A TASTE OF GLASGOW

NOVEMBER 30, 2024

After our return to the reality of urban Scotland in Oban, it was time to take on the real thing with our last stop in Scotland, three nights in Glasgow.  Four years ago when we first planned this trip, I had set aside almost a week in the city. But our traveling companions, Amy and Bill, seemed almost dead set against spending time there, so we compromised with a very short stay that really didn’t do the city justice. Let’s call it a taste of Glasgow, and we did eat and drink very well indeed.

                                                                  THIS COULD BE NEAR REGENT'S PARK IN LONDON. BUT IN GLASGOW THESE WERE NO LONGER HOUSES, BUT EXCLUSIVE OFFICES THAT SERVED A CLIENTELE THAT WOULD NOT BE CAUGHT DEAD IN A REGULAR OFFICE BUILDING, LIKE PRIVATE DOCTORS OR PERSONAL BANKERS.

There are parts of Glasgow which are beautiful, but it is not very pretty. The climate is grim, and there is no rural ambience to hide the fact that it is very grey even when it is not raining. As Portlanders we were of course familiar with this ambience, but Glasgow rain was not Portland drizzle, and our maps hid the fact that the ten block walk we set out on was about equal to about thirty of our standard miniature Portland blocks. While Glasgow is not San Francisco, it was Seattle, and it soon became apparent that one had to plan for some real hills as we walked around the city. If we had been there a few more days we would have deciphered the transit system and avoided some far too long walks and frustrating drives around the city.

                                                                  COMMERCIAL EMPIRES WERE RUN FROM OFFICES LIKE THESE IN DOWNTOWN GLASGOW.

Amy and Bill are hotel people, and we stayed in a classic large Bed and Breakfast in a beautiful neighborhood near the museums, parks and spaces bordering the University campus. For God’s sake, there were real grass tennis courts across the street. We reserved the latest spots that were available for breakfast, which was so epic that it took up two pages and allowed for a multitude of choices after the initial page of cereal and pastries. We usually finished around 11:00 AM, and it took all of our strength to not return to the room for a nap while Amy and Bill made their first foray to visit all of the fine museums that Fran was all too happy to avoid. We usually attempted to meet them in the afternoon at a pub, where I finally had a drinking partner in Bill to explore the world of Scottish beer and queerly flavored crisps.

                                      ONE OF A NUMBER OF VICTORIAN TRAIN STATIONS IN CENTRAL GLASGOW

finally overcome De-industrialization was stopped in its tracks by recent history. There were entire districts of empty new office buildings and apartments that had never been occupied once they were built. Outside the center of the city, many places seemed to be in a state of suspense animation, waiting for the boom that had been on the cusp of transforming the city. On the other hand, some parts of the center of town contained brief interludes reminiscent of the energy and affluence of London. On one stretch of a few blocks I passed more than half a dozen shops that offered watches from every country on Earth that started at prices higher than we had spent for our entire six weeks in Great Britain.

                                      JUST AROUND THE CORNER FROM OUR HOTEL A GRAND OLD SYNAGOGUE HAD BEEN CONVERTED TO0 OFFICES.

Fran and I spent a few nice days avoiding all of the art, science and history museums that we could. We had one nice afternoon exploring our neighborhood which was a quite lively university district once we had found the old shopping streets that seemingly offered cuisines from every corner of the globe. Fran finally had enough of Scottish cuisine and somehow found a Polish restaurant around the corner from our hotel that transported us back to the end of Cold War. It turned out to be part of the Polish Consulate and we had dumplings and wiener schnitzel and Polish beer.

                                      THE BIGGEST GREENHOUSE IN THE BOTANICAL GARDENS, A CATHEDRAL OF STEEL AND GLASS

Another afternoon was devoted to the Botanical Garden which rivaled Kew Gardens in London for outrageous displays of vegetation from around the world, both in a beautiful park setting that seemed to be nanny central for the city, and in incredible greenhouses for anything that couldn’t grow in the Scottish climate. It culminated in a giant greenhouse that had been donated by some Scottish lord when he got tired of maintaining it on his own estate. This glass and steel cathedral of plants had been taken apart piece by piece and reassembled in Glasgow.

                                                           THE GREENHOUSE INTERIOR UNDER THE DOME

I found a museum that Fran would enjoy in an architectural triumph by Zara Hadid that was somewhat curiously called the Museum of Transport. It turned out to be a collection of objects that illustrated the trappings of the Glasgow throughout the Twentieth Century. Every device that ever carried human beings around the city, from early bicycles to entire trains, was displayed in an absolutely chaotic fashion that could appeal to grandchildren curious about a foreign world before the present day to their grandparents who had lived in that world many years before. While I realized much to my chagrin that the museum’s incredible roof was basically an arbitrary sculpture, it did allow for the Disneyland recreation of entire streets of Old Glasgow that could illustrate the city’s history.

                                                           A REAL CLIPPER SHIP MOORED OUTSIDE ON THE RIVER AND REFLECTED IN THE MUSEUM'S ENTRY FACADE

There the Model T wasn’t in a museum but parked on the cobblestone street outside of the drugstore interior that had been saved from a long-departed Glasgow neighborhood. It was incredible and a little bit eerie  to walk into an ice cream shop that was just like the one where I had my first job as a soda jerk, or into an old pub where I could have known where to hook up the keg, or into an Undergound Station not that much different from my station in London from oh so many years ago.  The museum was almost like a novel that told a universal story while paying particular attention to a very unique part of the world.

                                                           ON THE STREET OUTSIDE THE PAWN BROKER

To culminate our taste of Glasgow we had our first High Tea at the Willow Tea Rooms in the middle of Downtown. Imagine a living history museum which celebrated Glasgow’s architecture, combined with a trip to the Great British Bake Off. Around the turn of the Twentieth Century, Charles Mackintosh found his first great opportunity in designing Tea Rooms around the city where women could dine and gossip and no doubt create the Suffragette movement when no respectable woman could go to a pub.

                                      THE PROPER FONT TO ANNOUNCE YOUR JOURNEY TO THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY WORLD OF PASTRY

Mackintosh created an entire environment, from the architecture to the furnishings to the silverware to the menu in these tea rooms. We had the opportunity to have High Tea about two and a half hours, sitting in a very accurate restoration of one of these places. I got to sit on one of Mackintosh’s “throne chairs” which cost more than my first car.

                                                                  THE FURNISHING, DECORATION, AND STAINED GLASS ALL AUTHENTIC AND AVAILABLE TO OUR PARTY, AT LEAST FOR ONE AFTERNOON.

More importantly, the spread met the approval of my pastry chef wife, who’d declared the culminating cake as a “first class sponge” just like she was a judge in the tent. A great time was had by all, and we were so stuffed that we got Amy and Bill to eat our last dinner together at their “ungodly late hour” of 7:30!

                                                                  THE PASTRY CASE WITH JUST SOME OF SELECTIONS AVAILABLE FOR "HIGH TEA"

The next day we had our final breakfast which was more than enough to fuel us all the way to our final three days in England's Peak District on the way back to London.