘Glasgow Walking Tour.’ It led us to Glasgow cathedral where we stopped in to look around. We didn’t originally know which one it was because there were about 4 different cathedrals in sight when we came up the road, and then when we crossed the road, another came into view. It was the most gothic looking church, so we assumed it must have been it.
Inside was...well it was just like another cathedral. Except this time, we could take pictures. After walking around the cathedral, Zach threw them a 1p donation for its continuation and maintenance. How generous of him. Then we set out to look at the Necropolis out the back of the cathedral. The necropolis is this towering big hill with a hell of a lot of gravestones, crypts and tombs on it. Most of the crypts were family owned ones, and Zach found it chilling that if he were to have a family crypt, he would know where he was going to end up when he died. It also housed a lot of rich dead people. Astonishingly though, they don’t bury anyone who lives within a five mile radius of the necropolis. The reason for this though, is that they are still alive. Ha. We found a gravestone of a person near the edge of the elevated ground, overlooking the rest of the city and discussed that at the time of his burial, pointed out that he would have had a brilliant view of the city. Problem now is that there’s a big building in the way. This man probably suffered his entire life as an orphan child, working in the coal mines and had all sorts of problems and, at the time of his death was offered a great view of the city. He’d be raging now though.
Anyway, back to the point. We stopped off for lunch and took a walk around the main shopping part of town. It’s a city that sort of reminds me of a larger Brisbane / Sydney, only with more bagpipes playing in the streets. Anyway, this shopping centre was very small – about 11/39ths the size of the Myer Centre back home in Brisbane, and everything in it catered to the typical female needs. We exited, unsatisfied and continued to walk around the streets and over the Clyde River, whilst taking several photographs.
We returned to the hostel and had a beer at the pub downstairs – I plan to have a Fosters or something Australian that doesn’t suck later on to show my Australia day patriotism (it’s 6:15pm at the moment on Australia Day). Who knows, maybe I’ll enjoy it?
Part Two
This is the second part of a combined blog that Matt and I decided to post together because it was incredibly inconvenient to have to head down to the bar to post the first blog (which Matt wrote) after he had written it, because, well, we were tired. So deal with it. Then I didn’t start typing THIS blog until the morning after the first day’s events. So the first part, which you have just read, written by Matt, is about the events of the 26th of January, our first day in Glasgow (as you may have picked up from reading it). And this second part is written by me, about the events of yesterday, the 27th of January, and our day at Loch Ness, Glencoe and the Highlands.
We started our day at 7:00am which was, for lack of a more descriptive word, dark. We both dressed and headed to the Glasgow Tourist Information Centre where our tour was to depart from. Come 8:15am (still dark), a friendly Scottish man named David Campbell (not even kidding) rocked up with a bus. His tour only was to have six people for that day – Me, and Matt (the only other native English speakers) and four Germans. He went into some brief detail about Glasgow as we drove out of town, like how important the Clyde was to the city (or used to be), and the population of Glasgow (staggering two million – I had no idea it was so big – but apparently there’s only 5 million in Scotland altogether, so we can still take ‘em).
First stop on the tour was Loch Lomond, and a little town called Luss. God damn, I just Luss the game. Anyhoo, it was quaint, he gave us half an hour to explore the town, Matt and I found a small river that led into the Loch which had the most amazingly flat stones in it – after doing some more than superb skimming for about ten minutes, I put one of the stones into my pocket to bring home (hope I can get it through the airports). The Loch itself was fog coated so we didn’t see much of it, but what we did see was pretty spectacular. Matt and I walked out onto the Pier at Luss and were soon joined by Dave, our tour guide, inquiring in thick Scottish accent as to where the “Nazi’s” went. Ah, we knew then that it was going to be a great day.
We had a couple of photo stops along the way to Loch Ness (the evidence of which you shall see when we arrive home). Scotland is very similar to New Zealand in its Highlands – just better, because it’s not covered in kiwis. I can’t remember the names of all the places we stopped because we stopped like five or six times, but some of the photos we’ve taken are pretty incredible. Snow capped and covered mountains, lakes that look like mirrors in front of said mountains, just amazing views. Drove past about seven different Lochs on this tour, I was almost Loched out. Haha, get it.
David went into detail about some of the Highlands history, like the Macdonald Massacre. Apparently the Clan Campbell decided to break Highland Hospitality in around the Three Sisters (a set of 3 huge mountain rages) and massacred about thirty or forty Macdonald’s. He then proceeded to point out his last name was Campbell, and there’s an old Scottish adage that you “Can’t trust a Campbell”, and they have “crooked” smiles. He then told us that there’s a pub near Loch Ness that has above the door “Campbell’s Not Welcome”. I told him I didn’t know if I could believe him. After all, he IS a Campbell.
We arrived at Loch Ness and Matt and I had a nice lunch at a Pub called Bothy’s before heading out on the Royal Scot to discover the Loch Ness Monster. Photographic evidence will prove conclusively, when I return home, that I saw the Loch Ness monster. Matt can confirm. I actually even caught it. I had to put it back though, apparently it generates TWENTY EIGHT MILLION POUNDS for the tiny town of Fort Augustus EVERY YEAR. The town surrounding the Loch is so small; your mother couldn’t fit inside. And it makes £28,000,000 a year. Dave said that “every country should have a monster”.
We came home via the inland route, doing many hours of driving through country Scotland and stopping at a few monuments along the way (such as the Commando monument – Churchill’s last ditch effort to produce an elite fighting force to combat the Germans in WWII, which was largely successful). It got dark quickly (around 4pm) and so much of the five hour drive home went unseen, but we did get pointed out to us Stirling Castle and the hill where William Wallace had his first and only defeat. Dave then went into detail about the truths and lies in Braveheart, which I found quite fascinating and made me want to watch the movie so badly. When I get home, this will happen.
Arriving back in Glasgow, we tipped out tour guide for a fantastic day, and started walking back to the Hostel. I asked Matt what we should have for dinner, and he said “Mickey D’s” (McDonalds – hey, good food is expensive over here, and we had a pretty good lunch). I told him I could murder some McDonalds like a Campbell. Oh, too soon?
We ate, headed back to the Osmosis bar (underneath the Hostel) to watch some of the Manchester United versus Manchester City game (a local derby almost as big as Rangers and Celtic, and definitely 100x bigger than Broncos and Titans). Man U won convincingly, much to the dismay of half of the pub. But it was hilarious to watch how into this game the patrons were. One Man City supporter came back from the toilet AFTER his team had scored a goal (and consequently after the pub had already had their uproar in joy or disgust, depending on who they supported), and decided better LATE than NEVER to celebrate – and started screaming his ASS off, lifting chairs into the air, randomly kissing people – ah, it was fantastic to watch.
Edinburgh today.
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