Scotland July 20th - Glasgow

Scotland!

“Wait Chris, didn’t you just go to a land of some sort right near there?”
“Why yes, I went to Ireland last year.”
“Well, what made you go to Scotland?”
“I just had to try flying over a small expanse of ocean in a plane powered by fan blades!”

It was myself and Janet Dreamcrusher off on another adventure in a celtic nation. Oh yes, the trip to Scotland was a whole different beast from my trip last year.

Aer Lingus x2 ***

I don’t know if we were doing something wrong or just being too cheap, but we ended up with a layover in both directions. I’m not sure if it would have been easier to fly into London and drive up to the land of the Tartans, but we just swallowed our pride and took the two layovers in stride. After all if we stopped over in Dublin then we’d have ample time to pick up some Jameson Truffle chocolate bars (this line of thinking will be important later).
Our first flight is straight to Dublin airport from JFK at 5:30p Friday night. The flight is simple enough, but try to patiently board a second plane at 6am in a foreign country without losing your mind and get back to me. If you think that’s too easy, try taking a bus to the plane which is about the size of… a bus with wings and two giant fans glued on.

 

I mean, what you really want when you’re in a hollow metal tube six miles into the atmosphere is two giant explosion tubes to propel you across the earth using invisible fire

Getting into Scotland we faced our next hurdle: this year we decided to pick up the car immediately.

Alamo **

As if switching planes after not sleeping for a full night wasn’t bad enough, we also had to wait on line for our car rental as children slept crashed out on the waiting benches. They looked how I felt, but much more at peace with it. Everyone was helpful though, so there was that.

Glasgow - Where is our hotel? *

We learned from Ireland that the signpostings for the major cities from the motorways would be pretty dynamic and fit our needs fairly well, unfortunately the cities in Scotland weren’t laid out as simple as Ireland. We probably spent a good hour in the area of our hotel while being unable to find it, going so far as to ask around 6 people. We made slow progress until someone grabbed a “Glasgow A-Z” book that pointed out the general area of the city we were supposed to be in. Another half hour of searching got us there - a half hour fraught with wrong turns and tizzies, but after we got it once we never made a wrong turn again.

We had a rocky intro - it was around 12 and we were looking to see if we could get in early. It was then that we were told that our check-in time was an hour later then it was on the website (3pm). That would have been okay except we’d been awake for 18 hours and were pretty exhausted. We went back into town to search for things to do in the meantime.

Botanical Gardens ***

The Botanical Gardens run multiple plays during the summer weekend in the greenhouses, which many people were taking advantage of and having a good laugh at a Shakespearean comedy. Unfortunately we agreed if we’d sat down for a moment we would pass out and wake up looking like well-dressed and under-equipped backpackers, so we decided to continue a garden tour.

Walking through the gardens we were able to swing around to the lower paths which led us along a river walk with outdoor body-weight workout
equipment. It was fun for a lark and made me wonder if that sort of thing appears anywhere in America. After getting through a rousing circuit we continued on to a well-deserved rest at our hotel room.

The Belhaven ***

Despite the introduction, we made it back around 3p and got to our room on the second floor. It was awesome! Huge vaulted ceiling and a view of the streets to die for. We had what we referred to as the ‘Balcony Room’ because we were situated over the entrance of the hotel which had a small overhang. The room was beautiful and was nicely located to give us a quick trip into the parts of the city we liked.

The breakfast was nice and easy without any huge surprises, which made for an easy introduction. The last thing you need getting into a foreign country is an early-morning introduction to some foul foods you'd never even consider eating at home like blood pudding or something... :)

We often grabbed our morning fruit to go as a mid-day pick me up, which made for a nice snack as we made our way around the city. All in all once you find it the Belhaven is great coming and going.