Glasgow

Posted by Kalie on October 19, 2009

I took my first long weekend trip this past weekend to Glasgow.   Sarah and I had been planning this trip since late September.  The main reason I wanted to visit Glasgow was because two groups I know, MC Lars and Bowling for Soup, had a concert on the 17th.  Later on, Sarah discovered that some bands she knew were having a concert at the same venue on the 16th, so we got tickets to that concert as well.

We rode the bus for three hours, arriving around 2pm on Friday.  Since we couldn’t check into our hostel until 4, we found a nice German restaurant to eat, drink, and relax at until then.  The hostel  was more like a hotel and so much better than the first hostel I stayed at in Copenhagen.  We had a room all to ourselves so we didn’t have to worry about locking up our backpacks.  There was a bathroom in our room and breakfast was included.  Before the concert, we wandered around and made our way along the River Clyde and found a coffee shop positioned on the river.  We stopped for a cup of hot chocolate and enjoyed the sunset view from the river.  I enjoyed the concert that night, despite not knowing any of the bands.  Sarah and I have similar tastes in music so it was a pretty safe bet that I would like the show.  The venue was quite large, and we had a perfect view of the stage.  The bands that played were Four Year Strong, Ghost of a Thousand, Anti-Flag, and Alexisonfire.

Saturday morning we took a bus tour of Glasgow.  With the hostel was included two day hop on-hop off bus tickets.  We sat on the open air top of the double-decker bus, despite it being very cold!  It took about an hour and fifteen minutes to complete the commentated tour.  We decided we needed something hot to warm us up, so with the help of Sarah’s travel guide and a few strangers who gave us directions, we found The Willows Tea Room.  I’ve been to tea rooms before, but until just recently I haven’t liked hot tea, so it was exciting for me to order it (ginger tea, to be exact) at a real tea room.  Along with that I had a cranberry and turkey sandwich (give it a shot – it’s tasty!) and a caramel dessert.  Re-energized, we went back out to the city to do some shopping.  It was at this time that we almost got run over by a dump truck.  The previous sentence makes the experience sound much worse than it actually was.  Here’s the story.  We were standing in the pedestrian shopping area listening to a Scottish band play, when suddenly a dump truck nearly bumped into me.  The driver was going really slow, and laughed at our shocked expressions.  Not a very traumatic experience, but it’s an interesting fact about myself that I’ll use from time to time.

The concert on Saturday night was great as well!  The Leftovers, MC Lars, Zebrahead, and Bowling for Soup were the bands.  After MC Lars performed, he said he would be in the back if anyone wanted to talk with him.  Since he was the entire reason I came to Glasgow, of course I wanted to talk with him!  We waited until after Zebrahead played to try talking with him so there wouldn’t be as many people around.  We talked for about 10 minutes and I got a picture with him!  He’s really quite a sweetheart for being a nerdy rapper (a sample of his music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYMwW6Lc-9M).  I told him how my boyfriend, his friend, and I are all fans of his and how we were going to go to his concert in Lincoln last year, but his bus crashed.  That why when he signed my ticket he said, “Sorry we crashed.”

Sunday morning we woke up a little too early, as the bus route didn’t start until 9:30, but we enjoyed sitting in St. George Square talking for 40 minutes.  Throughout the day we walked around the beautiful Glasgow University, botanical gardens, Glasgow Cathedral, and People’s Palace.  After a long past couple of days, we were pretty exhausted and ready for a rest.  We tried finding a quirky coffee shop called Where the Monkeys Sleep that promised “ballistic beans” (whatever that means), but unfortunately it was closed after walking 20 minutes to get there.  So we headed back toward the bus station and found a coffee shop that raised my hot chocolate standards forever!  The waiter brought out a mug filled with hot milk and a stick with a chocolate cube on the end.  To make my hot chocolate, I had to melt the chocolate in the milk for a few minutes.  It was absolutely amazing!  We killed enough time there until it was time to go to the bus station and head back to Aberdeen.

Glasgow, a city known for its architecture, was a great place!  It is a rather new city, despite being home to the second oldest university in the UK.  Because of this, I think I prefer Aberdeen to Glasgow.  I love being among all the old stone buildings.  But Glasgow was a great city to visit and I had a lovely weekend!

Cheers!

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