Scotland2005: Glasgow Day 3

I have to say that Glasgow really is a "night" city. Where as Edinburgh kind of rolled up the sidwalks at about 10p, Glasgow was going strong until the wee hours of the morning. Glaswegans also like to drink -- no, they LOVE to drink. I don't think we've ever seen so many drunk people on the streets as we did last night -- and that I see and hear right now outside the cafe window at 745pm. In fact, I don't think, outside of New York, I've ever seen so many people on the streets at night. This really is a much more of a "city" than Edinburgh, and is much more like London -- complete with their own "mini-Tube", a small circular subway that looks like the London one if you washed it and ran it through the dryer. Tony has to duck when he gets on to it. They need to have a "mind your head" recording in addition to the "mind the gap" one.

After a late dinner at an Italian joint last night, we walked about -- there are a couple of large pedestrian malls, and lots and lots of big nightclubs and bars, along with the corresponding drunk people wandering about in a party mood. (Picture Mardi Gras with 1/20th the people). We ran into "Steve" when Tony noticed a store with deep fried Haggis on the menu and commented to me. (Deep fried Haggis? -- generally you can make anything better by deep frying it, but Haggis?) Apparently Steve felt obliged both introduce himself to us AND to tell Tony NOT to have the deep fried Haggis, but rather the steamed version, and began walking with us extolling the virtues of steamed Haggis.

When Steve found out we were Americans, he asked us what we thought of "Jarge Booosh"? Before we could answer, we found out what he thought about "Booosh", and suffice to say we tended to agree, which made Steve a very happy fellow. Fortunately we arrived at a corner where we had to turn, so he shook our hands and stumbled down the street.

This morning we awoke to clear and sunny skies for the most part, and we were due to get the motorcycles back to the Harley dealer by 10ish. We had, upon the advice of the hotel, secured our bikes at a "car park" down the street, where we found them secure, but being fawned over by two blokes who were operating the garage. They too, like numerous folks yesterday, decided they had to extol the virtues of "'arley's" and wish they could afford one. At least that’s what we think they said, as their accents were so think we "couldn'na unnerstan' a werd they was sayin' mind ye!"

We wore our rain suits over to the dealership because we packed the saddle bags with our other coats, figuring we'd take a train out to the countryside down to the Dumfries area today after dropping the bikes off. However it was so nice when we got to the dealership, and Benny encouraged us to keep the bikes for the rest of the day if we wanted to. We couldn't refuse. He helped us plot a route out of town and down to Dumfries and back that we could do and still be back in time for the dealership to close.

It was a tad cool, so I elected to keep my rain pants on, while Tony took his off as he was feeling warm (rain pants that is -- they are like fisherman's waders -- sheesh, what were you thinking?) This of course meant that immediately after we left the dealer and got onto the Motorway (freeway), it would start to rain. My Mother must have perfected her powers of storm generation, because this storm actually made me want to turn around and get off the bikes. I asked Tony what he wanted to do, and he said "lets keep going, it looks like it's clearing the way we are headed." Sure enough it did, and we enjoyed sunshine and nice weather down the M-8 towards the border with England.

Dumfries is about 70 miles south west of Glasgow on the Soloway Firth -- the bay that separates England from Scotland, and thus was prime fighting ground in the wars with England. It is also the home of Caerlaverock Castle, which dates from the 1200s and which Edward I (the bad king in Braveheart) used for target practice several times. I had wanted to see this castle for some time, as it looks like what every child's story book picture of a castle looks like. It is made of red sandstone, and is surrounded by a moat. (Actually a moat was a big cesspool of sorts as the loos and drains all emptied out into it -- now days it has swans swimming about.)

When you walk around to the back, it's all blown to bits from a siege where catapults like you see in the movies hurled big rocks at it, and it looks like a Playskool brand toy castle that opens up to reveal the inside all displayed. It's really quite cool.


Unfortunately we couldn't spend as much time as we wanted to there, and had a quick bite at the tea room, and talking "'arly's" with the castle steward who'd wandered over as we were packing up. Tony put on his rain pants to keep warm and thus ensuring bright gorgeous sunshine the rest of the way home in theory.

We took a different route back up to Glasgow through the area known as the Borders. Lovely rolling hills with lots of stone walled pastures and farms, lots of sheep and cows, and quaint little towns. Also lots of roundabouts at every junction. Roundabouts are really quite fun on motorcycles once you get the hang of it. We were actually enjoying ourselves too much as we lost track of time and suddenly realized that we needed to be in Glasgow before 5pm, so we picked up the pace.

About 15 miles outside of Glasgow my Mother's storm generator kicked in again, and we hit pouring rain and even hail. Hail HURTS at 70mph on a motorcycle is all I can say. We managed to slosh our way to the Harley Dealer just as the sun broke out again, and the clock hit 450pm. We've now learned our lesson not to mess with my Mother's awesome and terrible power and will not be riding bikes anymore on this trip. The wonderful folks at the Harley dealer asked about the ride and how we enjoyed it, and even found a great shirt for Tony that we couldn't find in his size earlier, and didn't even charge us for the petrol we couldn't replace since we were rushing to get back.

We were cold, wet and tired, so we decided to hit the steam room at the hotel before heading out to the Internet Cafe. On our way back from the dealer however we ran into a huge crowd of folks coming out of the Football game (or what we in America call soccer). This was THE BIG GAME!!!! Apparently Scotland was vying for a World Cup playoff berth in a game against Belarus (one of those odd little ex-Soviet countries that no one can find on a map). It reminded me very much of a Seahawks or Mariners crowd -- lots of folks wearing the team's uniforms, or draped with Scottish flags. However, unlike folks going to Mariners or Seahawks games, a large number of this crowd were in their kilts. To my knowledge, Tony and I are among the few who have actually gone to a Mariners game in a Mariners jersey with a kilt. It's the norm here -- your kilt with the Scottish team's shirt.

They were all very disappointed, if not down right pissed off, as Scotland unfortunately lost 0-1. We now have the spectre of a whole bunch of very angry drunk people wandering about Glasgow tonite. This should prove quite interesting as we go out to dinner, and maybe check out one of the large gay clubs here tonite.

Tomorrow is our last day in Glasgow -- we'll spend it in town visiting a couple of museums and doing some shopping and relaxing. We'll also be booking our hotel in the next stop -- Oban. Oban is a small town out on the west coast in the Highlands and is the gateway to the Hebredies Islands. We plan on going out to Mull and exploring a bit along the Highlands Coast for three days. We'll also have a car those days since it is so remote and unfortunately there is no "'arley" dealer.

But tonite, we'll head out for some dinner -- maybe some deep fried Haggis (despite Steve's warning, it might actually be tolerable, because, everything really is better if it's deep fried), but then again maybe not. We'll also be dodging the pissed off soccer fans, watching the crowds of drunks wandering about, and just enjoying this, "very different from Edinburgh", city.

From the Yeeha Internet Cafe in Glasgow

Gary and Tony