We went to Scotland!
In the grand tradition of only updating here when we go on vacation, here's a run-down of our trip to Scotland. Started planning this trip in 2019 and booked it all for summer 2020. And... it took a couple of years to actually get there. Amazingly, we were able to push all our accommodation reservations ahead, first to 2021, then to 2022.
Day One, July 29, travel day. Got a ride to Logan at 4:15 am, arrived in our Glasgow hotel around 11-ish at night local time. We had to change planes in Heathrow, and it was a surprisingly smooth process to get through immigration and security for the connection. So smooth that we had way more time to wait in the airport than expected. Grabbed dinner at an airport restaurant and settled into a quiet corner of the airport for a few hours. Our flight was delayed, so we were really waiting around for a while. Finally made it up to Glasgow, took a taxi into the city, and settled into Fraser Suites.
Day Two, July 30. First, we had to go back to the airport to pick up our rental car. The rental car place was closed by the time our flight arrived the night before, but we knew that would be the case even before the delay. They upsold us on an upgrade to a Mercedes, which I will never again do, because the car was a huge pain to drive and a nice little Toyota would have been so much better. Once we got the car parked near the hotel we got some breakfast and then went off for a nice long walk across the city in the direction of the Kelvingrove Museum. That museum is so fantastic! Drew & I had been there on our previous trip to Scotland, and it was great for West. There's art, old stuff, and natural history stuff all packed together under one roof. After a couple of hours of museuming, we headed over to Kelvingrove Park next door and hiked up to a memorial bench for the singer of Frightened Rabbit. The weather was beautiful, and as we sat on the bench paying respects a Taylor Swift song started playing in the distance, it was, as the kids say, A MOOD. We walked back across the city to the very touristy area we were staying in and got dinner at a place that had a nice outdoor patio. There was a huge street festival going on and the city felt so festive and vibrant. The one downside was that our hotel was surrounded by bars that were open until 3 am and the noise was unbelievable. No place we stayed had air conditioners and it was pretty hot while we were there, so we had to keep the windows open, but that comes with not being able to muffle any of the shouting, music, or sounds of hundreds of glass bottles clinking into outdoor recycling bins at random times all night.
Day Three, July 31. Started with a bit of a walk around looking for a good breakfast place. Once we were fueled up we went to the train station and took the train out to Paisley (not far, about 15 minutes from Glasgow city center) for a football game. It was St Mirren vs Motherwell, a couple of small local teams. Fun experience to really feel like a local, especially the chaos after the game when we almost got caught up in an actual soccer hooligans street fight. We were walking away from the stadium towards the train station when a scuffle up ahead turned into police scrapping with a bunch of teenagers / young adults, and the scrum moved quickly in our direction, then people behind us started yelling and moving to get in on the action. We walked back toward the stadium, and then the crowd of fighting guys started running in our direction with the police in pursuit. Absolute scenes. The fight and police confrontation kind of rolled in the general direction of the train station for a bit but we walked fast enough to stay well ahead of it. I didn't think that actually happened in real life! Got the train back to Glasgow and stopped for dinner at Pizza Punks, then walked back to our hotel.
Day Four, August 1. We bid farewell to Glasgow early because we had a two hour drive to get to a ferry we needed to catch to get to our next location, the Isle of Mull. Unfortunately, about an hour into the drive our day went totally off the rails. One tire blew out and we had to call for roadside assistance. It took a long time for a guy to come out and look at the tire, at first declaring that he saw nothing wrong with it. He was going to just put some air in the tire and leave, but after I protested that it actually really was busted he looked again and finally found the problem. We then had to ride a spare over to the nearest garage that had a tire in the right size for the car (never upgrade to a fancy car! it's harder to get basic things like tires that fit!), so we drove over to Inverary. In less stressful circumstances, Inverary is a town that I'd actually wanted to see, it's extremely charming and picturesque. We had to wait for the garage guys to take their lunch break before they'd pop a new tire on, so we also got lunch, which was in a super cute, super old hotel restaurant. Finally got the new tire on and made our way back on track to Oban. We stopped along the way at St. Conan's Kirk, a picturesque church on the banks of a beautiful loch. All of this took so many hours that we missed the ferry we had booked tickets for, and the remaining ferry crossings for the rest of the day were sold out. So, we ended up in an unplanned night in Oban waiting for the first ferry of the morning the next day. We actually ended up staying in a very nice hotel in Oban that was extremely comfy and had a fantastic ocean view. Oban is very, very touristy and every restaurant was jam packed, so we ended up waiting an hour and a half for a table at a restaurant, but we managed to get dinner finished with just 15 minutes to spare for me to run back to the hotel to watch the season finale of Love Island, my absolute favorite guilty pleasure show that Drew & I had been watching all summer.
Ok, that's enough for one post, more in the next post!
Day One, July 29, travel day. Got a ride to Logan at 4:15 am, arrived in our Glasgow hotel around 11-ish at night local time. We had to change planes in Heathrow, and it was a surprisingly smooth process to get through immigration and security for the connection. So smooth that we had way more time to wait in the airport than expected. Grabbed dinner at an airport restaurant and settled into a quiet corner of the airport for a few hours. Our flight was delayed, so we were really waiting around for a while. Finally made it up to Glasgow, took a taxi into the city, and settled into Fraser Suites.
Day Two, July 30. First, we had to go back to the airport to pick up our rental car. The rental car place was closed by the time our flight arrived the night before, but we knew that would be the case even before the delay. They upsold us on an upgrade to a Mercedes, which I will never again do, because the car was a huge pain to drive and a nice little Toyota would have been so much better. Once we got the car parked near the hotel we got some breakfast and then went off for a nice long walk across the city in the direction of the Kelvingrove Museum. That museum is so fantastic! Drew & I had been there on our previous trip to Scotland, and it was great for West. There's art, old stuff, and natural history stuff all packed together under one roof. After a couple of hours of museuming, we headed over to Kelvingrove Park next door and hiked up to a memorial bench for the singer of Frightened Rabbit. The weather was beautiful, and as we sat on the bench paying respects a Taylor Swift song started playing in the distance, it was, as the kids say, A MOOD. We walked back across the city to the very touristy area we were staying in and got dinner at a place that had a nice outdoor patio. There was a huge street festival going on and the city felt so festive and vibrant. The one downside was that our hotel was surrounded by bars that were open until 3 am and the noise was unbelievable. No place we stayed had air conditioners and it was pretty hot while we were there, so we had to keep the windows open, but that comes with not being able to muffle any of the shouting, music, or sounds of hundreds of glass bottles clinking into outdoor recycling bins at random times all night.
Day Three, July 31. Started with a bit of a walk around looking for a good breakfast place. Once we were fueled up we went to the train station and took the train out to Paisley (not far, about 15 minutes from Glasgow city center) for a football game. It was St Mirren vs Motherwell, a couple of small local teams. Fun experience to really feel like a local, especially the chaos after the game when we almost got caught up in an actual soccer hooligans street fight. We were walking away from the stadium towards the train station when a scuffle up ahead turned into police scrapping with a bunch of teenagers / young adults, and the scrum moved quickly in our direction, then people behind us started yelling and moving to get in on the action. We walked back toward the stadium, and then the crowd of fighting guys started running in our direction with the police in pursuit. Absolute scenes. The fight and police confrontation kind of rolled in the general direction of the train station for a bit but we walked fast enough to stay well ahead of it. I didn't think that actually happened in real life! Got the train back to Glasgow and stopped for dinner at Pizza Punks, then walked back to our hotel.
Day Four, August 1. We bid farewell to Glasgow early because we had a two hour drive to get to a ferry we needed to catch to get to our next location, the Isle of Mull. Unfortunately, about an hour into the drive our day went totally off the rails. One tire blew out and we had to call for roadside assistance. It took a long time for a guy to come out and look at the tire, at first declaring that he saw nothing wrong with it. He was going to just put some air in the tire and leave, but after I protested that it actually really was busted he looked again and finally found the problem. We then had to ride a spare over to the nearest garage that had a tire in the right size for the car (never upgrade to a fancy car! it's harder to get basic things like tires that fit!), so we drove over to Inverary. In less stressful circumstances, Inverary is a town that I'd actually wanted to see, it's extremely charming and picturesque. We had to wait for the garage guys to take their lunch break before they'd pop a new tire on, so we also got lunch, which was in a super cute, super old hotel restaurant. Finally got the new tire on and made our way back on track to Oban. We stopped along the way at St. Conan's Kirk, a picturesque church on the banks of a beautiful loch. All of this took so many hours that we missed the ferry we had booked tickets for, and the remaining ferry crossings for the rest of the day were sold out. So, we ended up in an unplanned night in Oban waiting for the first ferry of the morning the next day. We actually ended up staying in a very nice hotel in Oban that was extremely comfy and had a fantastic ocean view. Oban is very, very touristy and every restaurant was jam packed, so we ended up waiting an hour and a half for a table at a restaurant, but we managed to get dinner finished with just 15 minutes to spare for me to run back to the hotel to watch the season finale of Love Island, my absolute favorite guilty pleasure show that Drew & I had been watching all summer.
Ok, that's enough for one post, more in the next post!