Farewelling Mum at the airport in Belfast, we then worked out how we were going to get to the ferry terminal to get to Glasgow. You see, we had chosen our accommodation excellently for Mum to hop across the train tracks to take her flight to London for further adventures with good friend Rhonda, but to get to the ferry terminal was another issue. In fact, it was what we like to call a DOLPHIN SANDS ROAD moment! (The most literal Dolphin Sands Moment we've had thus far!)
If you look at the map below you will see the marker on George Best Belfast City Airport where we said goodbye to Mum. Our accommodation was over the other side of the train tracks from the airport. The ferry terminal we needed to leave from is located at the very top of the map, labelled: "Stena Line Belfast." Short of swimming with our backpacks, we had to go the long way around!
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| Mapping a Dolphin Sands Road moment! |
* Ponies may be a slight exaggeration.
After a short bus trip we found ourselves with Ben and Jenny, our Airbnb hosts for a few nights. They were very friendly and welcoming. Currently they are on their own 4 month trip which includes Australia. It was interesting hearing about their plans and hopefully we gave the some good pointers for when they get to Melbourne, as they did for Glasgow!
Glasgow
We had only booked Ben and Jenny's place two nights before we left Belfast. At this point in our trip we had next to nothing on our itinerary, just vague plans. The only future date and time where we actually knew where we would be was vague plans to be back in Melbourne in January 2016! It was both exciting and frightening and it meant our plan for Glasgow was...well...to spend time planning! We wanted to organise our time in Scotland, then potentially the Netherlands and France. I also had some research work that really needed doing.
Our planning plans meant we did not see as much of Glasgow as you would expect in four days, but we did enjoy what we chose to see...
The People's Palace and Doulton Fountain
The People's Palace is a beautiful building that houses a museum of social history. It is set on the Glasgow green next to a big glasshouse and a beautiful fountain. The collections in the museum gave us some insight into the lives of Glaswegians over different periods. For example, we found out about tenement homes, the "steamie" or communal laundry and stories surrounding volunteers of the recent Commonwealth Games. Something that really struck me was the experiences Glaswegians had during war-time. I cannot imagine having to send your children to the country-side to keep them safe.
Outside the grand Palace building is Doulton Fountain, the largest terracotta fountain in the world. In incredible detail, the fountain that was built to commemorate Queen Victoria's reign and features a statue of Queen Victoria over a wide basin and four statues of water-carriers representing Canada, India, South Africa and Australia (represented, as the Scottish viewed us, in the 1800's).
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| Doulton Fountain |
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| Australia |
Something I had managed to organise before arriving in Scotland was for Rob and I to go hashing. It was a gloomy, wet day in Glasgow and we nearly bailed on the whole idea but decided to brave the weather. (It was unlikely to get better...it was Summer in Glasgow after all!) We are very glad we went. As with our experience of doing a hashing in Phnom Penh, everyone was extremely welcoming. The location of the hash was at Mugdock Country Park, north of Glasgow and not easily accessible by public transport. We took the train part of the way and then one of the regular hashers had kindly offered to pick us up.
What made our time on the Glasgow hash fun was that included a castle, a loch and, naturally, a zombie dance:
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| When Zombies attack |
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| Mugdock Castle |
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| Braving the rain...sort of |
Dinner and music at Maggie May's
Whilst in Glasgow we went to Maggie May's to hear some music. I had actually hoped there would be some dancing but not this particular night. We weren't in Glasgow long before we realised that we could only understand every 5th word someone said and they had no clue what we we were saying.
Also, in a sad story; Rob loves to try local beers wherever we go; upset that we had just missed the Glasgow Beer Festival 2015, he asked the woman at the bar "What local beers do you have? Anything you can recommend?"
She said "I have no idea, do you want to try Murphy's? It's Irish"
Rob responded "...umm no, I'd like to try something local, you pick"
And he will never make that mistake again.
Sister Act
I think we perplexed our aribnb hosts quite a bit with our choices of outings in Glasgow and maybe our Sister Act outing topped the cake. Although Rob and I enjoy seeing the important historical and cultural sites of a place, it can get a bit much after almost 7 months on the road. I think that is what prompted me to look on the "What's on Glasgow" website. I hoped to find something a bit different, perhaps a bit interactive, and definitely non-touristy. That is how we found ourselves at C7 Church for their production of Sister Act! Given we both love the movie we thought "Why not!" It was a pretty great community production, with mostly good singing. Embarrassingly, we got directly mentioned by the pastor (who hailed from Sydney), not because we were Australian but because when asked earlier we had told someone we had found the production on the "What's on Glasgow" website! Oh happy days!
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| Sister Act! |
Originally it was the name of the Scotland's Centre for Design and Architecture that caught my eye. Reading a bit more into it I found that you could get some good views over Glasgow from the top of the Mackintosh Tower. Jenny had also told us a bit about the architecture exhibitions available. Although some of the exhibitions were interesting, we were probably more about the staircase and the views to be honest.
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| Rob getting dizzy |
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| Glasgow |
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| Watch this video that explains how the Duke of Wellington keeps getting a witches hat on his head! |
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