Glasgow

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Tonight we're in Glasgow. We hopped a plane from London to Edinburgh yesterday and then took a Megabus to Glasgow. Megabus costs one pound regardless of how far you're going. Pretty good deal. I was expecting the bus to be a bit whiffy at such a price. I was pleasantly surprised however at the air conditioned luxury we travelled in. I was also wondering whether I would see a lot of Scots on the bus, it was cheap afterall and the Scots are somewhat known for being ... thrifty. However the bus was only half full. A shortish walk brought us to our hostel for the night. Again, I was kind of worried. According to the brochure we got the other day (after we had booked it, otherwise we may not have bothered) the hostel sleeps 380! Staggering. I'm expecting a huge doss house. How wrong can you be? It turns out that the hostel is HUGE, and goes up for nine stories. Anyway, the room is nice, so we dropped our bags and headed out for a wander about Glasgow. It kind of reminds me of a dirty, older version of Auckland, but that's just me. Cheri can't see it. Mind you, she agrees it's dirty. There are subtle signs that this is a student town. The three universities, the large number of teenagers, the fact that their prized statue outside the Art Gallery wears a road cone hat. Actually, we did a tour of Glasgow today and the recorded voice told us that if we looked right as the bus went along this street we might see the statue and he will probably be wearing his road cone hat. Obviously, the locals here have accepted it and given up trying to remove it each time a student climbs up and pops it on the statue. After wandering about the city for a while (or a wee while as the Scots would say) we got dinner. Scotland doesn't know how to make a burger. They're getting better, but by world standards, they're still woeful. Last time I was here I had a burger which consisted of bun + patty. I explained the concept of lettuce, tomato and cheese to a Scot and he looked blankly at me and then told me that doing that to a burger would "turn it into a meal". hmmm. maybe that wasn't the point? Well anyway, I told myself not to get sucked in again, however last night we were outside a pub offering burger, beer and chips for 4 pound. What a deal! Once the burger was delivered though, we remembered about the Scottish inability to make a decent burger. To give them credit, they had managed to put a thin slice of tomoato on and 3 slivers of cubed lettuce, not a bad improvement after only 2 years... Never mind, the beer was worth the effort.
Today we did a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of Glasgow. We stopped at a number of the stops and admired their Kelvingrove museum which has only just reopened after 3 years of renovation. The displays were outstanding and the artwork superb, including Dali's cruxifiction. We also had a look at one of their tenement houses and the conditions that they lived in at the turn of the century. No not a couple of years ago, I mean the one before. They spoke of the over crowding, the tiny rooms, the sanitry conditions. Well, apart from the sanitry conditions, they seemed like a pretty good deal to me. People in Auckaland city voluntarily live in smaller apartments than these and families in South Auckland manage to cram more people into their homes too. I even know of one house where they had 11 family members, 2 cats and a dog all under the one roof.

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