Scotland: Glasgow

This morning we drove to Glasgow without much excitement. Finding the hostel was a little interesting but we did not have to drive very far through town to get there. We walked around the University of Glasgow and went to the Royal Botanic Gardens. The grounds are free to visitors but the main attractions are the glass houses which have plant species from around the world. For whatever reason (most likely because most plants had peaked) we found the glass houses to have free admission also.

After looking at the cactuses, palms, ferns, orchids, begonias, and other plants, we went to the Museum of Transportation. There was a really neat exhibit made to replicate the way one of the major streets may have looked in 1920s, complete with a tiny cinema that played Looney Tunes and an old subway platform. There was a very interesting collection of old trams, trains, buses, motorcycles, and cars. The special exhibit was about shipbuilding and the old grand shipyards along the Clyde River. The rest of the afternoon was spend meandering among the streets. I had bought tickets to a play at the Citizen’s Theatre later that evening, so we took the handy (modern-day) subway across town to a large outdoor mall and browsed a few stores before finding an Italian restaurant for dinner.

 

The Harry Potter Ford Anglia

Later, we walked across the river to the theater for a showing of The Pillowman, a very dark comedy about a writer of short stories who is accused committing several child-murders (I said it was dark) that have occurred under similar circumstances as those in his stories. It was very well acted and engaged the audience easily, since the theater was a very small circle of stadium-style benches, creating an intimate atmosphere. Anyone who’s been to Cyrano’s in Anchorage knows what I’m talking about. During one of the intermissions I was talking to Hans and noticed he seemed distracted by something. I asked him what was up and he replied with a quiet “you’ve got big jumblies behind you.” I turned around to notice the very tall replicas of Greek statues. It was a very amusing moment.