Glasgow, Scotland

Oh look, I’m in Glasgow! How do I know this? Because I suffered through three plane trips in fifteen hours. Because the customs officer finally let me through after I opened up my laptop and spent an awkward ten minutes waiting for Word to load and then searching for a visa-necessary file. Because I just embarrassed myself by mistaking a bus driver’s query for a come on.

Him: “Single?”

Me: “Um… well, I’m travelling alone…”

Him: “Single or return? I’m not asking about your boyfriend.”

While humiliating, my mistake came as quite a relief. (His wonderful Scottish accent somehow didn’t manage to outweigh his advanced age.)

Glasgow seemed to pull out all the Scottish clichés for my arrival. As there was apparently a Scots vs Czech football match happening, every single male in the place was dressed in a kilt and football jersey. It was this strange combination of ugly-soccer-macho and, well, skirt. It just looked like a school skirt. But I was too scared of being bashed up by kilt-wearing skinheads to take photos. (“Which one of you ____ wants to dance?”)

I spent my first evening largely at Tescos. Hung over on jetlag and general sleeplessness, all I wanted was some food, and so I walked away with a loaf of bread, peanut butter (sound familiar, Lucy and Matt?), and some peaches. And then I got noodles from this place called ‘Wok to Walk’ because I wasn’t man enough to eat at a restaurant alone.

I spent the next day roaming the streets of Glasgow. It is incredibly hilly, mountainous even. And my hostel was right up the top of one of those mountainous hills. I got some fantastic views of the city, though I couldn’t see the river and its gorgeous bridges until I walked right up to it. My first priority when walking into town was to get a working sim card. Email me for the number if you’d like it.

I spent much of the day walking in and out of shops. What can I say? Those shops know me. They contain everything that I want to buy. It’s incredible. Even the cheapest shops, like Primark, are twelve times the quality at Cotton On. Somehow I managed to restrict myself to a total of 14.50 pounds for the day. (I really need to work out how to use the pounds symbol.)

As an aside, breakfast at the hostel was incredible. It was a ‘full Scottish breakfast’, containing eggs, bacon, toast, beans (hurray!), potato scone and tomato. (And they had weetabix! It looks like weetbix! My cereal dilemmas are solved!) The hostel itself was a catacomb of corridors and stairs, just as a British hostel should be. Even the people on the desk fit the stereotype, being prickly and verging on impolite. I really enjoyed my stay.

This morning, on my way to the train station – destination: Edinburgh – I was stopped in my tracks by a proper city marathon. I had to wait for about twenty minutes for everyone to jog past. It was on the news this evening. I’m still not entirely sure why it was happening, but it was a welcome break from lugging around my enormous suitcase.

In conclusion, Glasgow is a beautiful city with some fabulous architecture, shopping and street buskers, but I probably wouldn’t want to spend too much time being a tourist there. One and a half days were quite enough.

Next up: Edinburgh!