On Holiday in Scotland – Glasgow

[Again, this is being posted months after the trip–a good portion of it was written while still in Scotland, some upon our return, but Blogger somehow ate several hours of writing, so a lot of this is being reconstructed from memory. Also, procrastination (see earlier blog entry).]

Glasgow street in state of dilapidation

Now we've moved on to Glasgow, to our decidedly more urban flat. At first, when we got here, we had a bit of culture shock; this was not our beloved medieval, picturesque, refined Edinburgh. It is squalid, weedy, trash-strewn, run-down, marred by graffiti and disrepair. The River Clyde, grey and muddy, gives off a distinct odor of sewage in places. The city is riddled with dirt-mounded construction sites and large cranes in preparation for hosting next year's 20th Commonwealth Games. But our very obliging landlord, Mr. Macdonald (yes, really, there are people here named after that fast-food chain), took us on a wee tour of the city when we arrived (Am I overdoing the word "wee"? Possibly, but I think not. It's used whenever the slightest hint of smallness creeps into conversation), before depositing us at our comfortable flat on the south side of Glasgow Green, a large swath of park to the southwest of the center of town. Slowly, as the week has progressed,  we have become more aware of the city's beauties.

Our first move, however, was to hike a mile and a half to the local Tesco (a kind of British A&P or Kroger or Piggly Wiggly–pick whichever American supermarket chain you find to be most ubiquitous) to buy provisions for dinner and the following day. The kids discovered nearly an entire aisle of biscuits (cookies to us Yanks) and, when I told them sternly that we could absolutely not get one package of every variety, agonized for nearly twenty minutes over what kinds to buy. The boys' favorite has turned out to be Jaffa Cakes, a spongey cookie with marmalade inside and a dark chocolate coating on top. My daughter, the sweets fanatic, likes the plain tea biscuits best (they are plain wafers with very little sugar), much to my surprise. Both types of biscuit go very well with Scottish tea. The boys have rationed the Jaffa Cakes–no more than three a day per person, which means a packet lasts two and a half days instead of one. Of such small sacrifices is life compounded.

Immediately following the Tesco excursion, the kids discovered a fantastic playground on the Green, with 20-foot tall slides and amazing climbers, and proved that 15 is still a kid–the boys played just as avidly as my 10-year-old daughter. Also, watching my children scale those vertiginous heights with only a thin layer of sand on top of packed earth below, I theorized that the Scottish are a far less litigious society than the Americans.

The Barras

Kids at a candy stall in the Barras

Our first full day in Glasgow we wandered over to the Barras, a sort of year-round weekend flea market that has been taking place since the 1920s in open stalls and covered malls. "Barra" is the Glaswegian dialect for  "barrow," as goods were originally sold from large wheelbarrows. There were piles of discarded electronics, used clothing, designer handbag knock-offs, kilts, T-shirts, used DVDs and CDs, food of all kinds, and used furniture. The children gravitated toward a stall selling candy. My daughter had a great find–she managed to fish a lovely sterling silver Celtic-knotwork ring out of a bowl of rings (it looked like a serving of metallic spaghetti) and paid only £5 for it.

Later that day I resolved we should have tea at the Willow Tea Room, mentioned in the guidebook as a lovely representation of Glaswegian architect and designer  Charles Rennie Mackintosh's Art Nouveau style. Well, off we set on foot. I figured an afternoon tea would serve us in place of a late lunch. The Tearoom didn't look that far away on the map, but the streets of Glasgow do not meet at right angles, no matter what our charming landlord asserted: "It's the first European city constructed on a grid pattern, ye know." Also, to make things more interesting, the playful city planners leave off street signs at more confusing intersections. After walking for forty-five minutes, turning, turning again, retracing our steps, and staring at the map in frustration, the kids revolted. They sat down on a curb and refused to go another step. "We're hungry!" they moaned. "Our feet hurt! Let's just eat anywhere!" There was a McDonald's close by (no relation to our charming and inaccurate landlord), and I shuddered.

"Come on!" I encouraged. "It can't be more than three blocks from here!" I turned the map again and frowned. "Unless we're here, and then we're eleven blocks away. Or..." I turned the map again and blinked. "Never mind!" I chirped. "We're close!" The children glared at me mutinously. My son delivered the ultimatum: "We'll walk ten more minutes and that's all. Then we have to eat." "Fine, fine!" I hastily agreed. "Ten minutes, then food, no matter what."

Afternoon tea in the Willow Tea Room

After a few more false turns, I started to get desperate. As the minutes ticked away, I finally got up the courage to approach one of the natives. "Um, we're trying to find Sauchiehall Street...." (Trying frantically to figure out how to pronounce it, vacillating between "Soshy-hall Street" and "Sowchee-hall Street," I eventually settled on the latter) "Whaire. loove?" asked the perplexed Glaswegian. "Here!" I said, thrusting the guidebook into his hands and pointing at the word. "Ah!" His face lit up with comprehension, "So-key-hall Street! It's just over thaire!" He gestured, and the murderous looks on the kids' faces softened a little. In the end, it did take us a few more than ten minutes to get there, but we made it. And we had a wonderful afternoon tea there, each of us with our own little pot: Earl Grey for my daugher, Darjeeling for my son, Scottish Breakfast for my son's friend, and the shop's own Willow Tea Blend for me. My son and I ordered the full afternoon tea set, so ours came on a three-tiered platter with crustless sandwiches on the bottom, scones with clotted cream in the middle, and cake on top. Sitting on elegant ladder-back chairs that echoed the designs on the walls, sipping scalding tea and eating those scones dripping with strawberry preserves and clotted cream, we gazed around at the lovely light fixtures and decorations in the Glasgow Style. Bliss, Scottish-style! Also, the triumph of pigheaded determination over whining.

People's Palace

My favorite attraction in Glasgow turned out to the be the People's Palace, which was located on the Green, only ten minutes from our flat. In addition to the over-the-top fountain crowned by a statue of Queen Victoria outside, it featured room after room of recreations of moments in time in the working class and bourgeois history of Glasgow from the 18th century until about the 1970's. There was the Single End, a model of a single-room family apartment from the 1930's, where an entire family ate, slept, and lived. There was the Steamie, a public building where women would go to bathe and to wash clothes and gossip. And there was a World War II family bomb shelter, where the family would go during the air raids. I stood rapt in front of exhibits on contraception, the temperance movement, and dancehalls, only to look up at the end and find the children camped out on the staircase, moaning, "Can we go now?" The plaintive cry of the modern 21st-century child with the 140-character attention span.

View from ferry of unknown castle on banks of Loch Lomond

Two days before we were scheduled to fly home, we took a day trip to Loch Lomond, the largest loch in Scotland, but the day was chilly, overcast, and rainy. By the time we caught the ferry out to the island of Inchmurrin, which featured an inn and some Roman ruins, we barely had time for a soggy lunch of fish and chips before we had to get back on the ferry and return to the mainland. We never discovered the ruins, which even the tour guides assured us were "not mach ta see–bit disappointin', reeelly." Do Scottish tour guides even have to pass any sort of test on how to get tourists excited about local landmarks? Or maybe that's just as effusive as Scots get.

Children frolicking in secret garden

The children's moods were as dour as the weather when I suggested we take the footpath alongside the loch to see Balloch Castle, a manor house rebuilt in the early 19th century from the ruins of a 1238 castle. "Do we have to?" was the glum response to my chirpy suggestion. I quickly moved into Fierce Authoritarian Mode: "Yes, you do. Come on." We started off in a grudging, foot-dragging manner, but the mood transformed when, half-way to the castle, we found a walled garden. The kids frolicked (yes, they did, I assert defensively; they also gamboled and frisked. And rolled around on the grass) and then settled onto stone benches to read the books they had bought at Waterstones (sort of a British Barnes & Noble, but much, much better) the day before. It was exceedingly picturesque.

GeekMom in front of Balloch Castle

Nearly an hour later, we proceeded on toward the castle. We never found the ruins of the original castle, which I later read consist only of a grassy mound. Finally, we reached a large meadow studded with boulders in that picturesque Scottish way (I can just picture the Scottish Tourist Board inspectors walking about with clipboards, calling out to each other, "We cuid do with another wee boulder heere, Fergus."), and the disappointingly boxy, austere castle was in sight. My son, who had been looking green for the past half hour or so, suddenly flopped down onto the ground, moaning in agony from stomach pains, caused, no doubt, by the very greasy fish and chips we had had for lunch. We waited under the uncertain sky (kept threatening rain that never came) for him to recover, then walked up to the castle for a closer inspection. It was closed, and dismal up close, where evidence of modernization lay all around: exit signs, tourist pamphlets, vending machines. There was, however, a convenient public toilet, so my son recovered and we headed back to town.

Teens in playground

The day concluded with all three children playing in the local playground, another marvel of Scottish whimsy and total disregard for children's life and limb. then dinner at a pub, where we savored our last real Scottish meal, shepherd's pie for me, followed by sticky toffee pudding. The latter is a sweet, gooey slab of heaven studded with dates and drowning in caramel sauce, which looks like something that has been coughed up by a cow with an unsettled stomach. Never has something that looks so unappetizing tasted so good. And here is where I will end my travelogue of Scotland, with the memory of that warm, achingly sweet confection lingering in my mouth. I feel two weeks was not enough time to see even the tiniest portion of Scotland, but there is the dream that we will go back some day, to traverse the Highlands, to set foot on the Isle of Skye, and to explore the northern reaches of Loch Lomond. "O ye'll tak' the high road and Ah'll tak' the low/ And Ah'll be in Scotlan' afore ye...."

Sticky toffee pudding