On day six, September 11, we were scheduled to leave the Highlands and make our way into Glasgow, where we would ditch the car and fearlessly depend on our own two feet and public transportation to take us where we wanted to go. We finished off the last of our Scottish breakfast meats and settled in for the two-hour journey south.
It was a lovely drive, actually. The countryside surrounding Glasgow wasn’t much different from the rest of the Highlands; perhaps not quite as dramatic but all of the same lush growth and quiet lochs. We stopped alongside of one so Jason could have a chance to take in the scenery, something that was impossible for him to do while navigating the insanity of Scottish mountain roads. I walked along and picked up pieces of beach glass and then we climbed back into the car to continue on.
We were due to drop our car off at the Glasgow airport at one, and we arrived in plenty of time. While traveling, it’s always a little disorienting to go from having a vehicle to not having one. It suddenly makes you look around at your suitcase and backpack and realize, oh, this is all I have. Something about having a vehicle makes me feel a little more grounded and less vulnerable to the world at large. However, whenever I’m tempted to feel like that I think of the many travelers who make their way in life with only a pack on their backs and their own two feet; this helps me feel adventurous and brave again. We ditched the car, pulled our hats and hoods firmly over our heads because it was raining softly (per usual) and set off to find a bus to take us downtown.
We began referring to our different stages of transportation as “Phase ()”. This was partly to keep us from feeling overwhelmed, and partly because there were days that it was downright funny how many types of transportation we ended up using. I think the record was seven different phases in one day. On this particular day, we only used three – car, bus, and subway. We took a bus from the airport to the downtown transit center, missed our stop, trotted our way along to the appropriate subway station, and then hopped off only a half block from our lodgings for the next few days – a B&B located in the West End neighborhood, right along the river.
It would only be fair to mention that our trip from the airport to the B&B was not exactly roses and sunshine. I get pretty intense in transition – it definitely borders on being uptight and honestly, sometimes it is. I don’t like not really knowing where I’m going or if I’m doing the right thing. I get nervous about the possibility of taking the wrong train or bus and ending up in some completely unknown area clutching our suitcases and guidebooks like the tourists that we are. It was also stressing me out to try to ration the data we used on my phone to look up transit schedules. And, on top of this, I hate doing things slowly. I go after a route or directions like a badger hunting for bugs and then after that I figure out where I’m going I don’t really stop for anyone or anything. Including my husband and his more careful approach of not only finding directions online but also reading signs, checking his book, and possibly also asking directions.
So, inevitably, this lead to an awkward conversation about my crotchety ways almost occurring on a subway platform. However, I did at least have the peace of mind to say, “not now, love.” We duked it out in the safety of our room once we got checked in and then promptly decided it would be a good idea to take a couple of hours off from one another and do some separate exploring. I opted to wheel a suitcase full of dirty clothes up the road to the launderette, where the attendant did her very best to explain the machine to me in one of the thickest accents I’d heard yet while I counted out foreign currency in a bewildered sort of way. Not sure if it was acceptable or safe to just leave your clothes to wash themselves like we do in the states, I sat on a narrow bench and read a book, occasionally pausing to glance at the kids going by outside on scooter in their school uniforms. Doing laundry on vacation, especially in Laundromats, is usually a great excuse to slow down for an hour or two, and I look back on that time in an oddly nostalgic sort of way.
I somehow managed to wash and partially dry an entire load of laundry before running out of the appropriate change, so I stuffed the slightly damp underwear and t-shirts back into the suitcase and headed back to our room. I then proceeded to lay out the still-wet items all over on any available surface until it looked like our packed bags had vomited damp laundry all over the room. Satisfied with my accomplishments, I encountered Jason coming in the door from a run and we proceeded to head out to explore after he showered.
Glasgow is a very neat city – it reminded me of Milwaukee in many ways but it did have an older, foreign feel to it. The area that we stayed in, West End, had a pretty diverse population and we ran across many kebab restaurants, Russian grocery stores, and Indian fabric shops. We even passed a restaurant called the Wee Curry Shop, which was tempting but smelled overwhelmingly of spice and we had just done our laundry…we went to a coffee shop for an hour or so until we felt really ready for supper, and then walked up a few blocks to a restaurant situated in a former church building.
On a side note (the Wee Curry Shop made me think of this), the Scots have this very enduring way of using “wee” as an adjective for almost everything. I always assumed it was reserved for referencing small things, but over the course of our time in the country I heard quite a few things referred to as “wee” that weren’t exactly small or tiny things. Wee pens, wee bus fares, wee pounds…by this point, my inner voice was mostly talking with a Scottish accent, and I began thinking in their rolling singing way of all of the wee things that seemed so much more fun to say as a Scot.
Anyway, supper. Supper was good, and the interior was quite lovely. This would have been our first “sit-down” meal overseas, and we quickly encountered one of the most awkward aspects of being tourists from the US that sort of stumped us right up until the end of the trip: in the US, the waiter or waitress almost always brings you the bill. If they don’t bring it, we think they’re being lazy. Or vice versa; if someone is a grumpy corporate foo-foo type who gets pushy and asks for the bill, typically they’re fair game for the waitstaff to think they’re being rude and impatient. It’s sort of a faux pas, at any rate.
Overseas, it’s totally different. Every single time we ate out at a sit-down place, we would wait for the bill and try to give kindly hints that we were done with our meal and ready to head on our way. We eventually gave up on that and awkwardly started asking for the check. I consulted the Google gods to see what proper restaurant etiquette was in these circumstances, and really couldn’t find anything specific to the UK or Ireland except that a general consensus of waitstaff bringing the check before being asked is that they are trying to get you out of the restaurant so that they can clear your table for someone else. Perhaps the Scots and the Irish are, in actuality, much more polite than we are in the US and don’t try to hurry people out the door, no matter how busy a place is. I did notice that, at least the Scots, used quite a few more “pleases” and “thank-yous” than we were accustomed to. So, to try to avoid falling into the shameful stereotype of rude Americans (as if our boring, ironed-out way of talking didn’t give us away) we started being over-the-top polite. Well, at least for us. Maybe we really are rude Americans, but not intentionally. Maybe it’s just a cultural thing.
Anyway, I’ve taken you away from dinner now twice so let’s go back to our dinner in the old church building, shall we? After sitting around for a good half hour hoping the waiter would bring the check, Jason sheepishly asked for it, paid, and we walked around a little more. We passed a good handful of thrift shops (Charity shops, as they’re called there) all of which were closed but gleamed with happy promise for another day. That’s what I love about thrift shops – they’re always a complete surprise and you could find any sort of wonderful treasure or terrible junk in them.
We stopped in at a pub for some pints (well, a half-pint for me, that is) and hoped again to have some conversations with the locals. However, the temperature inside was astonishingly warm, even for a wee lass like me. And it smelled sort of strange. Like smelly socks. We finished our beverages and didn’t linger long after. A really comfortable bed and random articles of damp laundry were waiting for us back in our room. Clearly, that was cause enough to hurry back. No, really, we did have a lovely little room overlooking to courtyard. It was kind of a shame to muck it up with our explosion of undies, wool socks, and damp jeans.
– Johanna
Leave a comment