Scotland

I swear that my hair became redder the moment I passed into Scotland.

Scotland is super. The accent is endearing, the people incredibly friendly, and the landscape inspiring. I found Scotland to resemble parts of Canada closely enough to make me feel homesick and actually glad to be returning home soon.

I did a quick tour of the country (or whatever it is--there’s no other good word for it) over the course of eight days, finishing up my rail pass. I started off in Glasgow, near the western coast of Scotland. Glasgow was not at all what I was expecting. I’m not sure what exactly it was that I was expecting, but I guess mostly I was surprised at how the city felt so very Canadian to me. I suppose it’s natural for people to look for glimpses of home when they’re travelling, and certainly I have caught myself rather consciously comparing whatever city I've found myself in during the course of this trip to the cities I have lived in and called home in Canada--Toronto, Vancouver, Hamilton. Glasgow is not as old a city as I thought. It felt largely 19^th-century industrial to me, with parts of it giving off a very real Distillery District vibe--real in the sense that it’s still gritty and not yet gentrified, or not entirely.

Glasgow’s a small city, and not an overly pretty one. I spent my days wandering around a downtown core that brought to mind something like Vancouver and Hamilton’s lovechild. Gritty, but with sloping hills leading down to the river and a sense of airiness. I was staying in a great airbnb place I found in Glasgow’s West End, a bustling neighbourhood of shops, restaurants and fine old Georgian apartments, circling around the university campus and several beautiful museum buildings. It’s a fairly walkable city, although it was raining off and on during my stay, so I ended up taking the subway (and they actually call it a subway, not the underground) most of the time to get in and out of the city centre. I visited the Botanic Gardens, a happy explosion of green and flowers in the middle of what is generally not a very colourful city, and I climbed up Glasgow’s Necropolis--a high cemetery hill behind the cathedral, overlooking the city. That’s really about all I did. I wasn’t too impressed with Glasgow, overall. I think if I hadn’t been alone it would have been nice to go out at night and get a taste of Glasgow’s famed music scene, but I just wasn’t feeling it on my own.

The apartment I stayed in is in one of these buildings. I foolishly neglected to take photos of the apartment itself, but it was beautiful, trust me. An old apartment, lovingly restored by my airbnb host, who turned it into a bit of an informal B&B.

The Botanic (for some reason, not botanical) Gardens.

One of huge, beautiful the glasshouses in the gardens.

The roof of the other glasshouse. I walked by the gardens to get to and from the apartment where I was staying, so I snapped this photo another day, as the sun was setting.

Downtown Glasgow.

Downtown Glasgow is pretty damn quiet on a Friday afternoon.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh is this big deal Scottish architect, furniture designer and artist from the early 20th century. He designed lots of buildings in Glasgow, including this tea room.

And here's some of his weird furniture. These are probably not originals, though.

A group of bagpipers! I saw so many bagpipers in Scotland. It was amazing.

A bagpiper in front of Glasgow Cathedral!

The Cathedral from the side.

And inside.

The beautiful ceiling.

The Necropolis, as seen from the Cathedral.

Gate to the Necropolis.

Glasgow Cathedral as seen from the Necropolis.

I also went to Provand's Lordship, the oldest remaining building in Glasgow, built in 1471. Apparently there are only four medieval-era buildings left standing in the city.

Back garden of Provand's Lordship.

For Brian.

A University of Glasgow building, I think.

The Kelvinhall Art Gallery and Museum. I did not go in, since everything closes at 5pm in Scotland.

A rainbow on my last evening in Glasgow.

If Glasgow felt small to me, my next stop, Oban, situated on the west coast of Scotland, was teensy weensy tiny.

Oban is a ferry hub for travel to the Western Isles, which is really the only reason I think it still exists today. I stayed in an old hotel that was comfortable, but has seen better days, and I spent my first evening wondering what the heck to do, as everything closes at 4 or 5pm. (My answer: eat an early bird dinner of unsatisfying vegetarian food in this very much fish-and-chips seaside town and then hunker down in the hotel lobby, glued to the meager wifi on offer.)

Through the train window, from Glasgow to Oban.

Oban.

McCaig's Tower, a weird Victorian kind-of Colosseum-like thing on top of one of the hills overlooking Oban.

Oban, as seen from McCaig's Tower.

The pier outside the mediocre Italian place where I ate dinner.

Spectacular light.

See McCaig's Tower in the distance on top of that hill?

I had two nights booked in Oban in total--I arrived mid-afternoon the first day, and most of my second day was spent on the Isle of Mull. Mull was beautiful--absolutely stunningly picturesque. It reminded me a lot of Nova Scotia--or, should I say, Nova Scotia reminds me a lot of Scotland. I guess the namesake is a fitting one. The Isle of Mull is all rugged green hilly mountains, and everything is windswept and a little bit ragged. Beautifully wild, almost. I booked a tour with the local ferry company, which included a ferry across from Oban to the Isle of Mull, a forty-odd minute coach bus drive across the island to the far side, and a brief ferry across to the small island of Iona—and then back again. Iona is this old spiritual centre, where St. Columba apparently founded a monastery back in about 800 AD. The Abbey still stands there (not the original one, but a medieval one, nonetheless), and besides that there isn’t much there except a collection of little houses and fishing boats, and a surprisingly white sandy beach.

On the way to the Isle of Mull, about a 45-minute ferry ride.

Driving across Mull to the far side of the island, where Iona is.

Highland cattle!

Well, that seems like a great spot for a bus shelter.

Iona.

Because if you have rain boots (sorry--wellies), why not stand in the ocean on a windy, cool day?

Iona Abbey. 

I left early the next morning for Inverness, travelling by bus instead of train because there’s no direct track between Oban and Inverness. Inverness was really just a stopover town. I spent a single night there, in another airbnb place run by a cute elderly Scottish couple who were faultless except for the fact that they’re clearly smokers and the house, though spotless, stunk. Fortunately, I didn’t spend much time in there. I arrived in the early afternoon and spent the day wandering through the small city. The next morning, I took what turned into one of the highlights of my Scotland trip--a tour of nearby Loch Ness! It was a three-hour tour that took me by coach to the top of Loch Ness, then by boat to picturesque Urquhart Castle, and then by bus again to the Loch Ness Monster Exhibition Centre! The weather was uncharacteristically beautiful--sunny and calm. It was also on this tour that one of my favourite Scottish moments happened: a guy in a kilt playing the bagpipes in the middle of the ruins of Urquhart Castle, on the banks of Loch Ness.

Inverness.

The airbnb place I stayed in (the first house on the right here).

Shopping, anyone?

An old Victorian bridge leading to the Ness Islands, in the middle of the River Ness, in the middle of Inverness.

Nessie, travelling a bit downriver from her Loch?

Inverness Castle. Now it's a courthouse, jail and sheriff's office.

The Floral House.

And Cactus House?

Me and some Scottish thistle!

Loch Ness!

Urquhart Castle.

Me and a bagpiper, at a castle, on Loch Ness!

Look, Nessie!

Yessss.

Another Nessie!

Right after the tour, which dropped me back off in Inverness again, I picked up my bags and headed to the train station to catch my train to Edinburgh.

I loved Edinburgh. Granted, I was there during its famous festival season, when the city is full of people and there’s stuff going on all around you and people are generally quite happy, but still. The city just gave off such a great vibe to me--it struck me as a very self-assured city, if a city can be such a thing. Edinburghers know that they live in an interesting, beautiful city, and they don’t feel the need to shove that down your throat, confident that you’ll soon see it for yourself. And you do. Edinburgh’s not a huge place, but it’s beautiful and interestingly different enough from anywhere else I’ve been.

I wish I had one more day there, and a sunny day at that, because it was overcast and rainy pretty much the whole time I was there, with the exception of the evening of my arrival, when I was burdened by my luggage and not able or interested in stopping to really appreciate the city’s beauty in the sunlight. One of my regrets is that due to issues of timing and weather, I never had a chance to climb Arthur’s Seat, that majestic extinct volcano overlooking Edinburgh. I also probably would have enjoyed checking out Edinburgh Castle, despite its ridiculous entrance fee.

What I did do in Edinburgh was plenty, of course. I went to tour the Royal Yacht Britannia, the yacht (more like a small luxury liner) that the royal family used for decades for their vacations, honeymoons and state visits. It’s a museum now, and a fascinating one at that. When they decommissioned the boat in the late 1990s, the palace held a competition to see which city would get the honour of hosting it permanently in its port. Edinburgh won, and I have to say, they’ve done a great job of transforming the ship into a superb museum and tourist attraction. A lot of the original furnishings are still on board, on loan from the Queen. There’re photographs of the royal family everywhere, and it’s easy to imagine them relaxing on board and entertaining heads of state in the formal dining room, as the ship docked in capital cities around the world.

The Royal Yacht Britannia!

Guys, it was really foggy.

See the swans in the lower left-hand corner? See the cruise ship melting into the fog?

My friends the swans again, to give some perspective.

The bridge!

The Sun Room, the Queen's favourite room on the ship, apparently.

The Queen's bedroom!

Prince Phillip's bedroom!

The dining room!

Drawing Room!

Annnnd, how the other half lived on board the ship. Here, some bunks for the Royal Marine Guards.

A creepy-ass medical bay.

Laundry room.

I also took a tour of underground Edinburgh, something akin to Seattle's Underground Tour. It's this entire medieval street that's been covered over with the city's council building. Edinburgh is pretty hilly in parts, you see, and at one point they decided to just level part of it to build on top of, without much care to the residents who lived there. The result is a decidedly spooky subterranean street. Standing on the street, you can look up three or four storeys to what would have once been sky, but is now the basement of the building above. The tour was a bit too gimmicky for my taste, unfortunately--I would have preferred more straight-up history, but I suppose not everyone is a history nerd like I am. (I have no pictures of this tour because a) it was really dark down there and my camera sucks in low lighting and b) you weren't supposed to take photos anyway.)

I did some good wandering of the city, too, despite the overcast, at times rainy weather. Here are some of my general Edinburgh photos:

Morningside.

The airbnb place I stayed in.

It was a gorgeous, two-storey apartment.

Stopping for a Scottish pick me-up...

...a fresh, homemade shortbread cookie!

Oh look, another piece of shortbread! Okay!

The Firth of Forth!

This is the city building that was built over that street I mentioned before...

Greyfriars Kirkyard is a hauntingly beautiful place, especially on a foggy Edinburgh afternoon.

Do you know the story of Greyfriars Bobby? He sat vigil over his master's grave for something like 14 years until he himself died. He's buried in the churchyard and has this statue in the street in front of the church. (And a pub named after him, too, apparently!) 

Very Scottish bus seats.

I know this sign probably refers to some changed traffic signals or something, but I quite liked it.

The best street.

The Sir Walter Scott Monument.

I climbed up the monument on another, decidedly less sunny day. Still great views, though.

 

The Scottish Parliament building.

I also went to Holyrood Palace, the official home of the Queen when in Scotland (again, photos were not permitted inside):

 

The ruins of an old abbey stand adjacent to the palace.

Creepy ass statue in the garden.

All in all, my trip to Scotland was pretty great. The next time I find myself up there, I'd definitely try to see more of Edinburgh, of course, but also the Western Isles. The Isle of Skye was on my original list of things to see, but it didn't work out logistically this time around. So, next time!

And let's not forget all the Scottish cream teas I had!

In the Willow Tea Room, in Glasgow.

At a bakery in Inverness, before catching the train to Edinburgh.

At the Royal Deck Tea Room on board the Royal Yacht Britannia, in Edinburgh.

CREAM TEA COUNT: 14