UK Trip - Day 2: Glasgow
One of the first places we went to was the Gallery of Modern Art. It had some interesting architecture-- a parthenon with silver mosaic embedded at the top and in front of the building stood a statue of a horse and rider, who happened to be sporting an orange traffic cone on his head.
There, in their beautiful and surprisingly large main hall we saw a show by Jim Lambie called "Forever Changes."
Glasgow is very hilly, with surprisingly steep inclines and declines with each street. I came to the conclusion that people who live and work there probably need to be relatively fit to get around, especially since public transportation is so prevalent. Some parts of it reminded me of San Francisco.
Much of today was spent wandering, browsing, and shopping.
Among the shops we visited was Primark, a large Irish/British clothing chain known for it's cheap but fashionable clothes. I liken it to Forever 21. We went here mainly because we needed to buy some "essentials" due to Continental Airlines' late connecting flight which led to our luggage (with all our clothes) not being sent with our connecting flight yesterday. So I suppose our clothes were somewhere in New Jersey while we spent our first couple days in Scotland. It was questionable when exactly our luggage would arrive but at that point it'd been over 24 hours and we decided we'd best get some clean underwear.
Shops on Sauchiehall St.
Later we went to another UK institution, Marks & Spencer to pick up some quick lunch. I got a Hoisin Duck wrap (yeah I was really surprised to see something like that in Scotland, but apparently it's one of the standard sandwich varieties along with Tuna & Sweetcorn and Egg & Watercress, and more that I don't remember). We didn't spend too much time there because we had other things on our schedule. The place is huge, like a grocery store/dept store/cafe that serves English tea in teapots. It was really interesting, and if I lived in the UK, I'm sure I would go get groceries there.
Glasgow Central Rail Station
Before we headed back to the hostel, we stopped off at British supermarket, Somerfield.
There my cousin Katie took the opportunity to stealthily snap photos of some of the more interesting and amusing produce...
As it turned out, after we'd spent all day out, and spent our money re-buying the essentials which we'd already packed in our missing luggage, we came back to the hostel and found our luggage delivered. Ironic.
There, in their beautiful and surprisingly large main hall we saw a show by Jim Lambie called "Forever Changes."
Glasgow is very hilly, with surprisingly steep inclines and declines with each street. I came to the conclusion that people who live and work there probably need to be relatively fit to get around, especially since public transportation is so prevalent. Some parts of it reminded me of San Francisco.
Much of today was spent wandering, browsing, and shopping.
Among the shops we visited was Primark, a large Irish/British clothing chain known for it's cheap but fashionable clothes. I liken it to Forever 21. We went here mainly because we needed to buy some "essentials" due to Continental Airlines' late connecting flight which led to our luggage (with all our clothes) not being sent with our connecting flight yesterday. So I suppose our clothes were somewhere in New Jersey while we spent our first couple days in Scotland. It was questionable when exactly our luggage would arrive but at that point it'd been over 24 hours and we decided we'd best get some clean underwear.
Shops on Sauchiehall St.
Later we went to another UK institution, Marks & Spencer to pick up some quick lunch. I got a Hoisin Duck wrap (yeah I was really surprised to see something like that in Scotland, but apparently it's one of the standard sandwich varieties along with Tuna & Sweetcorn and Egg & Watercress, and more that I don't remember). We didn't spend too much time there because we had other things on our schedule. The place is huge, like a grocery store/dept store/cafe that serves English tea in teapots. It was really interesting, and if I lived in the UK, I'm sure I would go get groceries there.
Glasgow Central Rail Station
Before we headed back to the hostel, we stopped off at British supermarket, Somerfield.
There my cousin Katie took the opportunity to stealthily snap photos of some of the more interesting and amusing produce...
As it turned out, after we'd spent all day out, and spent our money re-buying the essentials which we'd already packed in our missing luggage, we came back to the hostel and found our luggage delivered. Ironic.
posted by Christy | Wednesday, June 11, 2008
5 Comments:
Ohh...the shops along Sauciehall also included the UK-equivalent of the Dollar Store: "The Pound Shop", "Poundland", "Poundworld", "Pound-a-Plenty", and "Pounds r' Us". I may not have remembered all the store names correctly. Fun fact: this is called "price-point retailing".
Primark was wonderful for our purposes! I got a 3-pound pajama set (which turned out to be a bit small due to the unfamiliar UK sizes added with my unfortunate underestimation of my slow-growing girth), 3-pound lounge pants, 2-pound package of 5 pairs of briefs, and a 1.50-pound blue t-shirt that is now one of my favorite wardrobe items. Should've stocked up!
OH, and along Sauciehall we encountered groups of schoolchildren wearing green uniforms reminiscent of the Hogwarts kids. I snapped a few creepy, blurry pictures of "Ron" and "Hermione".
Speaking of the ubiquitous ready-made sandwich and wrap flavours, many eateries showed a common theme with offerings of chilli con carne, spaghetti bolognese, paella and macaroni and cheese.
For dinner that night we went to Ichiban (on Queen St?) where I had yakisoba. Christy had curry?
In part due to this being a Japanese restaurant, we had a moment (one of quite a few) in which we both forgot that we were in a foreign country.
Hi Christy and Katie, really enjoyed your very descriptive tales from glasgow and endinburgh. i grew up in glasgow, but its funny how you dont see the things that a stranger sees, its like seeing a place for the first time. am going to edinburgh in august and staying in the student digs, so glad to hear they were nice. hope you will remember your trip for years to come. Best wishes, Catherine, Belmullet, Co. Mayo, Ireland.
Catherine, thanks for your kind comments! We appreciate them. We loved our time in the UK and hopefully will be able to go back someday...
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