My Sunday in Glasgow

You may remember my trip to Glasgow. You can refresh your memory here and here. But I have kept meaning to get around to writing about my last full day there.

Sunday I woke up to a pouring rain that had apparently gone on all night. After my breakfast I noticed that the River Kelvin, which I had to cross to get to my tube station, was a raging river as opposed to the babbling brook it had been the day before. No worry for me though, as I had my L.L. Bean superjacket on. It features a zip out fleece lining that doesn't look like a fleece lining, an adjustable hood, big pockets, small fleece-lined pockets for your hands, and even a pocket for a flask. Or camera. Plus it's waterproof. And believe me, I tested it. Not by design, but when I crossed the river and turned to walk into my tube station, a huge iron gate was in my way. Confused, I crossed the street to go in the other way. Same story. Apparently, subway service does not run in Glasgow on Sunday. I'm trying to imagine that in NYC.

So, I debated for a moment about whether to cab it or walk it downtown. It was only a 5 minute subway ride, so I decided to walk it. This was a mistake. As much as superjacket kept me dry where it covered me, my pants and face got soaked trudging around in the windblown downpour.

I will say, however, that Kelvingrove Park, which I walked through, was a wonderful space even in the terrible weather. It's home to a statute of the great scientist Lord Kelvin, who invented the Kelvin temperature scale and lent his name to the Kelvinator brand of fridges.



I walked through the park over to Glasgow University, which my guidebook said had several interesting (and free) museums. I'm going to guess that they were interesting (and free) because they were also shuttered up (and closed). I started muttering to myself about Anglicans having to split from the Catholic church but closing everything interesting on Sunday. But in perusing my guide, I noticed that the Glasgow Tenement Museum was open on Sundays at 11am, was a short walk away, and it was 10:30am. Smashing. I had seen the NYC tenement museum, and this was the same premise: a former tenement frozen in time that one could walk through with a guide.

Problem was, the museum was close as the crow flies, but was on the other side of a highway called the Clydeside Expressway. So I walked about a mile down a steep hill, crossed over the Clydeside, then the River Clyde, then another mile up essentially the same San Franciscan (or Corkian) sized hill. Happening upon the tenement museum tired and somehow both proud and cranky with myself, I went up to the door only to find this sign: BACK AT NOON. Well, I'm interested in poverty probably more than the next guy, or at least more than Tom, Dick, and Harry, but I ain't waiting around for an hour in the rain to see a bunch of old furniture and have a pimply faced grad student explain how hard it was back then. Even if I sometimes qualify as a freckle faced grad student.

I sloshed back down the hill and ended up at the edge of the shopping district. I saw a McDonald's and went in to use the restroom and regroup for a minute. Now, I'm not one of these anti-McD's people, but it's got to be pretty bad for you to catch me in one by myself in a foreign country on vacation. I dried out as best I could (God bless air dryers, even if Glaswegians think me strange), and replotted my day, paying careful attention to when things were open and where they were in relation to each other.

When I left the McDonald's, still clutching my map, I noticed a City Tour Bus, which was still covered by my 48-hour ticket purchased the morning before. I was about to motion to him to wait and start running, but the driver looked at me and nodded. Confused me for a moment, then I realized I was carrying the bright red map that came free with the bus ticket. And, as I walked the block to the waiting bus, I noticed the rain had stopped outright. Still overcast, but no rain. Things were looking up.

To be continued.