Skip to main content

Scotland Part 1 - Glasgow and the Isle of Skye

Glasgow

We arrived in Glasgow on Saturday morning after connecting through Heathrow. The connection was a touch tight but fine or way too close for comfort, depending on whether you're me (former) or Hannah (latter). 

Glasgow is chockablock with fish symbols, and not of the Jesus fish variety. A restaurant served us water from a pitcher shaped as a fish, for example. As it turns out, this refers to one of the four miracles of the patron saint of Glasgow, Saint (I'm not kidding) Mungo. The legend goes like this: King Riderch (I found various spellings for this name, one particularly ambitious spelling included three consecutive ds) of Cadzow, gave his wife, Queen Languoreth a ring as a gift. She in turn, gave the ring to one of Riderich's knights as a gift. Riderch found out about this re-gift and became suspicious that his wife might his wife was being unfaithful, and also - perhaps - a little peeved she re-gifted his ring, because who does that? Anyway, the king gave Languoreth a day to produce the ring and said that if she couldn't, he would execute her. Languoreth went to Mungo with her conundrum. Mungo told one of his lackeys to bring him a salmon from the river Clyde and from inside its mouth, Mungo pulled the ring.

We spent a day in Glasgow, and we enjoyed the Kelvingrove Museum and restaurants Outlier and Gloriosa.

Isle of Skye

We drove to the Isle of Skye on Sunday. No trip with Hannah would be complete without a detour to the middle of nowhere to visit an inconveniently located restaurant. In this case the restaurant was Inver, and it was situated along what I can only describe as a bicycle path, but what is for people in the UK a road that accommodates traffic from two opposing directions. Inver was lovely. We had langoustines, lamb, and halibut.

From Inver we made our way over several hours to the Kinloch Lodge. Along the way Hannah and I took in the stunning highlands landscape, which is a mountainous, rocky and mostly barren landscape, dotted here and there with woods.

The Kinloch Lodge is the former hunting lodge of the chiefs of the MacDonald clan and current favorite stay-cation locale for Eddie Redmayne. The MacDonalds are a large norse-gaelic clan that dates back about a millennia. More recently and more humorously relevant to our times, it included one Ronald MacDonald.

Ronald MacDonald, 14th Baronet, 21st Chief of Sleat

The sun sets late here. After dinner on Sunday, we went for a walk around 10pm, before sunset, only to be beset by midges, the local bloodsucking pest, along the shore.

On Monday we went to the Old Man of Storr, which isn't a man at all, but actually more of a phallic shaped rock (so man-ly?). This hike took us up a steep mountain slope dotted with sheep. At one point we were led quite astray by our hiking app, which took us through a nearby sheep pasture, complete with lots of sheep poop. 

Finally, on Tuesday, we made our way from Skye to Dunkeld, which we had been calling "Dunk-Feld" nearly up to the point of our arrival. Fortunately, we corrected this error before arriving (whew!). On the way, we took a detour to visit the Fairy Pools, which were notably lacking in Fairies, unfortunately, though they were pretty.   












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The dishwasher has a fondue setting

Zug, Switzerland - I visited the office today to pack up my things in preparation for our impending departure from Switzerland. While I was there, I noticed a curious icon on the office's dishwasher. Further investigation revealed that the icon was for a fondue/raclette wash function. The icon is pictured below. The manufacturer, V-Zug Ltd. (subsidiary of Metall Zug Group, a Swiss industrial holding company), describes the fondue/raclette function this way: "The typical Swiss programme for the Swiss market from the Swiss manufacturer! Caquelons and raclette pans are cleaned to perfection without having to soak first. The programme can also be used as a 'super-intensive' run thanks to its active soaking phase. Pre-rinsing of burned-on soufflé or gratin dishes is a thing of the past." V-Zug apparently makes this feature available on several of its Adora models of dishwasher.  Upon discovering this, I of course rushed home to investigate my own apartment'...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fording the Fjords

We stayed one night in  Ålesund and for a few days in  Øye. These cities are fun for me at least partly because they use letters unique to the Danish-Norwegian alphabet, the 'a' with the circle on top and 'o' with the line through it (official letter names pending further review). Ålesund  is a port town of about 70,000 on the western side of Norway on the Atlantic coast.  We landed there  around 1100PM, but it looked more like 700 or 800pm, owing to the latitude (about 62 degrees north). Throughout our stay here, I've been very excited about the (nearly) never-ending daylight. The sun sets at about 1130PM rises about four hours later, but the hours between are marked more by a duskiness rather than a true darkness. We only stayed in  Ålesund overnight (if you want to call it "night") before departing the next morning for  Øye, which lies at the tip of a remote Fjord, the Norangsfjorden. Some locals told us that another nearby town, Urke, had less than...
1 comment
Read more

Edinburgh

We stayed in Edinburgh for two days to conclude our Scotland adventure. Hannah spent a semester in Edinburgh in her spritely college days and she remembers it fondly. As we wandered through the city, Hannah would point out various places and reminisce. Here was the restaurant where she would gather with friends to celebrate special occasions (The Outsider), here was the local café they frequented between classes (Peter's Yard), this was the park she walked through to get home (The Meadows), and there is the shitty hostel she stayed in when she arrived (less interesting!).  Edinburgh was fun. We liked it more than Glasgow. Edinburgh had more to see (more ancient castles, museums and monuments) and the city was denser and more lively. Glasgow just felt more utilitarian.  Hannah - of course - led me to the far-flung corners of the city in an effort to find the newest and best food, including marching me straight out of Edinburgh and into the neighboring city of Leith. We ate well...
Post a Comment
Read more