saturday july 11th, a good day because we’d had 10 hours of sleep, plus it was sunny and nice in Glasgow.  We had the morning to look around until taking a train and a bus to our first cycling town.

we wanted to see some of charles renee mackintosh’s work, and i wrote down a list of the places to see and decided maybe we could see some of them when we came back to glasgow at the end of the trip.  that way there wasn’t so much pressure to see EVERY SINGLE THING in a half-day.  actually, i’d planned that we could see several of the places on the first afternoon, friday, but of course that was ridiculous because we were like zombies.

the nice woman at our b&b made us a reservation to tour the Glasgow School of Art, designed by mackintosh.  it’s still a working school so you had to take a guided tour.  our guide was a cheerful woman who had decided to major in pottery because she’d gotten a degree in something else – anthropology, maybe? and couldn’t find a job.  hmm, i wonder how her pottery career will go.

the school was really cool, but we weren’t allowed to take photos or video.  so here’s the outside of the place.

we bought a few postcards of some of the rooms in order to remember them. 

after that we went in search of the Willow Tea Room, designed by mackintosh.  we walked along a busy pedestrian street with lots of junky stores like one that was the ONE POUND STORE, like the dollar stores here.  we couldn’t find the tea room and i finally looked at the rick steves pages i’d been carrying with me, and we’d gone right past it.  the bottom floor of the tea room is a kind of tacky jewelry store.  overlooking the store is the first level of tea room, and it was filled with people.  they could eat and look down at the tacky store, plus it was too warm there.  thanks to rick s, though, we knew to keep going, up to the third floor where the really good room was.  when we arrived it was completely empty, so i took a bunch of videos and kevin took photos.

here it is:

we had lots of time to look around because the service was really slow and awful.  but it didn’t matter so much because we were enjoying the location.  i got tea and toast with nutella, and kevin got a scone.

here’s the sugar bowl; most places had lumps of brown sugar in addition to white, which i decided were meant for me to suck on while waiting for food.  hmm, and i wonder why i have all this tooth pain now…

i wish we’d seen some of those great teacups for sale, because we’d have bought them.  maybe not, though, because we could each only have one suitcase on the bike trip and they were already kind of heavy with all our clothes plus bike gear. 

i think kevin took this in homage to my movie “hope’s happy birthday.”

there’s me taking video on another crowded pedestrian street.  this was buchanan street and i’d read that there were lots of good stores but we didn’t like all those crowds and didn’t have any interest or time to look at them.

here’s a statue on george’s square, or maybe it’s called st. george’s square.  robert peel,  and here’s some of the entry about him from Wikipedia:

Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to
29 June 1846. He helped create the modern concept of the police force while Home Secretary (leading to officers being known as “bobbies“, in England, or Peelers, in Ireland, to this day), oversaw the formation of the Conservative Party out of the shattered Tory Party, and repealed the Corn Laws.Robert Peel developed the Peelian Principles
which defined the ethical requirements police officers must follow in
order to be effective. His most memorable principle was, “the police
are the public, and the public are the police.”

he also developed a new breed of pig called the tamworth pig.  a very busy man, mr. peel.  here’s a wide shot of the square, which had many beautiful hanging flower baskets.  there were lots of flowers all over scotland, actually.

here’s me looking like a tour guide.  i don’t know if you can see it clearly, but the top triangular sign says 14%grade.  it was very hilly in glasgow. 

i don’t know if i’ve mentioned it, but scotland is a very hilly place.  we found this out even more vividly when biking.

kevin took these pictures when crossing a pedestrian bridge back to our hotel.

we took a cab to the train station and were entertained by the very friendly cab driver, as are all the cab drivers in scotland as far as i know.  we quickly got our tickets and boarded the train and at first it was FAST.  kevin took a picture of our two suitcases.

we then got on a bus, and arrived in the town of Callander. It was a small town, with one long main street.  we walked up the street to our b&b, which wasn’t too far away.

the place was called the old rectory, and apparently it really was an old rectory, right next to a church.  this was the only b&b we stayed in that had a little bar in it.  the first night they put us in a room on the first floor, even though i’d e-mailed them asking them to be upstairs because i’d read a horrible review of the place by a very upset person who had been put in that very room and couldn’t sleep because of the noise. 

we walked down the street to a very nice place and had fish, and kevin felt compelled to take this very appetizing photo.

and then, a photo of the wine list – the one on the bottom, the marquest de caceres, was quite delicious, and we wanted to remember it in order to try to find it here. we haven’t attempted that yet, but at least we have the good record. 

that night we even ordered dessert; i think kevin’s was some warm bread pudding.

me, i couldn’t resist the cheese plate.  delicious, one of the first delicious cheese experiences i had in scotland.

here’s the front of the hotel.  on the left is one part of the dining room, and on the right, the other part.  our room the first night was right in back of the place on the left.  the second and third nights, though, we were upstairs from that room, and that room was awesome.  there was a great view of the street and the river across the street.  the downstairs room had, indeed, been loud and awful, but the one upstairs was really nice. 

here’s a close-up of the b&b kitty.  he always wanted inside, and i tried to let him in whenever possible.

and that’s our final day BEFORE BIKING.  the two first days in scotland, fairly warm and quite sunny.

on sunday, we started.  more later.  and have you noticed how i’m already whizzing along with the posting?  i’m pretty sure it took me months to post all the photos when we went to austria.

yeah, grace, don’t get cocky – there are many many more photos to post and i haven’t figured out a quick way to do them so it’s pretty darned time-consuming.

we were going to go to the state fair today, but it’s raining.  tomorrow, maybe.

ok then,

monday grace.