glasgow

Day Two - Glasgow - Riverside Museum of Transport & Kelvingrove Art Museum

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On our first morning waking up in Scotland, we enjoyed a classic UK breakfast. This has to be one of the best QOL aspects of traveling in the UK & Ireland, because a grand breakfast is the right way to start a day when out exploring new places.

On 9 of 16 nights, we stayed at B&Bs, or Pubs w/rooms, and at every one were served an excellent breakfast, almost always around 8 am.

We drove from Plean to a Stirling Park & Ride, taking a bus to the ScotRail station, where we had to run up & down some stairs to get to the waiting train. Glasgow is 45 minutes away, mostly through farmland & gentle rolling hills topography.

At 10 am we emerged at street level from Queen Street High Station. Across the street is George Square, an open-space City block, with a statue of English King George IV, the first British King ever to visit Scotland (in 1822), as well as statues of Scottish National Bard Robert Burns, and, famous novelist Sir Walter Scott.

Being the political, economic, and tourist center of Glasgow, traditional black Cabs were lined up 14 deep. After a brief ATM stop, we took cab #1 to the Riverside Museum of Transport, on River Clyde. The Museum opened in 2012 & won the EU Museum of the Year Award in 2013.

map of Glasgow sights

RIVERSIDE MUSEUM OF TRANSPORT

Once at the Museum we had coffee at the cafe, with a great view of River Clyde & an 1800s Schooner.

Then we checked out this vast, but condensed, Museum collection. To conserve floor space, many exhibits are stacked up.

Generally speaking, a person could probably spend four hours here, if they took the time to read all of the displays.

The Museum reveals Glasgow's legacy as a major shipbuilding hub, and participant in the Industrial Revolution (along with Liverpool, Manchester & Birmingham, in England). This is where modern heavy industries were born, as well as modern air emissions (pollution), since wood or coal were the energy input for steam engines. Glasgow's intense manufacturing districts created legendary levels of smog, on a daily basis.

The dockside Schooner was a commodities trading ship, built here in the 1880s & often sailing to Portland, Oregon or to Australia, all rigging & sails for 40+ trips through the treacherous Drake Passage, an admirable accomplishment. Later this ship did service in the Spanish Navy. Restoration was funded by the overall Museum project.

Architectural note - this Museum was designed by the late Dame Zada Hadid (1950-2016), an Iraqi-Brit who was the most highly-decorated woman Architect in UK history. Her Wikipedia page, showing samples of other buildings she designed, is worth a look.

note - you can enlarge any part of a picture by left-clicking in and then out again.

George's Square		River Clyde		washing the window....		Riverside Museum of Transport
	1880's Schooner, built in Glasgow		global traveler		autos
wider view of autos		the history of motorcycles...			nostalgia scenes of Old Glasgow
			River Clyde today		or yesterday.....
a child showing a younger child the Firth		Glasgow was a ship building City for decades
			trains, too		steam engine history
looks like early stainless steel		revolutionary!

KELVINGROVE ART MUSEUM

The uphill walk from the Riverside Museum to the Kelvingrove Art Museum took about 20 minutes. We were near the Univ. of Glasgow and associated apartments and dorms, and saw students coming & going.

Once at the Museum, we split up, my wife & I headed to the Charles Renee Mackintosh Arts & Crafts section. After that we wandered through the general European collections, such as Dutch masters or Impressionists, and then came across a British Spitfire.

A war machine in an art Museum ? Quite possibly, it's here out of general public good will and reverence for the role the Spitfire played in defeating the German Luftwaffe and winning The Battle of Britain. I was impressed at the plane's compact size & elegant geometry.

R & L enjoyed seeing a special exhibit of Linda McCartney's photographs, most taken when the Beatles were in ascendancy. Linda Eastman was an accomplished black & white photographer of rock music people, established on her own well before she married Paul McCarthy.

Just before the UK trip, R&L had attended two Bay Area concerts, one with Paul McCartney's Band, and the other with Ringo Starr's Band, the two remaining Beatles. None of us knew ahead of time that the Beatles photo exhibit was here, so it was a nice surprise.

R&L also saw the Mackintosh section and other parts of the Museum, too.

	River Kelvin		towards the University of Glasgow		ahead is the Hunterian Museum		but we're going to the Kelvingrove
		another look		main entrance		an impressive building
	a mighty organ		Queen Victoria attended the Museum's 1901 opening		heads exhibit		French women impressionist painters
Mary Cassatt is probably the best known		into the Arts & Crafts display				Chas. Renee Mackintosh furniture
	a sadly unrecognized artist in his lifetime		< interesting pair and their home >		her skin like cracked alabaster		"Music", by Glaswegian David Gauld, 1891
		museum light		British Spitfire		Linda McCartney (formerly Eastman)
	early Beatles photo by Linda Eastman				Kelvingrove Park		incredible architecture
		back at Queen St. High Station

The Kelvingrove Museum opened in 1901 as part of Glasgow's International Exhibition. Architecturally, the building style is Spanish Romanesque, modeled on the Cathedral de Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain, the burial place of Christian Apostle James, and a popular Catholic pilgrimage destination, since the middle ages.

The Museum called us a cab, and we passed through still-fashionable Victorian style West End neighborhoods, as we headed downhill to center city & Queen Station. Trains to Stirling run every fifteen minutes on day shift, and we were on the next one. ScotRail trains between stops cruise up to 80 or 90 mph, from what I could tell, and the ride is usually as smooth as glass.

Back in Stirling we had another early dinner, this time at The Inn at Torbrex, in a neighborhood below the south wall of the Castle. A display inside stated that for many years the Inn was an overnight stop on one of the main roads from the south, but the building or house was very modest, so there must have once been a larger lodge of some kind. The food was excellent and Rich and I tried a haggis appetizer, which was great.

Later, back at the B&B, while our wives were upstairs, no doubt gainfully employed, Rich & I were downstairs enjoying some red wine & banter with the B&B owner-husband, who turned out to be a naturally funny guy, and an atmosphere of general mirth ensued.

On our arrival night you could tell he was glad to have some guy company, to 'shoot the shit' with Rich and I, and he was generous with his wine, which we highly appreciated.

So tonight he was pleasantly surprised when we brought some Spanish Tempernillo and Argentina Malbec (from the local Tesco) home with us to reimburse him, and of course he opened some.

We compared notes on the kinds of music we each liked, and which impressive musical artists we had seen in concert, over the decades, and found some common ground. Well, actually, not a lot.

He was a big fan of US artist Steely Dan, but, as a result of our conversation, he was impressed by Rich's depth in American Jazz and its Gospel roots, and, that Rich has had a radio show for decades on KDVS FM.

At one point I asked what he thought about Scottish bagpipe music, and he instantly said "Hey, I'm 100% Scottish, but I can't stand that %#$& droning sound." It was a hilarious moment !

Once again, the tourists turned in early. It was our second night in Scotland, and out third night on the trip, so we were still in 'diurnal adjustment' mode.

go to next page - Isle of Bute & Mount Stuart

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Postscript - thankfully I had a long night's sleep on the second night and by the next morning felt pretty much recovered from global-repositioning effects.