Glasgow

It was difficult to leave Edinburgh. I had had great times there with two good friends and did not particularly want to set off on the next leg of my journey by myself (or return to Dublin at the end of the weekend, for that matter). Megan took more time off work to wander around the city with me that last morning. We went back to the National Art Gallery to see the Impressionism gallery which Alyssa and I had missed the day before, but as most of it was closed for some reason we only got to see a couple new paintings, including Gauguin’s surrealist painting of angels wrestling which I had no idea was in Scotland. As we were walking in the park, I started to point at where the fellow was singing the other day, only to spy him in the exact same spot, going at it again. I’ve since learned through fellow-Scottish travellers on facebook that he’s kind of a legend. Finally, we went to the Children’s Museum (really a toy museum) which has multitudes of creepy porcelain dolls as well as many racist ‘golliwogs’.

I bid my farewell and set off on the Scottish rails again reading Fred Kaplan’s ‘1959; The Year that Changed Everything’ to distract me from my melancholy (having firmly set aside Ian Rankin). I was a bit nervous, as I didn’t have a little Lonely Planet book for Glasgow, but I told myself that all train stations in big cities have free tourists maps at the information booths. I also should add that my legs were still very much aching from all the climbing we did in Edinburgh, and I was very stiff when I got off the train. Eventually, I found where I thought an information desk should be, but all the pamphlets were train schedules and, bizarrely, info about sites in Edinburgh, the city I had just left. I finally gave up and went to get on the bus. I usually avoid buses as they never provide maps for where they go and you are just assumed to know (I even continue to do this for strange buses in Toronto!) but the other information my hostel provided on how to get there was via bus, so I braced myself for it. As in Dublin, your bus ticket differs in price depending on where you’re going (a practice that might make sense for locals, but is infinitely more complicated for tourists) and when the driver barked at me about where I was going all I could remember was that the street name started with Woods. “Woods...bridge? Woods...lawn...?” I attempted. He shrugged his shoulders as though the words were of a foreign planet. “Alright!” I cried irritably, and made him wait as I pulled out all my hostel info from my bag. “Woods...land.” “Ah, Woodlinds. Two-thirty-five.” ‘That was so difficult, wasn’t it,’ I thought bitchily as I looked for exact change. In British sterling 2.35 is FOUR pieces of coin, a ridiculously stupid price for a standard bus fare, so I ended up giving him two pounds. As if my frustration wasn’t enough, no effort was made at all to announce the stops, so I had to crane my neck the whole journey searching for every street sign. The bus ride was less than fifteen minutes, and I definitely could have walked it.

My hostel was up on this hill overlooking the city. The streets of white Georgian townhouses were arranged in circles, unusual for Glasgow, but luckily there were signs pointing the way. After checking in and thankfully receiving a photocopied map from the guy at the desk, I stashed my stuff and headed back to city centre. I am a traveller to the bone, and as cranky as I may be I am always relieved and excited to be in a new place. I will never forget walking down the steps towards the city centre as twilight descended.

Unfortunately, not much happened the rest of that night. I had the name and directions to one gay bar but after walking all the way into the middle of town discovered (conclusively, as I walked the street three times) it was not there. I ended up at an Italian restaurant by myself, and exhausted, went back to the hostel to discover two old men in my shared room, just hanging out with the lights on. I watched TV in the lounge for a couple hours, and when I got back and the lights were still on I ignored them and got into bed with my sequined eye mask. Unfortunately, that did not shield me from the incredibly loud snoring from below me and the hours-long bed creaking from the room above.
No more shared hostel rooms.