Scotland is Also Cold

I made it to Glasgow, though if I’d started out earlier in the day like I was supposed to (thanks a lot, soft ocean sounds outside my window lulling me back to sleep!) I could have made it to Inverness, but as it stood I didn’t have reservations there until Friday anyway, and I figured I’d go to Glasgow and either stay there or see where I could go from there.

Glasgow is ok. It’s not spectacular or anything. I think I’m getting used to all these old cities. The architecture’s pretty great, but honestly it's not far off from being in New Haven, with Yale's old-style buildings up against the modern stuff. It’s a city and it has lots of stores and about 50 McDonalds just like every other city. I blame America.

Also, for the record, the McNuggets and fries taste exactly the same out here. Also, there are no McNuggets on the Pound Menu (yes, they have a Pound Menu). Actually, their entire menu has much less selection than back home; I can only get a 6 piece McNugget. This annoys me.

So I wandered around Glasgow for quite a while. I figured it would be a good town to get lost in, so I set off in the right general direction and tried to find Queen Street, since that’s where the trains out north depart from. Well, guess what? Glasgow defeated me, but it didn’t play fair. Like many British cities, they don’t have street signs on corner poles like in the States. They have signs on the sides of buildings or fences on the corners. In London, they’re pretty big. But in Glasgow, they are literally like the size of a piece of paper. 8½ x 11. Placed conveniently about 2 stories high. And I now officially need glasses for distance. I was hoping it wouldn’t bite me while I was out here, but it did. So thank you tiny Glasgow street signs for making me get lost and not actually finding the station.

As a side note, I have had to ditch my scarf again in Glasgow. There are a lot of Catholic/Protestant problems here, centered mostly around the city's two football teams, Celtic and Rangers. The also have things called "orange parades" which frequently turn ugly when Rangers fans bust them up. My scarf is orange. It's staying in the bag.

I did get to Queen Street Station eventually, by finding my way back to Central Station where I’d come from (I was never 100% lost, I always knew how to get back to my start point. That’s Rule #1 of not getting hopelessly lost; I don't travel thousands of miles from home on my own so I can have some Glaswegian punter bash my head in bec ause I got really lost) and taking a taxi. The driver was the first grumpy guy I’ve met. He didn’t want to talk or anything. So I found a train to Edinburgh and got on. I thought I might make it to Inverness by midnight, though I wasn’t crazy about the idea. I have no reservations until Friday night, and I’d have to find some random place. Inverness is pretty far up to have a lot of decent choices.

The problem with my train was that I had gotten on the wrong one, sort of. Once it got moving, they announced the stops and the line ended at Stirling. Now, Stirling is a fine town, I’m sure, but seriously, Stirling? So, I start rationalizing, I figure I can stay in Stirling, whatever. The goal is to get as far north as possible, to make tomorrow’s trip to Inverness as short as necessary. Stirling is some progress. I guess. But then they stopped at Croy, where they announced a connection to Edinburgh. So I could indeed get to Edinburgh! So I got off and waited half an hour at some godforsaken, freezing cold train station at Croy for the train to Edinburgh. I arrived at Waverly Station in Edinburgh thinking that maybe this was it, I’d have to get a room…wait…no, there was a train in half an hour going out to Aberdeen! Hooray! And I’d be in Aberdeen by midnight! Wonderful. So here I sit, in a lovely hotel room in Scotland’s biggest industrial port city early Friday morning, where The Scottish Animals Board has apparently replaced all the sheep with seagulls and I feel like my room is in the aviary from Jurassic Park 3. It’s a nice room, though. Here is a picture of Aberdeen from my hotel window:Aberdeen is also the coldest place I've been so far, by the way. Colder than Croy!

The Trouble With Scotland is It's Full of Awesome

Note: Due to there being a general lack of readily available internet access in the Highlands region (in Drumnadrochit I didn't even have a phone in my room!), it has taken me a while to put up some new posts. This post is up to date to Thursday. I'll get the blog back up to date tomorrow.

So I took the train to Belfast. On this train I saw many sheep. Similar to Wales. Sheep every place. Upon arriving at Belfast, I got a taxi to the harbour. The driver and I discussed the economy. There’s a lot of building going on in Belfast, lots of skyscrapers going up, and the driver told me that all that was started before the downturn, so Belfast looks to weather the economic storm at least until the buildings are up. It looked like a cool town to hang out in; maybe next time.

I picked up the ferry and once again, it was as well-appointed as a cruise ship. I got a bit of sleep and checked Facebook (yes, you can get the internet even on a ferry in the Irish Sea), changed my euros for pounds for an exorbitant fee at the bureau de change JUST IN CASE, and landed in Stranraer.

The taxi ride to the Corsewall Lighthouse Hotel was 100% dark (zero streetlights and only unilluminated fields of green along the roads will do that) and the road was a winding, one-lane affair that my driver was only too happy to take at top speed. The Lighthouse was a pretty great place to stay at, but since I’d spent the last two days hanging out with cool human beings, I kind of missed not having other people around. Also, it was the kind of place my grandparents would have liked, and that thought left me a bit down as well. The dinner at the lighthouse was amazing, (though I'm amazed how much lamb these people make without using garlic. They have garlic around here, they just don't seem to use it with lamb at all...still good, though) but then it was off to bed.

The best thing about the room I was in was the view from the window in the morning. Who wouldn’t want to wake up to that? After a splendid breakfast, it was back to the rails again. The taxi ride back illuminated all the scenery I’d missed the night before. And the sheep. Again, sheep and beautiful green hills everywhere. Although, my driver warned, people from London are selling their pricey houses down in England and buying big plots of land up here in southern Scotland for cheap. It’s the same everywhere.

So here I am, typing this missive at the rather spartan train station here in Stranraer, waiting for my train to Glasgow or Inverness.