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October 17th 2009

Published: October 27th 2009

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AleksNemo

Statue, Small Penis

Near Clyde Street, Glasgow, Scotland

The first thing that I’d like to point out is that I’m still on strike, and will only write when I feel like it. So there. (Humph)

By the power of technology, I’m writing this blog from a bus heading North from Glasgow to Portree in the Isle Of Skye. This new Acer netbook is gas, and I believe the guy next to me has been looking up from his iPhone in a very jealous manner a few times. I’m a bit miffed about the fact that they advertise all the buses in Citylink as having Wifi. Needless to say, this one doesn’t.

The last few weeks have been amazing, what with us finishing up in Ireland after visiting Tipperary, Waterford & Cashel and putting our asses on a very cheap Aer Lingus flight ($70 for the both of us) which was great because it didn’t involve dealing with those peons at RuinAir AND we could check in up to 20kg, not 15. It was however delayed by an hour. But the flight was very short; it felt like we didn’t even have time to get off the first runway before the landing gear was coming down for the

A View To A Church

Somewhere In Glasgow, Scotland

second. Once again I managed to leave Ireland AND arrive in Scotland without getting a stamp of any kind in my passport. As far as they’re concerned, I could be hiding under the floorboards in a pub in Dingle somewhere, tapping into a beer line. Anyway, I’m sure that Jo and Billy were glad to finally see the tail end of us, as we had spent nearly 7 weeks bumming around in their country being reprobates and drinking all their juice. Massive thanks to the Byrnes and Tindals for all of their hospitality over the weeks we spent in Ireland. Hopefully it won’t be so long this time before we see you all again!

We got off the plane on Wednesday 14th October in the horrible looking Glasgow airport and took the bus from the Airport to the City Centre (£9 for both of us) and found a Tourist Info place to scope for Hostels. Eventually deciding on Euro Hostel in Clyde Street, we had to wait till 2pm to check in, so we went doon to the attached bar, Osmosis, and had a scotch and dry. This was my only drink for the day as I am was

Selfie With Timer, Park

In A Park In Glasgow, Scotland

about to embark on sick leave from my drinking occupation, purely because my liver divorced me about three days prior.

The next day was a bit more get up and go, albeit after a late start as Aleks was coming down with the cold I had obtained from Caroline the week before. The major highlight of the day was seeing a cathedral from the 15th century and it’s attached graveyard. Wow, so impressive. The graves in this place aren’t your average tacky marble outfits with a naff cross on them like you have in Australia. Oh no. We’re talking 30-40 feet high, intricately carved out of granite or sandstone, and covered in writing. Mausoleums. Sarcophagii. All that and a hill overlooking the whole city as a base. Outstanding.

We also managed to see the People’s Palace (a kind of Glaswegian social history museum), looked for a café that didn’t exist, went to a different café called Spoon run by people with down syndrome (nice soup, shite service), attempted to walk across town to the other museum, Aleks felt sick, we called it a day.

That night I decided it was time for me to go exploring, and

Nice Graveyard Shot

Glasgow Necropolis, Glasgow, Scotland

so I took my camera out to the beautiful bridges over the River Clyde (each illuminated in a different colour) after dinner and drank my bodyweight in Rose wine whilst taking extended exposure photos - a last hurrah before my drinking hiatus. After a bum nearly ran off with my wine, and me nearly dropping my camera in the river and falling down a slippery slope, Aleks came out to join me and we called Sean & Tegan with some of the International minutes we had on our new SIM. More photos were taken and we retired to bed, aiming next day for Skye.

Things didn’t go according to plan. We arrived at the bus station, found out that buy-at-the-bus tickets were going to cost us £72 ONE WAY… And promptly decided to go to Edinburgh instead and book in advance. The tickets to the Burgh cost us £6 each, which is about 6 times more than we should have paid, but we were over it. Note when travelling in Britain - you have to book all buses as early as possible and online otherwise you’re paying up to ten times the cost!

Arriving in Edinburgh, we sat

Huge John Knox Monument!

Glasgow Necropolis, Glasgow, Scotland

in the bus station for half an hour calling hostels to see if they had any availability on a Friday night. Stupid question really. Here is one of the most beautiful cities in the United Kingdom, and every man and his dog wants to go out there on a Friday night. One hostel was charging £95 a night for a simple double. After finding a dorm room at Budget Backpackers on Candlemaker Row (I know, ain’t it a cool street name!) we threw on the packs and went to find it. But it was nowhere to be found. It was there on the map, right next to the street we were on, but nowhere in sight. After doing a few donuts, we realised something. We were standing on a bridge, and guess what was the street underneath. Underneath! Who puts bloody streets on top of each other. There was plenty more where that came from too - half the streets in Edinburgh are just stacked up like card houses. It was just mental. After ditching our shite at the backpackers, we mosied on out into the cool morning.

We were immediately floored by how completely different Edinburgh is to

Awesome View From Cemetery

Glasgow Necropolis, Glasgow, Scotland

Glasgow. It seems like Glasgow has been built with practicality in mind, followed by aesthetics, and Edinburgh is the polar opposite. Where Glasgow is gritty, Edinburgh is pretty. The castle was the first thing that caught our eye, immense and imposing, perched up on top of a huge crag right in the centre of town. I can’t describe in words how it commanded your attention. Your eyes just keep flicking back to it like a girl in a low cut top across the bar from you. We decided that would be our first stop off after waddling our way up through the near-vertical streets and hundreds of flights of stairs. Unlike most cities which are quite flat, Edinburgh is built as precariously as possible, which was great for our quads and calves. The castle was built on a crag and the old town on the descending (and steep) tail of it, which was once where the city walls stood.

Reaching the castle, we found the price was £12. Extortionate, but not quite as much of a rip-off as Dublin charging 8 euro just to get into a feckin CHURCH. Thieving knackers. We decided to leave it for another day

Glasgow Cathedral

Glasgow Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland

as it was getting on in the evening, and wandered around the beautiful Royal Mile with it’s ancient pubs like the Jolly Judge and giant Kirks, which are the Scottish version of cathedrals, but they aren’t actually cathedrals, or something like that. That night we tucked into a home cooked feed of scrambled eggs with lots of lovely stuff in them and met a girl from Melbourne who told us about her travels. Twas an early night.

We had two more days in Edinburgh of just wandering around. There’s not much more I can say about it really… it’s just that kind of city - you could just wander through it for weeks and never see the same thing twice.

On Saturday night (the 22nd) we had ourselves a French crepe for dinner and then I decided that it was a good idea to go on both the 8:30 and 10pm ghost tours with a company called City Of The Dead. It was far less theatrical than the other companies: a simple ankle length leather trench coat was sufficient to look spooky, thank god they didn’t go for the white face powder and crayon scars that the other

Beautiful Interior!

Glasgow Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland

gits were wearing.

The first tour with a middle aged cock-eyed lass called Tanya, was of haunted vaults under the old bridgework on South Bridge street, with tales of them being closed for 250 years and rediscovered in the eighties. There were great historical facts about the city in it’s earlier years, and it was genuinely spooky when we walked down the old alleyways and into the vaults themselves - great big open voids where hundreds of people used to live in filth and squalor. Right at the end, just as the torches and lights started flickering out and they were telling a story about “The Entity”, some geezer in a mask jumped out of the darkness and roared at the silly punters and they just about had kittens. Very funny indeed, I had a right chuckle. I wasn’t scared though. I did however get a big feckin drip right down the back of my neck just as the lights went out, and that made me hop a little.

The second tour was the Haunted Graveyard tour with our guide Fred. Sensing there might be a bit of boo-ing at the end of this one, Aleks jagged us

The People's Palace

Greendyke Street, Glasgow, Scotland

a student discount and we played along. He was very good too, very funny and genuinely entertaining, telling us the history of the Greyfriars Graveyard, Bobby the loyal Skye Terrier and his Master John Gray, and finally we were lead through a locked gate into the Covenantors Prison. Fred told us the story of the hundreds of men who were kept prisoner in this place (by a bloke called George Mackenzie) and died in the winter sometime in the 18th century. Mackenzie is obviously dead and is now a poltergeist that haunts the Black Mausoleum, a big vaulted tomb about halfway down the long walk of graves. This is the most documented poltergeist case in the world, with over 1000 recorded incidents in 10 years - scratches, bruises, people getting knocked unconscious and ambulances being called. Some guy even crapped his pants last week. Weird. We packed into the tomb as Fred set the scene of what you may feel if there’s a presence around, and eventually the same scare happened but it was just as funny the second time around. The second tour was my favourite, as the graveyard, haunted or not, is genuinely a terrifying place at night.

Billy Connelly Immortalised

People's Palace, Glasgow, Scotland

The next day we got up at a reasonable hour and moved our stuff again to the Cowgate Hostel, as the High Street Hostel that we were staying in was a bit average and full of bogan Australians and it smelled like pee. The Cowgate was only £8 for a dorm room, which is about half of what all the other places were charging. Bonus! We then trundled off to get some coffee at none other than the Elephant House - a café that overlooks Greyfriars Graveyard and several other amazing buildings. It’s in that very café where JK Rowling got the inspiration for, and wrote a bit of her Harry Potter books! Loose. We had been told by Fred the previous night that Tom Riddle’s grave actually existed in the graveyard, so we went for a wander amongst the graves again and eventually found it: Thomas Riddle, Esq.!

We made our way up the Royal Mile to the Castle itself, and even though there were just as many millions of tourists, it was either deal with them or not go at all, so we went with the former. It was a self guided tour, but I hired

Aleks All In Yellow

Near People's Palace, Glasgow, Scotland

an audio guide for £3.50 which had stacks more info than what was written on the plaques. Edinburgh Castle is just astounding: the rock it’s built on is so hard it survived the pressure of a full sized glacial drift without budging in the last ice age. Not bad at all. So then it would stand to reason that it might provide a great foundation for an enormous castle, and that has proved a good assumption as the castle has stood there in many different incarnations for nearly a thousand years.

Some of the exciting things we saw include: the birthplace of James VI and the royal abode of his mother, Mary Queen of Scots (the room is the same as it was in 1566), Mons Meg (a fecking HUGE cannon that used to fire basketball size cannonballs over 2 miles and use 55kg of powder per shot), and also the Scottish Royal honours (the equivalent of the crown jewels of England). The Honours were so beautiful, and there was an excellent display describing their being lost and found again by Sir William Scott, and how they were made etc. Overall the 12 quid for the castle was totally

St. Andrew's Bridge

River Clyde, Glasgow, Scotland

worth it and we were really impressed.

That afternoon saw us visit the Jekyll and Hyde pub, a mad place where the toilet doors are hidden behind bookshelves and the whole place looks like a haunted house (totally recommend it - on Hanover St.), and we also saw the huuuuge monument to Scott and generally faffed around a bit more. That night we crashed at the hostel after finding 99p Famous Grouse mixers at a local bar, and had a good sleep.

Tune in next time when we come to you LIVE from Pitlochry, a little town in the dead centre of Scotland, where I catch up with the beautiful Sarah and her fam.

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