Glasgow's Medieval Cathedral

I'm always amazed at how old stuff is outside of the US. We obviously have ancient culture but nothing like Europe (never mind Asia and Africa). Today, Luci, Lee and I went to see the Glasgow Cathedral.

imposing interior

ceiling decoration in the addition called Blackader Aisle

There are amazing stained glass windows in the Cathedral, many of them replaced in the 1940s and 1950s by descendants of the original donors.

Luci had her heart set on an afternoon tea, after spotting the three tiered treat plate in the window of a tea room near our house. Since we were near the city centre, they went to Stewart's Victorian Tea Room for lunch before heading for a matinee of the Nutcracker (modern dance style). I headed back to the flat to pack for our upcoming trip to York!

Pancake Day and First Visitors

Pancake Day is celebrated in the UK on Shrove Tuesday (also known as Fat Tuesday) as a day to indulge in the fat, eggs. and sugar that you will abstain from while fasting during Lent. We had pancakes for breakfast -- yum!

Our first visitors from the States arrived on Sunday -- Luci and Lee, the brave souls willing to come during February vacation (though the high today is 50 here and 17 in Bangor so I don't know why people want to wait for better weather), will stay with us for part of the week, then they are off to visit Lee's friends in Edinburgh for the rest of the week. After their arrival and nap, we took them to the Botanic Garden, Kelvingrove Museum and Mother India Cafe for dinner. A perfect introduction to Glasgow since it's all nearby. On Monday, they and Liam went to the Football Museum and toured the stadium. Liam was very proud because he had the fastest kick -- 45 mph. Today, Lee and Luci went on a day trip to Stirling Castle (on our list of places to go), while we did our usual Glasgow weekday things.

Playing with candy!

A Tour of the Flat (Apartment)

After describing how great our sublet is in previous posts, I thought you might want to see the rooms for yourself.

Our flat is located in the fancy neighborhood of the West End, where there are many beautiful, old buildings -- some divided up into flats or bed-sits (1 or 2 room apartments) and some remaining as single-occupancy mansions. As I mentioned before, it has wonderful views of the church (the building was once the vicarage) and is a quick, one-block to a great commercial street. The basement and ground floor are one unit, and we have the second (or first, as they call it here) and top floors. So, when you enter the front door you come up a flight of stairs to the flat. On this floor are the common living spaces.

A large living room with a beautiful marble fireplace complete with some dog statues on the mantel.

The dining room -- we were having a few of Liam's colleagues over for drinks.

The galley-sized kitchen, notice the little washing machine tucked in by the oven.

The downstairs bathroom with a giant tub.

Grand stairs with very stained carpet leading to the next floor, where the bedrooms are.

The master bedroom, which also has a great view overlooking the church across the street.

Cormac's room with his latest acquisition from the perfect store (comics, figurines, and posters) -- the Gorillaz poster.

Declan's room which was the owners' study, so it's lined with bookcases packed with Chaucer and poetry tomes.

Our upstairs study.

The upstairs bathroom.

As you can see, some of the rooms are quite grand, while others are smaller. Overall, we are finding the accommodations very convenient and comfortable!!

Chores in Glasgow

Doing your laundry -- throw in a load, toss it into the dryer, throw in the next load. Not so fast. Our washer here takes about two hours to do one small load (much of that time it seems to be resting, soaking the clothes maybe?), which then has to be hung to dry, so don't bother doing another load until tomorrow, since you need to wait for the first load to dry.

Our downstairs bathroom has an ingenious system for drying. There are three racks attached to a rope pulley.

So, you put your clothes on the racks,

hoist on this rope,

and voila, clothes are pulled up to the ceiling to dry -- out of your way and exposed to warm, rising air.

Throwing away your trash -- simple enough -- you put in on the curb on your assigned pick-up day. Not quite in Glasgow. Instead, you toss it in a dumpster, which are sometimes tucked away in alleys, but also are just right on the sidewalks.

Then, there's recycling. Three different kinds of dumpsters -- glass; plastic, cans and newspaper; and cardboard. Not all located together, but sometimes. We have trash dumpsters and plastic, can and newspaper recycling one block away in the same alley (but be careful those green containers which mean glass in other places are just trash here).

Two blocks away are the cardboard and glass dumpsters. Near this cool mural though!

The slower pace of life permeates everything from service in restaurants to doing household chores; people don't rush anything here!

Daily Dose of Museums -- The Burrell Collection

A few of the amazing items collected by Sir William Burrell.

A few weekends ago, with our friend Simon, we went to check out The Burrell Collection, which is one man's extremely eclectic amassings of what he liked. There was a far-spanning range of ancient Greek sculptures, Egyptian sepulchres, European paintings, Turkish rugs, etc. The entire collection includes 9000 pieces, but 6000 are in storage. So, yesterday, which Glasgow's schools had off, the boys and I went on a Behind the Scenes Tour, where we got to go into the storage areas and see some of the items not on display. Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed in the storage areas.

We saw some amazing silver ship trophies/models that even had miniature men climbing the rigging. We saw a giant candelabra that depicted Britannia supported by her colonies (figures of a Chinese man with a long braid, Arab with a pipe and Indian with a turban) -- very similar to the fountain we saw the day before, showing how much the Empire was incorporated into art.

I'm reading some Scottish authors, and this tour had connections to two books I've read recently. Ian Rankin is a very famous thriller writer with a series about Inspector Rebus, but I read a book called Doors Open about some amateur crooks stealing art from the storage areas for the National Gallery in Edinburgh -- then I was in a museum's storage areas but saw little chance to grab any items (not that I would even given the chance!). I also read a book, by Alexander McCall Smith best known for his #1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, 44 Scotland Street, which is not part of that series, but is about flatmates in Edinburgh who think they've found a painting by Samuel Peploe, one of four influential Scottish colourists. So the stored painting we saw on the tour was a Peploe -- not this one, but another with pink roses.  Odd how things emerge more than once.

As this was a family tour, we also saw some weapons, which Declan appreciated! We were really impressed by the staff who explained things in a kid-friendly and interesting way, making our behind the scenes tour a special treat!

The Burrell Collection is located in Pollok Country Park, an estate donated to the city for a public park. This park also contains beautiful, wooded walkways, a historic home/museum with accompanying gardens (waiting for spring to do that tour), and Clydesdale horses and Highland cows. We saw signs of spring coming -- snowdrops!

Daily Dose of Museums -- People's Palace

The People's Palace is a museum and winter gardens set in the middle of a park.

Inside the museum are exhibits about the Glaswegian dialect, drinking alcohol, living in tenements, old shops, and banana shoes -- very eclectic representation of Glasgow life!

Outside is The Doulton Fountain -- the largest terra-cotta one in the world -- which depicts Queen Victoria supported by her Commonwealth of India, Canada, Australia and South Africa. Just a reminder of the people's place in the hierarchy (ironically, outside the museum about the common folk).

Also, outside was a little reconnaissance mission by our boys.

The battle continued at St Andrew's Church, which is now a cafe and event space.

Food, food, food

As you may know, I like to cook and am a foodie (in my mind, a foodie is a person who wants to eat delicious, healthy, local food). Back in Bangor, we mostly ate at home, since eating out, in my opinion, is expensive and fattening. Of course, in Bangor there were only 3-4 restaurants we liked. So, a big change in Glasgow is the hundreds of restaurants to choose from, many within walking distance of our flat. However, they are still expensive and hit-or-miss in quality. A cheap meal for four is about $45, which doesn't seem like too much unless you're eating out a few times a week, as we could easily do. And although we've had some immemorable meals, we've also found a couple of great places -- more on that later.

In order to stretch our pennies, we do still eat in a lot. But shopping seems very different here, more of a daily journey. In part due to the size of the refrigerator. Notice the freezer is the same size as the fridge, which seems like a waste of space to me, especially since all that we found in the freezer were bags of ice.

Luckily, we live near a commercial street that has three grocery stores, plus a butcher, fish shop, cheese shop, and fruit and vegetable shop. We could really do European style shopping here with stops in different stores for each item. I'm too American to really shop this way, but I also love a bargain, so mostly I use the different stores to comparison shop. The big challenge is remembering I have to carry the groceries home, so not to buy too much.

Scots are famous for their sweet tooth, and the aisles of the groceries

confirm this.

Two aisles of candy choices!

Scots also love crisps (chips), so there is also a full aisle of these, including some unusual flavors, like prawn (shrimp), lamb and mint, thai chili chicken, cheddar and onion.

By contrast, notice small selection of peanut butter, hidden on the bottom shelf.

Also, near our house every other weekend is a farmers' market, with loads of seasonal vegetables (beets, cabbage, kale, potatoes, leeks), local meat, baked goods, and prepared Indian food.

The vegetables are great here (even the ones from the chain supermarkets)! After our first trip to the farmers' market, we had bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potatoes). This week, we will try venison sausages, four-berry jam, smoked salmon, and moonga dal. As you can tell, Indian food is pervasive in Glasgow, even at the farmers' market.

So, we won't go hungry in this land of restaurants and markets, but we might have to watch our waistlines!