Blogs from Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, Europe - page 35

Got up reasonably early, stuffed myself silly on the free Scottish breakfast complemented by the sweet Scottish lady: "D'ye fancy a cooked breakfas', dearie?" and then voyaged out into the rain (of course this is Tacoma-style rain, not Hawaii downpour). Beautiful train ride, all sheep and green green hillsides, budding trees and awesome cloud formations. Still didn't catch the ferry till noon-ish, and then sacrificed my Hawaii-Mexico acclimated extremities to my desire to see the view. Arran did the total movie-ish rising out of the mist like the answer to a quest, and nobody was more exicted to get off that boat and into the hills than me. I took a different bus than the one I wanted, and have never been so happy to be on the wrong bus. It looped around the northern coast, ... read more

Well. The adventure is off to a rocky start. I was completely stupid on several counts and am now in Bergamo airport, hoping against hope that I can get my standby flight to Newcastle, three hours after I was expecting to be in Glasgow. I will be on the plane when I wanted to be on the train to Glencoe. At least if I get this flight, they wont charge me another 60 euro. Oh well, learning experience. Remember when I said I had managed to not get into any more scrapes. I think this counts as a Scrape. By the way, a taxi ride from Milano to Bergamo on a non-Easter weekend day is normally forty minutes, and about 70 euro. On Good Friday, it is an hour and fifteen minutes, and 85 euro. Thats ... read more

Spent five wonderful days in the city of Glasgow. I went to visit my friend Jacqueline who goes to the uni of North Texas as well. She worked in the study abroad office there and it was scary how much we have in common. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and it was a beautiful train ride up there. It had been snowing and everything looked picturesque. The green hilly land was covered in snow and there were sheep everywhere. I was going to attempt to get some work done, but I couldn’t stop looking out of the window! Jac meet me at the train station and we headed to her uni. I really loved Strathaclyde and it was in the middle of the big city. I could see myself studying at her uni. The first night ... read more

We awake to very light rain showers and some fog. Our stay at the Park Tower is complete. We trek to the Underground tube (subway), at £2 one-way, and take the Piccadilly line to the Victoria line to Euston station. Our BritRail (operated by Virgin rail) train departs for Glasgow. The scenery along the way is stunning. There are sheep and soccer fields everywhere. The land is wide open, still very green land, and usually bounded by stone fences. (746-750, 985-1026) Train 1015 arrives into Glasgow station just ten minutes late. Boarding the local to Ayr heads us south towards Turnberry. Too many obstructions and fast moving trains haven’t allowed my GPS to find our position. We’re winging it now. At Ayr we board another train - a two car, old train - and continue south ... read more

Just had a few days in Glasgow to watch the gymnastics. In some ways it was quite a difficult city to figure out. My hotel wasn't really where its map showed it to be so I was neither in the city centre or near the gym arena. It was easy enough to get to both in the end though. Some great gym was on, Ponor on beam was amazing as was Baby Cheng Fei on floor - she was totally robbed. It was interesting watchig the different gymnasts prepare for the meet, some very social, especially those that speak many languages, some keeping to themselves. Most the coaches were quite social too. Climbing through the stands to greet one another. Congratulating and gossiping. Watched the TV coverage when I got back and I was shown loads:) ... read more

All I can say is HOLY CRAP!!!! I cant believe we are finally here. It took bloody well long enough (look the language is seeping through already!) anyway, the plan is that Jackie and I will both be writing on this, about the same stuff so dont be surprised if lots of the journals are similar due to the fact that we share a brain. Back to the Europe thing. Well, we are outside of Glasgow in this wicked awesome castle which in actuallity is probably older than most of our country. To sum up how I am feeling right now..... cold..... I did enough walking today to last me for the entire trip. and it rained the whole time....go figure. oh well... the point is however, that i am is scotland. I have honestly never ... read more

Well, we made it over the big blue ocean. The airplane was okay, there was a whole bunch of turbulance so by time we reached 41000 ft I was feeling pretty much done in. The food was "chicken" stir fry - in quotations because thats what they were calling it, but one could argue that it was not really chicken... Customs at the airport took forever, but we finally made it out and took a bus into Glasgow, the whole time I was repressing the urge to run to the bus driver and yell "You're on the wrong side of the road!!!!". It is so amazingly pretty here - everything is lush and green because it does nothing but rain. Sarah and I were both soaked to the bone by time we finally got to our ... read more

This is my first travel blog. I had not traveled to a foreign country only until 2001 when I completed my first post-graduate degree and got a job at a University in Hanoi. So Glasgow is my first destination to explore. We went with a group of six. Starting at Hanoi airport, we checked in in time to be announced that the fight Hanoi - Hong Kong was delayed for 2 hours. Pacific Airline did not explain the reason, and we had to wait inside the waiting room with quite a number of passengers. It was not that good start!... read more