Glasgow Scotland – A UK couple on our Portuguese Douro River tour insisted we needed to see what Scotland looked like from here. Glasgow has hosted communities for millennia with the River Clyde providing a natural location for fishing and is said to have been founded by the Christian missionary Saint Mungo in the 6th century. In the 18th century, after the British Acts of Union in 1707, Glasgow became prominent as a hub of international trade to and from the Americas and a major ship building port. Today, while the River Clyde still flows through the City, the trade and shipbuilding are all a thing of the past. Today the city seems to have a large insurance company and finance presence and of course ,tourist visits.
We flew into Glasgow and took a cab to our hotel close to the City Center. After settling in we walked around and got a brief ‘feel’ of the place ending up with a lovely dinner at a small restaurant and then back to our hotel. Let me say at the outset that the hotel a Best Western Historical refurb, was still a work in progress. First, we were in the basement level, not really a problem but no elevator or lift, and the heating was intermittent, making the room very uncomfortable. We got up the first morning to find the heating completely off – the radiator cold to the touch and the single pane windows not helping a bit. The response from the front desk – “we had complaints that it was too hot, so we turned off the heat”. Well, that didn’t make me happy and they clearly knew that but enough about the lousy hotel.
Our first full day, we walked down to the main square and picked up a couple of tickets for the Hop on Hop off bus tour around the City. This was a really good way to learn about the sites of the City and learn some of the history.
The tour hits all the highlights and gives some details. We did a complete tour and got off at the stop closest to our hotel. We did hop off a couple of times and checked out the local sites.
Onesite was the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. This was a lovely museum with interesting displays of Edinburgh history.
The next day, we walked down to George Square and the main (pedestrian) shopping area of the City and just walked around looking at the sites and taking in the holiday cheer of the shops.
As we really aren’t looking for anything in particular it was fun to just window shop (although a bit cold for us SoCal folks).
While we didn’t visit many of the historically significant sites of Glasgow we did get a nice feel for the City and didn’t feel badly when we left by train to Edinburgh.
