110 - fri 18 aug - glasgow

as part of our deal with leasing this car from citroen, we had to get it serviced after 1000 kms, which unsurprisingly we had reached pretty quickly. glasgow seemed as good a place as any to book the car in for a service so we had arranged it for today. we made our way to citroen glasgow, dropped the car off and made our way back into the city centre courtesy of a bus and a helpful glaswegian pointing us in the right direction. why glaswegian? i never worked this out.

we spent the morning walking around town. glasgow, at least the parts of it we saw, is not a glamorous town. it has the wide streets and tall buildings of melbourne, not the narrow passageways and cobbled paths of edinburgh or york. its historical buildings are stately without being particularly interesting, and its main architectural claim to fame is an art nouveau dude named mackintosh who everyone in glasgow seems frankly completely obsessed with, despite the fact that perhaps outside of the world of architecture you may not have heard of the man. the days we were there were gloomy and wet as well, which didn't put the city in its best light. but despite not looking the part, the city seemed to have a pretty vibrant arts and culture scene and a groovy nightlife, it seemed like you probably just had to get under its skin to really get it.

we found breakfast at a cafe and shop selling organic produce - we had breakfast 'despite language difficulties' suz has written here, but i have predictably forgotten what hilarity we had in that particular cultural exchange that morning. after breakfast we found the glasgow museum of modern art which was really great. it was a pretty small collection but uniformly interesting. nothing too abstract and a lot of provocative things without things being stupid. yeah. after goma we went to glasgow's other cultural heavy-hitter, a centre called 'the lighthouse' which is a museum dedicated to architecture and the city. despite sounding interesting it was kind of disappointing, perhaps due to a slightly labyrinthine floor structure that made it seem like there was more to see than there was. i dunno. some bits were closed. there was an exhibition on some dude who made ugly giant concrete buildings in the 70s. woo hoo! and there was another exhibition that was all about a bauhaus dude who totally reinvented the chair, man! i mean, aluminium! in the chair! freaking amazing! but seriously, why are designers obsessed with chairs anyway.

we pressed onwards to the next glaswegian hotspot. having seen the lighthouse's inevitable charles mackintosh exhibit - i mean, even mcdonalds had a charles mackintosh exhibit (ok i may be exaggerating) - we continued on the mackintosh theme by visiting one of his buildings, the willow tea rooms. it was a building with an art nouveau facade and an art nouveau interior, with art nouveau this and also some art nouveau that. we had some art nouveau tea and scones. actually i had coffee. then we walked all the way back to pick up the car from citroen glasgow.

that night we attempted, kind of unsuccessfully, to find the glasgow food and wine festival which according to large banners and pamphlets seemed to be on that night. we did in the end find it, but it wasn't what we expected. rather than some grand expanse of stalls and wine tastings, filled with eager amateur gastronomers yabbering and sampling regional produce, like some grand night-time market, it turned out to just be a series of cooking demonstrations by well-known (unfortunately not to us) local chefs, and perhaps a stall or two. i say perhaps because it was all being held inside this grand old building, so you couldn't actually see what was going on before you bought your tickets. the ticket people had trouble explaining to us what we'd find if we went in there, and one of them even suggested we come back the next day because it was the better of the days. we waited to see if anyone came in or out of the grand hall they were supposedly holding their festival in. not too many, just some other slightly bewildered tourists like ourselves. we saved our money and after hopping through a few bars - including one really great one nearby called cafe gandolfi, you know, if you're ever in glasgow... - we made our way back to an asian joint that we had spied near the lighthouse. it was really good stuff.