Glasgow

After an excellent day sightseeing yesterday in Edinburgh, we decided to spend today in Glasgow, seeing what is essentially my father and his sister's town. Dad and Evelyn lived there for most (if not all) of their childhood, before Dad's job took him around the region and eventually with Mum to Australia.

So we began on a bus into town from Renfrew (one of the main suburbs to the West of Glasgow). In Sydney Renfrew would be considered a suburb, but the city limits are strictly defined in the UK & Europe, and the urban sprawl is quite autonomous. Thus a place 30min bus ride from the city centre is definitely not part of that city - except possibly in London, but even there has London and 'Greater London'. By this measure, North of Nth Sydney, West of Strathfield, and South of the Airport wouldn't be considered Sydney.

But I digress - we took one of the excellent open-top City Sightseeing tours. I can't praise these enough right now - if you have limited time, as I have, they are a brilliant way of hearing the history of the city and finding out where is great to go. So far they've been decently priced too - about £6-8 ea for a 24-hr ticket. Glasgow's bus even has live commentary by locals, which is mighty interesting.

So we took the tour around the city's poorer East End. The East of cities is invariably poorer in the UK due to the prevailing wind. If you have a largely industrial city, as many were, the wind pushed all the smog and dirt eastward, thus making the Western reaches cleaner and therefore more desirable. The area doesn't look too bad, but I got a great look at the Gorbles (lovely couple, lots of fun!) and Glasgow Green, with the very impressive terracotta fountain and the People's Palace.

From there we went back into the city centre, through George's Square and down towards Stobcross Quay, with the Armadillo (the Clyde Auditorium), the SECC, Science Centre and the Tall Ship. It's in a process of regeneration as well, and will soon (2008) be home to a huge new museum. Following this, we went down Argyle St, past the very fashionable and quirky West End (home to Glasgow Uni too), before stopping at the very recently reopened Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum.

This place is fantastic - it's like a taster to what's at the Museum of Scotland. It's a bit all-over-the-place, with Glasgow next to Ancient Egypt, but it has some fantastic stuff. It's all brand new, so it was quite busy, but well worth a visit - and it's FREE. It has an excellent series of displays at a lower height for kids, as well as housing 'Christ of St John on the Cross' by Dali - their most famous piece.

From there, we went to Tenement House - an excellent example of the old Tenement (single room) flats in early industrial Glasgow. They've kept it as close to how it would have been, and it's great - it's amazing how much they managed to fit into such a small space - especially the bed cupboard/alcove etc.

Finally we went for a walk around the Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed School of Art. Mackintosh art is everywhere and he's one of the most important art nouveau designers in the UK. It's all metal and led lights, so not entirely my cup of tea, but it's impossible to overestimate how important it was to the city - his designs are everywhere.

And that was the end of our day. We wandered through Sauchiehall (succy-hall) St for some window shopping, and then back to Renfrew by bus for a fantastic curry!

For photos of Glasgow, click here