Isle of Bute

To keep our country mouse visitor happy, we took my mom on a trip away from the city to a nearby island. We used every form of mass transit to get there and get around once we were there -- train to ferry to bus to shuttle van. Luckily, the weather was perfect, cool but mostly clear, allowing us to make the most of a day outside, breathing in ocean air and exploring a new place.

Bute was (and still is today) a holiday destination in Scotland with easy access from Glasgow. The train station at Wemyss Bay connects to the ferry terminal through this gorgeous, Victorian walkway.

Then a short ferry ride and we arrived. On the pier are two fabulous Victorian buildings -- a visitors' centre and public toilets.

In the heyday, goldfish swam in the water tanks above the urinals.

Adorable family of swans swimming in the moat of the castle, described below

Off to the Rothesay Castle, which is the only castle we have visited that still has a moat with water in it.

Part of the castle was under construction

But the polite Brits wrote us an apology note

View back to town and over the Firth of Clyde (where the River Clyde joins the sea)

We set off up this street, reminiscent of Lombard in San Francisco, then walked through a wooded trail before doubling back to town in search of fish and chips.

Filled from our lunch, we took the local bus to Mount Stuart, where the gardens and house wowed us.

The house, built in Gothic Revival style, is a mixture of excessive opulence and quirky details. The ceiling of the grand hall has the constellations on it and each of the four sides has murals of the three signs of the zodiac for that season with its own particular color scheme (e.g., red for summer, blue for winter), then the ceilings on the next floor have small round skylights also colored to match the mural above. Such attention to detail! The carvings in one bedroom intersperse animals playing instruments with nature images, and the bed frame in that room has enlarged carvings of a few of the animals, including a bear playing the bagpipes. The house is quite gaudy is one sense and quite fabulous in another way.

The gardens were incredibly extensive. Our favorites were the giant rhododendrons and the Japanese garden. The boys opted to play outside rather than tour the house, which was probably a good choice since the elderly tour guide talked quite quickly in a monotone sing-song, which combined with his Scottish accent made for difficult comprehension. Yet, the rest of the people on the tour found him to be quite funny.

Waterfall in Japanese garden

The fish pond in the glass pavilion

Declan putting his new catapult to use

Boys showing just how tall the rhododendron is

Another wonderful Scottish island!

On the Mackintosh Trail

Today, I took my mom and Martin and Lesa into City Centre where we checked out the architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, most famous native son of Glasgow. Mackintosh's art nouveau design incorporates images from nature (roses, birds in flight, trees) with geometric shapes and simple lines. He designed a number of buildings in Glasgow, including the Glasgow School of Art, the Willow Tea Room, and Scotland Street School. Of course, my carefully constructed walking tour, immediately went astray but what we ended up doing was just as fun!

I love this desk, which shows some of the elements of Mackintosh design with contrasting light and dark, stained glass, and natural images.

We started off at The Lighthouse, a building Mackintosh helped design for the Glasgow Herald; it is now a design centre and museum.

A humorous sign indicating the direction to the toilets.

This sign was inside the bathrooms; my mom's guess was different handicaps -- pregnancy, missing legs, and mental illness -- though why the men, women and disabled toilet users all had to be warned about these handicaps is anyone's guess!

View from the top of the building

Internal spiral stairs that took you to the top of a tower

Lunch at The Willow Tea Room on Sauciehall Street continued our Mackintosh tour.

This Tea Room has two rooms, one with a more simple design and a mostly black and white color scheme.

There is also the De Luxe Room which has a pink and purple color scheme with mirrored walls and stained glass doors for when you want the over-the-top tea experience.

Quick dip into The Glasgow School of Art, where you can take a tour led by current art students or just check out the lobby and gallery space. Then a pause to admire the view atop the Garnethill neighborhood, where the elderly John Macbeth (at least, so he claimed his name to be) became our self-appointed tour guide, telling us about the mountains and glens in the distance and about his shopping (margarine spread and cheese), but mostly breathing whisky fumes on us. A true touch of local color!

Final stop The Tenement House, which is not strictly Mackintosh related, but a flat from the Victorian times, so the same era anyway. This is a fascinating National Trust property, as the mother and daughter who lived here kept most of their stuff over the years. The four room flat contains lots of artifacts from the time, including a pole to help make the bed (since people were too short to reach the far side of the beds build into the corners), a box commemorating Queen Victoria's Jubilee (we'll be here for the current queen's jubilee in June), and a pair of china dogs on the mantle (quite similar to the ones on our flat's mantle).

A great day culminating in a meal prepared for us by Martin, but that will have to wait for another post.

Orchid Show with Clucky

My mom, aka Clucky (her grandmother name that came about since she has chickens), arrived on Saturday, just in time to see Cormac's performance for a theatre camp he had been attending last week at the Citizens Theatre. The performance was amazing, opening with some poses and movement that created slow motion abstract tableaux, leading into a brief, modern version of King Lear. All the teen actors did a great job expressing the emotions of Lear and his daughters through movement and words. The group had created the whole play through improv around the themes and emotions of King Lear (warms an English teacher's heart!). The lead tutor's son was finishing his dissertation on Cormac McCarthy, so he warmed to our Cormac right away!

Today, we took Clucky to the Botanics, where they were having an orchid show. We were dazzled by the variety and array of blooms. Below is just a very small sample of the gorgeous flowers we saw.

Following a great lunch at Mother India Cafe, we headed into the Kelvingrove Museum, where we were once again impressed by their eclectic and interesting collection of art, artifacts, clothes, taxidermy, tartans, furniture, jewelry, etc. You have to love a museum that has both these statues -- from Greek god to rock-n-roll king!

A circuitous return home through the university showed Clucky to be the most stalwart of walkers!

Then, just as we were dishing up dinner, our dear friends, Martin and Lesa arrived in a taxi. So, we all ate lamb curry with vegies (from the farmers' market) -- just like back in Bangor where we enjoy many meals together. Though after dinner we went out to the pubs, which does not happen back home very often (at least for us).

Funny Signs

We find the Scottish to be friendly and polite, wanting to tell you more than you might want to know, and this attitude even extends to signs. Here are some amusing and/or informative signs we've seen in the UK.

The warning signs tend to be very specific, providing both written and visual of what might happen if you don't do as the sign says.

Some signs are just sweet -- like this reminder to hold your child's hand! Of course, it probably really means caution kids in the area, but I prefer my interpretation.

These speed limit signs crack us up, such a nice reminder. Of course, most cars drive extremely fast even on city streets, so I don't think the signs help much.

This sign confused us when we first moved here. We could tell it meant don't tip over the dumpsters, which given the public drunkenness is probably a good thing to warn against, but the fly part stumped us. Our friend Simon thinks it means, don't tip the dumpsters on the fly, but I'm not entirely convinced by that explanation.

A graphic reminder of what happens when you don't pick up after your dog -- love the scent lines!

Helpful warning signs even in public bathrooms (or toilets, which is what they are called here -- again, maybe too much information in "I'm going to the toilet" vs. "I'm going to the bathroom" which allows you to pretend you're doing something else in there).

Friends who had been to Ireland warned us that drinking fountains are rare, if not non-existent. So, we bring a water bottle on our excursions, but find the lack of potable water in some museums and office buildings quite baffling. Doesn't all the city water come from the same source?

More extremely specific warning signs. My favorite is the electrocuted man -- wouldn't want to end up like him!

Love this last one -- words to definitely live your life by!

Mask Making

Today, Declan, his friend Reuben, and I went to check out the mask exhibit at the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre, which is within walking distance of our flat (though Reuben thought it was a far walk, Declan and I are tourist-strong, meaning we can walk forever). The boys got to play with puppets and marionettes and make their own masks. The owners were super-nice and spent lots of time telling us about how they started this place back in the 1980s and how to make masks using traditional tools and methods.

Declan's mask

Declan and Reuben's masks and the Mad Hatter giant-sized puppet

The exhibit included masks from around the world, including wooden Japanese Noh masks, leather Italian commedia dell'arte masks, and replicas of Greek comedy masks.

My favorite!

Reuben's favorite -- he liked the teeth.

Declan's fave -- enjoyed the picking of the nose with the tongue.
One we all liked -- some crazy eyebrows! I think they might have inspired the eyebrows on Declan's mask.

A little off the beaten track and well worth a visit!