The Meat of my Trip-Sandwiched Weekend

Alright...here's my story. April 19-20th. So, my flight from Dublin to Glasgow, Scotland was at 8:50am. The buses started at 6am and went to the airport from the stop near our hostel. I set my alarm, got ready, checked out, and made it to the bus stop before seeing a clock stating that it was only 4:45am rather than 5:45am....I was an hour early! I didn't realize the clock on my phone didn't switch automatically. So, luckily I was able to get an airport shuttle to spend my last 6 Euro on to take me to the airport, which I figured was much better than waiting an hour in the cold for the public buses to start running. There I was, only a mere 3 hours and 20 minutes early for my flight and not coherent enough to fully function so I basically found a table and just sat there for an hour. I suppose though, early is better than late!

Needless to say, that morning was a fluke and the rest of my Glasgow experience was great! My friend, Ian, met me at the Glasgow central station and we walked around downtown Glasgow for a bit. First we checked out the Glasgow Cathedral, where St. Mungo is buried and is the only medieval cathedral on the Scottish mainland.

It was quite windy that day, but the sun was shining!

Behind the Cathedral we found the Necropolis...a bunch of tombs in the hillside.


We walked around for a bit and got some great views of Glasgow!

Afterward, we grabbed a bite to eat and not just any bite...a homemade Steak Pie bite! Soo tasty, steak with a sauce and a flaky pastry thing over the top, mmm mm.

Then, we made our way to George Square where this, the City Chambers, is located. Here, we just chilled for a bit while enjoying the sun...something that had been quite foreign to me until the past weeks.

Next we made our way up to University of Glasgow, where Ian goes to school...totally is Harry Potter-esque...and wonderful! But first, we stopped for a drink on this cute little street in the "posher" part of Glasgow where we met or more so encountered a nice, older lady who was waiting for a wedding party to arrive. She basically joined us at our table and carried on conversation when she wasn't watching for the bride and groom to get there. Ian even ended up taking a picture of her and the father of the bride who I might add...was wearing the traditional kilt! And this is one of the few places where hearing a bagpipe player on the street isn't rare.

Alright, here's the University which dates back to 1451 when it was founded.

And us with our scholarly, "thinker" looks, fittingly. Unfortunately, I missed getting the tower in the background.

The arches connecting the two quadrangles...there is an official name for the arches that is on the tip of my tongue but can't remember for the life of me. It starts with a 'C' though...of that I'm 88% sure.

A view of one of the quadrangles.

...and the other.

This is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, we didn't make it to this one but did check out the Hunterian Gallery which had a lot of sketches and paintings. One of the artists featured was Whistler...I have yet to figure out if it's the same Whistler who painted Whistler's Mother or not.

Flowers! Spring is here...finally!

That night we went to a movie (21-good movie!) with Ian's friend Jenny at one of the biggest movie theaters I've ever been too. I think we had to go up something like 6 escalators to get to the movie. Oh, and there was a fire alarm that went off at 3am in Ian's building and we all had to evacuate...luckily we had gotten back only 15 minutes before so no sleep was lost.

The next day we went to another town about a 45 minute train ride away called Loch Lomond. It was full of rolling hills, the largest inland lake in the UK and...these hilarious ducks!

They were just looking for food among the rocks, but I thought they were hilarious and we watched them for probably 5 minutes...these are only a few of the many pictures I took of them. I know I'm a dork :)

See, rolling hills!

We skipped rocks for a bit...I think the record, held by Ian, was 8 skips. I was close with 5! There were so many dogs too! It's a great place where the locals come to walk their dogs, ride bike, and let their kids wear off some energy.

This hill may not look so tough, but we had to take a break on our way up to this castle.

And our view from the breaking point.

<-- Ian Castle -->

Haha, I just realized that there's a HUGE tree in front of it...literally just noticed. And I thought this was such a better picture than the one I took before we headed up the hill.

There were these funky pine trees...which looked like Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree as saplings...sorry I didn't get a picture of a lil' one for you.

I love the bright colors!

After strolling around the Lake area for a bit we got something to eat where I was introduced to one of my new favorite desserts...scones, cream, and jam. Sounds simple enough right--delicious! In fact, I could go for some right now...

Afterward we took the train back to Glasgow where Ian and I parted at the train station...it was a really short trip unfortunately. This was quite the traveling day...my flight was supposed to leave just before 9pm, but ended up being delayed an hour and a half which wasn't a big deal because I was meeting Hilary, Miki, and Garrett at the airport where we're camping out for our 6:40am flight back to Copenhagen. So, anywho the flight back to Dublin wasn't so bad except toward the end when the stewardesses started running up and down the aisle faster than usual, the engine powered down, and the flamboyantly gay man and his girl friend sitting next to me were freaking out about how their friend had cursed them and we're going to crash; all that happened within a 5-minute period...then, I got a little nervous. But we landed and it was actually one of the smoothest landings I have experienced this semester thus far.

I met up with the rest of the crew and here we are camped out in the only open area in the airport that we could find to sleep. I slept for maybe 45 minutes this night...not too keen on the hard, cold floor. And you see in this picture how I had plenty of space to lay down on toward the bottom of the picture, but where did I choose to curl up? ...in half of the tiny little space between the sets of legs and behind the blue backpack. Smooth, right? But satisfaction awaited me as after we checked in at 4am, Miki and I found these padded benches outside a restaurant where I passed out until I was woken up to board our flight. Good trip!