Around The World – Glasgow, Scotland
My goal on this leg of the trip is to start the European part of my trip, back to my old stomping grounds in Scotland in 2001-2002.
My saga trying to get out of Miami: After having great success with Uber in Tampa, I requested one and the guy shows up in a little Toyota, doesn’t speak any English but I figure he knows how to get to Miami Airport. After a while we find ourselves on the wrong side of the runway, in the commercial area of the airport. He stops and gets directions and we drive all the way around to the passenger terminal. I’m trying to tell him where to go with my high school spanish, it’s clear he doesn’t know the area, this seems like his first time ever going to the airport which is a bit disturbing for an Uber driver. Good thing I had lots of time. Later I requested a partial refund for the extra miles and time and Uber quickly credited me back about half the fare, which I thought was a fair amount.
I breezed through security (if that’s even possible), then had a bit of a wait for the plane. The boarding time came and went with no announcements. We ended up with an entire 777 load of people standing in a semicircle around the gate. Finally the agent mumbled something on the PA that nobody heard. I literally couldn’t get close to the guy because of the swarm of humanity. Half an hour past boarding time he makes another mumbly announcement and all I caught was “air conditioning”. Everybody’s looking around at the other passengers trying to understand what’s going on. Then he calls for boarding first class and everybody pushes forward. I’ve got some status on AA so I get to board early but it got ugly with people standing in the way and everybody’s understandably mad. I get onto the plane and it’s a little warm but there was clearly no air conditioning emergency. A man and his son sit in my group of three seats, luckily the little guy sits between us so I had some elbow room. From a nicely coherent announcement from the pilot I determine that our 777 has no working APU – auxiliary power unit. It’s the device that makes power and everything that comes from that while the main engines aren’t turning. This is troubling to me but not bad enough I guess to scrub the aircraft. Once the main engines fire up everything is fine.
I watched 7 Big Bang Theory episodes on the excellent entertainment system in the seatback. I’m falling asleep during the last one, so I took a melatonin and settled in. I woke a couple of times finding the little boy’s legs poking right into my side, so I slid them down, doesn’t bother him in the least.
We arrived at Heathrow after doing a few loops around southern England due to weather. Heavy fog is causing lots of problems. I didn’t see the ground until about 2 seconds before we touched down, IFR and the auto-landing software sure did their job today.
I went through immigration, where the agent lady was very interested in my trip. I had to stand on two painted feet while a mystery machine scanned me. Could be a picture, could be a temperature scan in case I had Ebola. I then found out my flight was delayed by 4 hours due to the fog. I guess I was lucky, dozens of flights cancelled outright, huge lines at the customer service counters. Hmm, fog in England, if only they could have predicted something like this and made a standard set of contingencies… Strolled around the terminal in a time-zone daze, read my book on my phone, watched some How I Met Your Mother videos.
They finally assigned a gate, A4, and I waited in the chairs because the digital sign at the gate said “Wait”. Finally I realized everyone is going through the seating area and walking down some stairs. I go down and find that it’s a “bus gate”. We all pile into a narrow hallway and make our way through ticket check and the mystery scanning machine again (why?), then we get into a bus. The bus drives around to the plane, which, I kid you not, is parked right up at a regular gate with a jet bridge back to the terminal building. Why we couldn’t all just go to that gate and then walk onto the plane, I have no idea. Good thing I’m not in charge of logistics at this airport!
On the plane I fall asleep immediately and wake up in full-body-bad-airplane-seat pain several times. Luckily the seat next to me is empty so I try to wedge my face against the side of its backrest to stay upright. We finally arrive in Glasgow. There are two baggage belts in the terminal in Glasgow. One’s sign displayed our flight. The other was marked “For those travellers who started their journey outside the UK”, but it only showed a flight from the Isle of Man, so I was naturally confused. I stood strategically where I could see a part of both belts and waited, scanning back and forth like a Centurion from Battlestar Galactica. My bag made its entrance on the Isle Of Man belt so I hurried over to get it. And yes, my name tag has been snapped off again. That’s two, time to buy another one. Made me remember the Monty Python song about “I’m worried about the baggage retrieval system they’ve got at Heathrow”. And that was in the 70s. They should have upgraded it since then.
I walked over and got some money out of an ATM. For those of you who don’t know, there are three banks in Scotland that are authorized to print their own currency. I can’t show you a picture because I don’t want to go to prison, but the machine dispensed bills from Clydesdale Bank. Yes, Clydesdale. Anyway the Scots seem to accept the notes in payment but I did get caught when I lived here in 2001, down in jolly old England if they notice the note, they will not accept it. It says Pounds Sterling and everything, but these have Robert The Bruce’s portrait so that got to be a kick in the teeth to the Queen… Irish Pounds have apparently the same problem. So if I have any Clydesdales left when I head out to England, I’ll try to exchange them from a human at a bank, preferably not Clydesdale Bank.
I walked over to the micro Tesco’s (not Tesco Lotus like in Thailand) in the airport and bought a pack of 4 chocolate bars, half to get some food and energy inside me and half to get some change. I walked outside and caught the L7 shuttle bus to the center of town, then transferred to a local bus which took me within a hundred meters of my hotel. I checked into the hotel and ended up on the 4th floor, stairs only, in a cute little room just slightly larger than a double bed with a dormer window and my own bathroom, whose shower stall was too small to bend over to pick up the soap without sticking my butt through the shower curtain. Everyone chip in with your favourite joke….. now!
The next morning I walked out of the hotel to catch the bus. The scheduled next bus didn’t show up, and the next bus driver said I had to have exact change. Urgh. Decided to walk down into the city center.
I found a phone shop, a very helpful guy sold me a SIM card for 2 pounds and pointed me over to the Tesco’s to buy some top-up and allocate it to a plan. I put 20 pounds into the phone and selected an All-You-Can-Eat data plan with huge voice minutes and texts. Again, puts Canada and America’s phone plans to shame. It took less than 5 minutes and I have unlimited data and using the “Feel At Home” plan, no penalty for roaming around my future destinations of Denmark, France, Spain and Italy.
I continued my walk downtown. I really tried hard to be good and wait for the pedestrian crossing lights but nobody else seemed to care. It was red even when it was clearly safe due to stopped traffic. So screw it, I started crossing when it was absolutely safe in both directions, looking in both directions twice.
I spotted the red doubledecker tour bus and got a 2 day ticket. I rode around the city and stopped at the Transport Museum, with its great collection of local bicycles (who knew?), locomotives, ship models and cars. Back on the bus through the city to the end. Lovely tour guide Donna said to take the tour of the City Chambers tomorrow.
I had dinner at a greek restaurant on George Square. Excluding all dishes with onions and meat, all I could have was tzatziki, hummus and a hot feta cheese dish. Feels like I’m back home at my greek restaurant in Hua Hin.
The next morning I woke up at 11:30 and walked out just down the street to pick up the second day of the sightseeing bus. Took it down to George Square, walked over to the City Chambers and got a ticket for the tour. Inside of the building is beautiful, Carrera marble and alabaster. Beautiful woodwork, rooms lined with Australian satinwood and Tasmanian Amberwood. Mahogany in the main council room and reception room. A woodworker’s dream.
Decided to have lunch at Pret a Manger, a small eco-conscious sandwich shop. The counter girl was very helpful finding something with no onions or meat. Turns out the only thing was egg salad sandwich so I had that and hot chocolate.
I jumped back on the bus to go around the city again, but listened to the kids ghost commentary track, I could tell several adults were listening to it too. Being up at the front seat of the top deck I got to see how stupid and dangerous pedestrians are, remember those ones who didn’t pay attention to the crosswalk signals? Several times people walked out without looking and had to jump back to avoid getting flattened. Some people boldly strolled across the road causing both lanes of traffic to stop. If only I had a rocket launcher up there…
I jumped off the bus downtown at the big cinema and watched the new Bond movie Spectre. Not bad, but the ending sucked. The bad guy just lays on the ground without making some kind of evil mastermind speech? Ugh.
Planning ahead and feeling good about Airbnb, I booked another Instant Book place in Edinburgh for $40/night for 5 nights. I’ll take the train to Edinburgh for about 9 pounds.
Having lived in Edinburgh for a year, I heard about the rivalry with Glasgow and how it was a crumbling city full of criminals, etc. And it turned out to be true. No! just kidding. I appreciated the parks and preserved architecture living in parallel with the heart of a modern city. One thing I did notice though – Glasgow seems to not be set up for tourists at all. There’s only one sightseeing bus and although the city center is quite cosmopolitan, there are few hotels and very few souvenir and tourist oriented shops anywhere. It seems like they just like having the city to themselves, which can be a good thing.
