With the change in flights, we knew we needed to cram as much into today as we could. We woke up too late for church this morning, after the late night rearranging our flight, and booking accommodation in Manchester, so we went down for breakfast, and then headed over to Glasgow Central railway station to book our train ride to Manchester, so now everything is set for our changed itinerary!
From there, we headed to Glasgow Queen Street railway station, as that’s the place to go if you want a train ride to Edinburgh. (On the weekdays, trains leave every 15 minutes for Edinburgh. On Sundays, trains leave every half hour or so.) Now armed with our train tickets to Edinburgh (which cost about 1/5 of what we paid for our train tickets to Manchester), we boarded the train.
Having seen both Edinburgh and Glasgow, I can honestly say I like Edinburgh far better. It’s a more friendly, more welcoming town than Glasgow, and I’m going to miss it a great deal.
We did some exchanges of gifts that we got, and bought a few new ones. In all, it was really enjoyable. They even had a couple street performers that weren’t there when we were there before. There was a young juggler, a man pretending to be a statue from hundreds of years ago, and an all-female drumming group, and they were all pretty darn good. Of course, there were the standard pipers scattered along the Royal Mile. Edinburgh felt very alive, today.
After finishing what we needed to get done in Edinburgh, we hopped on the train for the 1 hour return trip to Glasgow. When we got to Glasgow, there was the threat of rain in the sky, and indeed it had been raining on the way, as evidenced by the water that had been pouring off the train. We decided that we wouldn’t have much time to get anything done in Glasgow tomorrow, so we went to the Glasgow Cathedral, which was pretty. We even got a nice shot of what we think is the John Knox statue with the setting sun behind it. Very pretty.
It was time for dinner, so we went to Dow’s Pub by Queen Street Station, which we found out didn’t have food on Sundays, so we went to this Free House across from George Square, which had excellent food, and was completely HUGE inside!! (A free house is a pub that is privately owned. See, I found out that one of the reasons no pubs in the big towns have really decent ales on cask is that they are owned by the same companies that own the major breweries. Or else, they’re owned by giant pub groups, which have deals with the major breweries, so they only serve the major stuff, which for the most part really don’t say anything bold…they’re inoffensive ales, which is the best that can be said of them.) Anyway, this free house had Abbott Ale on cask, which I really liked, and the best Steak and Ale pie I’ve ever eaten. Kim had 4-Cheese Ravioli’s which she said were really good.
Then, back to the hotel for some re-packing of our stuff to make it train and plane friendly. We think we’ll get ourselves down to 1 carry-on, which is what is allowed from the UK. We’ll see how it goes.
Well, I’m off to bed, but tomorrow is an awesome day, as we’re going to the town from which we’ll be flying home. Scotland has been an amazing trip, and I look forward to coming back, but Scotland is definitely lacking something for us: Our friends, and our bed. :) Also, we’d like to have some days where we don’t have to cart around our luggage with us every couple of days. But we definitely miss everyone in the States, and are looking forward to getting back!! See you all in a couple days!
