finally some more photos…i was going to post all these photos in a timely manner, remember?

this is our last day in Glasgow; we took the train on wednesday morning from edinburgh to glasgow, and spent one night there.  i wanted to go to the university museum where they had some re-creations of of chas. rennie mackintosh rooms.  as we walked, the clouds were rolling in.

we walked up up uphill, and it started raining but luckily we had our umbrellas.  we got to the museum…and the exhibit was closed.  til september.  there had been nothing about this on their website when i’d checked it out before going to scotland.

oh well.  what would we do instead?  we were hungry, so we went back to the art museum where we’d gone our very first day in scotland, and had a lovely lunch again.

there were many different places we could go, but we decided on the transport museum.  the primary attraction was that it was just about a block away.  but it turned out to be a wonderful place, and i took lots and lots of video (which we haven’t even watched yet).

it was all about all kinds of transportation – everything from old prams and buggies to really old bicycles, motorcycles, gypsy vans, camper vans, buses, streetcars, model ships, and of course, many cars.  it was a little bit like the wonderful peterson car museum in LA except the one in Glasgow has more kinds of things, but isn’t as fancy.

here’s a couple of the very old bikes.

this is a motorcycle with a sidecar! some sidecar, huh?

…and another one.

hmm, what kind of car is this?  i’m sure i’m describing it there.  i bet kevin knows.  maybe it’s a car he owned?  quite a few cars there were ones he owned at some point in his life.

i’m pretty sure he had one of these.  but maybe not.

i know he DIDN’T have one of these, and i know it’s a very fancy car…but i don’t know what it is.  kevin will have to add his comments explaining about these cars.

outside, he spotted this…this…it’s some kind of hybrid car, and they have them in the US but he says they’re described as “walnuts” and are nothing like this sporty little car.

we spent the night in the same little hotel we’d stayed in our first night in Glasgow.  this time, however, i was chatting with the owner about tripadvisor.com, and how we relied on it to pick our hotels.  she was leading me to a room, but then she said “or, if you like, you could have this room because it’s bigger.”  and it was much bigger and nicer room than the one she was going to put us in, or the one we’d stayed in the first night.

neither of those rooms was bad, but not nearly as nice.  this makes me want to be more assertive and ask for a bigger or better room whenever we travel – some of the rooms we stayed in on our trip were kind of small, and i do remember seeing a much grander, better room in at least one b&b.  i guess it couldn’t hurt to ask.

we had a lovely last evening in glasgow, lolling on the bed, eating the rest of the cheese we’d got at the best cheese shop ever.

the next morning we took the train to southampton.  we could have flown for about the same price, but we thought it’d be more scenic and relaxing to take the train.

it was a very long trip – i think about eight hours altogether, on two different trains.  we’d assumed we’d be traveling through the lovely, bucolic english countryside…but it wasn’t.  there were many little towns, but they were all…awful.  they looked depressed and kind of like bad 70’s architecture.

we did have books, and it was nice to just sit and read – no biking, no rushing around, no seeing any sights.

but it would have been nice to see some pretty countryside.

we finally arrived in southampton and decided we’d walk to the b&b because we’d been sitting so long.

it seemed like a pretty enough town, but the people there – not so nice.  as we walked through a park, some teenagers were yelling abuse at some older drunk-looking homeless woman.  we walked on through a newer, kind of trendy street, and these two men were walking ahead of us and i just remember that one of them was going on about some other guy who he wasn’t going to hang around anymore because of all the fights they got into, and they just sounded like trouble.

we quickened our pace and headed down a wide boulevard.  we couldn’t find the address, and there were no b&b signs anywhere.  a woman had pulled into a driveway and tried to help us, but had never heard of the place we were going.

we finally crossed the street and found the address – it was an old two-story house with gravel all around it.  not fun to roll suitcases over gravel.

the man who opened the door for us wasn’t friendly at all.  this is the only unfriendly b&b owner we encountered.  maybe he was mad because we were there much later than we said we’d arrive?  or maybe he was just having a bad day.

our room, however, was very nice.  the owners were a gay couple, and we didn’t see the other half of the couple till the next morning.  there were only two rooms for rent, and the other one was vacant.

we strolled down the boulevard and found a nice restaurant near a park.  this part of town seemed more civilized.

in the morning, peter, the other half of the couple, cooked us a big breakfast.  i didn’t want a big breakfast, but really felt obliged because he really wanted to do it.  even kevin ate more than his usual porridge.  peter was so funny and nice, the complete opposite of the other guy, who i think was named Mike.  peter was a party planner and had been to chicago and NYC and LA and had planned huge parties and had many many interesting and funny stories about his many adventures.  we chatted for quite a while, before he called us a cab to take us to the dock.

here’s peter.

and then we got into a cab and headed for the dock and boarded the QUEEN MARY 2.

and even though i still wish kevin had taken more pictures, there are still quite a few pictures of the ship.

and i’m DETERMINED to finish posting these scotland photos BEFORE THANKSGIVING.

i think i can, i think i can, i think i can…

ok then,

grace.