Glasgow!

This weekend Peter and I drove down to Glasgow for a night and stayed with our friend Leesa. She's in the UK on a three month secondment from Australia and started in the Aberdeen office a couple weeks before I did and also lived across the hall from me in my temporary housing. But anyway, after a month in Aberdeen she went to Glasgow to work there so we decided to visit!

We got a late start Saturday morning though and didn't get down to Glasgow (2.5-3 hour drive from Aberdeen) til late afternoon. Then spent an hour getting lost around the city because the GPS kept losing signal and didn't know where we were going. So we finally got close to the Spires (same serviced apartment chain Leesa and I stayed in while in Aberdeen) parked in a parking garage, and walked to 160 Bothwell street. And found this:





There is no 160 Bothwell street. A quick google search found that the Spires had moved locations in June 2010 and the pile of rocks we were next to was no longer the spires. Although I was disappointed in my google map app for sending us to an old address it did give us a 15 minute walk across the city which was nice.

I really love Glasgow as a city. There seems to be a great mix of old and new buildings and lots to do. And random architecture like this peacock:



After we finally made it to Leesa's, we walked around while we tried to decide where to go. We walked past Jamie Oliver's restaurant, but I was too hungry to wait in line just to put our names in




But don't worry, we went back later for some very very late dessert. It has a casual feel,




which was good because we weren't dressed up at all





Anyway, to back track we ended up having a leisurely dinner at an Italian restaurant called Viva and then walked around town to see Glasgow at night.





I fell in love with Glasgow a bit this weekend. I liked the combination of the old and new and the size of the city as well. It isn't huge but big enough that you feel like you're in a city.

There are a lot of pedestrian areas and shopping (thankfully for my wallet we didn't have time for that) and from what we saw on the bus tour Sunday morning, some nice parks and open areas. Maybe it was because except for the occasional rain shower it was sunny all weekend, but I would really like to spend more time in Glasgow.

Few shots from my phone:




















It was a hop-on, hop-off bus tour but our only hop-off was to stop at Glickman's, Glasgow's oldest sweet shop.

It was tiny but I got some pretty delicious treats :)





Then after the tour we made one final stop to an "american" sweet shop Leesa had found:



Yes, that's statues of the Blues Brothers.

The name is a bit misleading as most of the store is not candy from America. But the back of the store was a bit more promising. I was most excited by the pop selection, which included cans of a&w root beer, wild cherry pepsi, and welch's grape soda. I was planning on stocking up until I saw they were £1.50 ($2.25) per can. Once I realized how much the 12 pack of wild cherry pepsi and 6 pack of root beer was going to cost I quickly downgraded my quantity.

I did come out with a decent haul though, which combined with the first sweet shop stop of the day meant we spent about £50 on sweets (and soda) in one day. Yikes.




But I'd say it was worth it :)


And one more bonus of the weekend, saw my first uk rainbow on the drive back from Glasgow




Followed by a full rainbow not too far after.  One small perk of lots of rain!

Next weekend, it's down to Reading (pronounced RED-ing) near London to visit some of Peter's friends. And then it's only 2 more weeks until my mom and Bill are here!!