Ach and Aye and al of that

Eventually, I got to my airbnb. It was lovely! If I were to buy a flat, it would be this flat.

The following day I went exploring on my own. This mostly meant waking myself up and getting in to Central Glasgow. Given their efficient and inexpensive transit system, this was very easy. It's a grey and cool day but nothing I'm not used to. The trees still have most of their leaves and the colours are very pretty.

I wandered to a cathedral. Surprise! My host recommended I go to a place called The Necropolis, which is a very old graveyard with many prominent Scots buried there. It was also in the vicinity of Glasgow Cathedral, so that was a bonus.

For a very long time, Glasgow was a filthy, industrial city.  This caused a lot of soot and pollution.  There's no getting around that. Sandstone (both blond and red) was the building material of choice/easiest to access. It was used for everything it could be from homes to businesses to graves. Sandstone absorbs pollution. As a result, for a long time a lot of the sandstone was black. Over time, the city has cleaned up a lot. It isn't filthy. It isn't industrial. Efforts have been made to clean the stone up but the residue lingers. It's a part of the building now, part of the story that can't be erased or gentrified. I like it.

In order to get to The Necropolis, you have to cross the Bridge of Sighs. There are many explanations given as to why this is the name but my favourite came from the sign guide made by the historical society: the bridge is the divider between the land of the beginning and the land of the dead, with a sigh being the last breath they give.

Cities are not well known for making space for their dead. People used to be buried in church yards if they were sane and baptised and not diseased. Then the insane/unbaptiesed/diseased became far more numerous and cemeteries needed to be built. And wouldn't you know it, people didn't stop dying. Many cities have come up with numerous ways of dealing with this but in The Necropolis, there is no unused space.

There is no shortage of mausoleums/crypts/gravestones built into the hills. Foliage runs amok and really gives the area a sense of place. Also mausoleums/crypts will never not be creepy.

The church is a survivor from medieval times and is Gothic in design.
We weren't allowed to go in as they were setting up for Remembering Sunday services. This is a particularly poignant year as it marks the 100th anniversary of the armistice and the end of WWI. Less significant: I lost poppies in two countries this year.

Wandering further (and realizing it is that horrible time of year in the Northern Hemisphere where it is dark at 1630), I tried to find my way back to the train station. It shouldn't be a surprise that I got lost. What should come as a surprise is these awful map post things they have up all over the central area that are completely useless. They have no directional arrows, and when you follow what directions they do give you end up in the wrong direction. Then you decide to outsmart them and walk opposite of what they say but you're still wrong. Also Glasgow has no street signs.

The city hall is beautiful, however.

My secondary goal of the day was to find the Duke of Wellington. I've seen several Duke of Wellington statues in my life but this one is special. Capping the statue with a traffic cone has become a traditional practice in the city, claimed to represent the humour of the local population and believed to date back to the first half of the 1980s, if not before. The statue is one of Glasgow's most iconic landmarks. Due to minor damage and the potential for injury that the placing of cones involves, the practice has been discouraged by Glasgow City Council and Strathclyde Police.
Of course, this doesn't stop people. The cone has been removed and replaced more times than people can keep track of; often it is replaced within hours of being removed.

illegitimi non carborundum. Glasgow.

Next: Tims, architects, and cousins.

Getting to Glasgow

My original birthday trip was supposed to be to Iceland. Through the ins and outs of how things go, it wasn't.

Instead, Glasgow, Scotland! With about 48 hours to plan!

I didn't have much in the way of expectations. I wanted to eat a chip butty, a deep fried mars bar, and that was about it. If I could get in contact with my cousins out there, even better!

As always, we start things off with a video.

And we're off! For a little more money  -  I think it was $5 - I got Plus seats all the way there.
This meant that me in my yoga pants and general trashiness got to board the plane faster and into better service than the business men who were in my gate area and complaining that they had to board in Zone 3 because they didn't have their gold status yet. See you later, business men!

Plus is what WestJet calls the service they used to have standard. Free meals, smiling faces. Still no seatback TVs but we can't win them all.

The seats to London were like Lay-Z-Boys. They're the old Quantas planes so it was pretty awesome. Good food, an amenity kit, blankets and good service. Still no seat back TVs but they gave out tablets to those of us in Plus. Every other international airline calls this "economy" (except the lay-z-boy part).

London Gatwick is a perfectly cromulent airport. It's dated. It smells a bit. You can't get airside until a couple of hours before your flight which sucks if you've got six hours to kill and no confidence to leave the place (and no cash to take the bus anywhere because you're not smart enough to think of that sort of thing). There's a lack of seating and a lack of things to do landside. The two terminals are a km or so apart.

Once you're landside in the South terminal, things improve a bit - there's more seating, more shopping, more eating. Great! There's no gate announcements. The airport is very quiet. You only know your gate if you watch the board. The board will tell you what time to expect your gate and then when it comes up, you've got another half to 3/4 of a kilometre to book it in a very short amount of time. They don't mess around here; your gate is listed and you are boarding. Done. Once in the gate areas there is nothing to do or eat or anywhere to sit. Not good or bad, perfectly cromulent.

Up until this point, I did not have any through ticket to Glasgow. Whoops. I didn't plan very well and that's on me. My goal was to get to a BA desk in Pearson and buy a ticket but that didn't exist. I found the one in Gatwick and paid about $200 for a round trip ticket. Thank you, decent Cabbotage laws.

The thing with UK airports is that you walk. Period. Everywhere. There are few moving sidewalks and nothing is close. It is easy to hit your step count in a two hour layover just trying to get from baggage to terminal to gate to terminal. This is true of Heathrow, Gatwick, and Glasgow.

It's not exactly early at this point, so I get on a bus and get in to the city, then to my airbnb.

Next: Glasgow!!