Summertime Travel Plans

It is official. I am returning to Scotland on July 2nd! My youngest daughter will be flying over with me and also my Mom and Dad. It will be their first time to visit. We plan on all the sites of Glasgow and most of Edinburgh too. Hopefully we will also tour the Highlands this time, which I'd never been able to do yet. And......London might be a possibility too, who knows! Ask me if we are excited?

Good Friday

Today is Good Friday and to Christians everywhere it is the anniversay of Christ's death on the cross.  This leads to Easter Sunday in a couple of days, when we celebrate His resurrection. I don't know about you, but to me this is even more important than Christmas when we celebrate His birth. I won't preach on this subject but wanted to recognize it here on my blog and also post some photos of crosses that I collected from Scotland this past year. It seems like an appropriate time to present them. Most of them are Celtic varieties and they are all photographed within the Glasgow Necropolis Cemetery. The Necropolis is an ancient, eerily beautiful Victorian burial ground. This place became a popular tourist attraction since it opened in 1833. I found myself walking to it at least 3 times when I was there last year. Mostly because it is so big and also to get the best photos at various times of the day. They say at least 50,000 Glaswegians are buried there in 3,500 tombs and mausoleums. If you go to see the magnificent Glasgow Cathedral, you can get to it from The Bridge of Sighs, also very beautiful sights to see. The cemetery is actually a hill starting with the wealthiest people at the top down to the common people down at the bottom. Seems snobby? That's how it was done. I recommend not missing this if you are ever in Glasgow!

I don't normally pose in cemeteries, but did here to show how large these monuments actually are. There are many more that are even taller. I was awe struck to see this in its entirety. Some might find a place like this strange, spooky or weird, but it was serene and beautiful for me.

Red Hot Chilli Pipers New DVD Release

Here is a clip from TV with a couple of the band members talking about what they do and their DVD release in 6 days. They are supposed to show up at the HMV store on Argyle Street in Glasgow at 4PM and sign CD's and let people have their photos taken with them. Guess where I will be? Hopefully the line won't be so long that I'll have to give up, I hate lines but plan on showing up early to try and get in line sooner. We shall see!

Glasgow Cathedral Service

Sunday morning service at Glasgow Cathedral was very beautiful. They had a service dedicated to Seafarers and there were servicemen and women in full dress uniform from the HMS Neptune as well as veterans, fishing fleets and their families. The Royal Navy, Royal Marines, and the Merchant Navy representatives were all there as well as children in uniforms too. While I am not of the Catholic religion, the experience was still appreciated. The music was quite lovely with the echoing pipe organ and gorgeous choir they had. Sitting there surrounded in ancient history and massive stained glass windows was just so awesome! The first lesson was from Psalm 107:23-31. Hymns sung were mostly ones that had to do with being a pilgrim, the sea and things pertaining to storms and God's mightiful power. You can click on each photo and see more detail.

Clanadonia Live!

Who I saw today!
The free entertainment is overwhelming!!
Of course, I had to have their CD
and they were nice enough to sign it.
Here is Clanadonia's website.
Warning: With 5 drummers and only one piper,
they are VERY LOUD, so ya might just
hafta turn down your volume.


I also got up early, took the subway to Queen Street and took a short walk over to The Barras Market, another side of town. There is a big ol' flea market there with tons of things to look at, buy and stare at! You can read more about it here: The Barras
Your usual fish and chips, scottish meat pies, haggis, other oddly smelling items are all there. This is a true Glaswegian seller's market and the conversations alone are worth the visit. (if you can understand them) There are also bootleg sellers and sometimes they get raided, but none of that happened on my visit. I read that you can find almost anything from an anchor to a needle here and I believe it. The antiques, jewelry, clothing, baby stuff, and sweets are what I liked. I didn't dare take too many photos cuz some of these folks just have this look about them and I'd be afraid to tangle with some of them! But I did snap a few from a distance. Funny, I had a fortune teller come up to me and start telling me all about myself. She new I was a foreigner and took advantage of that saying all these things and would I buy a charm from her? I turned her down and she really didn't like that, but heck I never asked to have my future read in the first place, LOL. I guess that's how she takes advantage of some, but not me. Anyhow, it made for an ineresting day and tomorrow I'm goin to the Glasgow Cathedral services to hear their majestic pipe organ music. More later...

We Will We Will Rock You

Same group of musicians in my previous post 3 days later, same spot performing Queen's big hit We Will Rock You! Notice where the big bass drum player kneels down for the small child to try and bang out a few beats....he seemed to be very timid. Was quite funny to watch.

Pipe and Drum Music from Glasgow Video!

While walking down Buchanan Street near the intersection of Argyle, I came upon this talented trio of kilted young men playing the most amazing music and I quickly switched my digital camera to video mode. It's definitely what one might expect or think of whilst in Scotland for sure. Here are the results. They are quite fun to listen to and look at as well ;-)
Enjoy!

My Online Scotland Photo Book

Whew, what a job editing well over 600 photos and picking ones I liked the most...here is an online photo book that you can view here or click HERE and see it in a larger size, complete with descriptions. If you'll click on the Full-screen option and after it opens, then choose options, you can slow it down or speed up the page turns. Enjoy.
Cheers,
Sharon

Click here to view this photo book.

Probably Not Strange

But just different! I wanted to tell you all about some things that I learned whilst in Glasgow. Check out this Irn-Bru commercial first. I love this drink!

OK, so most of you may know that they have their darn steering wheel on the wrong side of the car ;o)
Of course that makes these Glaswegians, which is what they call themselves also drive on the wrong side of the road too! You MUST be careful when crossing the street or you'll absolutely get run down by a taxi. Most folks don't own a car and use mass transportation instead. We whine about our gas prices, hahaha you should hear what we calculated the price in USD from pounds after the conversion of litres to gallons. OMG! You stand to save money by walking, taking the subway or taxi, or even riding a bike. The train works nicely for longer distances and they also have buses. Anyway, we mostly walked everywhere except for when we went to Edinburgh. We'd take the subway to get to the furthest side of Glasgow to save time too. The air there is just so clean compared to DFW where I live, in spite of the fact that there are just so many smokers there. They only smoke outside though and I don't think it is allowed in any indoor spot at all. I was told that their autos and vehicles were so finely tuned and many are alternative fueled that the air stays cleaner than ours. Wow! The days were simply perfect with temps varying from 50F - 65F or so. I lucked out and it really didn't rain until the last day or so and it was very light at that. I say lucked out because my son said it rains a LOT in Scotland. Funny thing....I brought an umbrella and never used it until the next to last day. Then on our trip to Edinburgh the 2nd time, I had a darn pick pocket grab it out of the top of my purse. HAHAHA, it was so odd, because I had my passport, money, and credit cards all below it and he must have thought he was getting my wallet or something, because it was one of those tiny compact ones. Oh well, I hope he enjoys my black multi-colored polka dotted umbrella....NOT! Daylight happens around 4AM and it stays that way until almost 10PM at night. This makes it hard to want to go to sleep at night and my bedroom window just happened to be above where the party crowd comes when the clubs close. So almost every night at around 3AM, I'd hear laughing, yelling, arguing, and breaking glass. The OKO Express across the street would usually stay open and others from around town gather there to have their drunken breakfast or whatever they ate there. I wised up and started using ear plugs and that took care of that! If you can imagine how many 7/11 stores there are here, there probably are just as many Starbucks and Fish & Chip spots there. Our dollar is really weak right now, so my shopping adventures were not as interesting as they could have been, except that my wonderful son and daughter in law took care of just about anything and everything. I was just bowled over and felt like a queen! I tasted so many different and delicious foods there. My new favorite drink now is called Irn-Bru. The taste is very different and I wish so bad that it was available at a reasonable price. You can find it here and there I've since discovered, but the price is outrageous. It's just a simple carbonated soda, a pale sort of orange color, full of caffeine, a little like a slightly cream citrus like taste, but not so much....hard to explain until you taste it for yourself. I had great lamb, Indian cuisine, Japanese sushi, Italian you name it, squid, tofu, udon noodles, ox tail, crepes, honeypot yogurt, yummy rocket salads, feta cheese, espresso, prawns, French wine, teas, Victorian lemonade, Cloudy lemonade, Hot pot chinese buffet, puddings - oh my!, sweet corn at the cinema, angus beef, meat pie, apple slice pastry, dark chocolates, fresh asparagus, delicious root based soups, scones, shortbreads, back bacon, clotted cream fudge, creme brule, tapas, and more I can't remember right now, hah! I weighed myself when I had the nerve after coming home and found I'd only gained 4 pounds, which is not as bad as I'd feared. I suppose all that walking we did helped remedy that, so all is well. Oh....here's something else funny - the traffic signals of all things, they turn yellow right before they turn green instead of our yellow before red, wonder why that is? Taxi drivers can be chatty and tend to like to give out advice if they know you are a tourist, which is fine. Only thing is, their Scottish accent is so thick sometimes, you have to ask them to repeat some things until you catch on to their quirky little phrases and ways of saying certain things. Also, the working class order of the people coincides with how hard it is to understand them. If they are a suit wearing well to do businessman, you can usually understand their Scot-English easier, whereas a beggar in the street (and there were plenty of them) or a raggedly dressed man or woman has more of a thicker accent.....coincidence? I don't know. Beggars will either sit on the street or a corner with an old cup and say "Spare change love?". They always look very forlorn and unshaven or ragged, but some of them have crutches one day and then the next they don't, so I decided that they play on your emotions more than anything and didn't feel quite as sorry for some of them as I first did. Every museum that we went to was Free to the public! They took donations of course. The buildings of the city were so Victorian and Gothic looking, I just wanted to take so many pictures and stop and stare. Just beautiful!
Yes, there are bagpipe players on the streets and most play in anticipation coins tossed into their hats or instrument cases. There were more street performers of all kinds on the weekend, but you can expect to hear a guitar player, sax musician, drummer, or even a singer on any given day down Buchanan Street near the Royal Exchange Square. Wow, I miss it already and if things go as planned, I'll get to return in November to see my new Grandson or Granddaughter for the first time and son and DIL again! More photos to come soon, thanks for your interest if you've read this long post =o)

Photos to share of my journey!

Hi yall! I've been back a few days and finally have my time zone lag adjusted (I hope). The difference in Glasgow is a whole six hours ahead, so you might imagine how "off" that must have felt for me. To try and force the change when I arrived, I stayed up & felt like a zombie, but it seemed to work per my son's advice. But somehow when I arrived home, it took longer to get back into the days and nights for CST. Whew! What I'll be trying to do is post a few photos from each day spent there every day or so as I have time and energy. The heat here is just awful, so adjusting back to 100F from being in 50-60F is really not fun :( I have lots of things to tell you about how different things are in the UK from the USA too, but for now, here's a few images and I've labeled each one as to what and where they are. These are from the first full day in Glasgow and if you want to see a nice 600x800 size of each one, just click on them.