Honeymoon Time: Glasgow, Scotland!

After spending a night and 2 full days exploring London, on Wednesday September 3rd, we caught a late night coach which took us to Glasgow, Scotland... it was about 8 hours and we got to Glasgow around 8am on the Thursday. It was a long, full coach that was pretty uncomfortable and there was a man behind us with a very heavy Scottish accent talking to his girlfriend "Mary" (with accent "Miri") about how he is "sorry" and was losing weight and changing his life around. Really an unforgettable phone conversation for a completely quiet bus. But you know, no complaints for 20 pounds (less than $40 for both of us!).

We arrived by coach to the Glasgow coach station around 8-9am. We were sooo exhausted after trying to sleep on the bus overnight to no avail. We didn't have any hotel booked at that time, but knew there was a Premier Inn nearby for around 80 pounds a night... we walked with our luggage to the Premier Inn and... success! A room for 2 nights: Thurs and Fri available and we were able to check in at that early time! We learned from London that we need our rest to explore so we crashed until 1pm, then went out to explore Glasgow. This pic is in front of our hotel, post-nap, feeling up to start the day!

We looked up a bunch of things to do in all the cities we visited, and we found that one of the recommendations in Glasgow was called the "Lighthouse", which offered a museum as well as a good view of the whole city! This is the staircase that we walked p to get to the view... just a cool picture... Aleksy's at the bottom looking up and I'm up a couple of stories,

W got to see a few cities from tall buildings/towers, and Glasgow was one of them. It wasn't quite as high as our London outlook, but still really cool to see the city from above!

After the lighthouse, we headed over to the gothic cathedral which is right beside the necropolis. We didn't go in the cathedral (got some pictures of the exterior), but we made sure that we were able to go through the necropolis, which was so big, extending over lots of land, and gradually going up for a view of the city too! The graves/tombs were so old, large and interesting to read. Aleksy and I were really drawn to and shocked by the family tombstones with multiple children who died at very young ages which seemed to be very common in the 1700-1800s.

This picture was taken from an upper point of the necropolis with a view of the gothic cathedral (left) ad the hospital (the large building extending for most the picture to the right of the cathedral).

We learned so quick that people in Scotland were so nice (way nicer than London), and when Aleksy and I were walking trying to find the necropolis and cathedral a lady who was in her car on the phone saw we were lost, asked the person she was talking to hold on a sec so she could give us direction... and we didn't even ask! The people were just so friendly and helpful!

Our plan after the necropolis was to go on a brew tour of the Tenants brewery, but they were full for the evening because their last tour was at 5pm. We booked our tour for the following day and decided to go back to the "Old College Bar", which we had passed on the way to the necropolis for some beers! This was the oldest pub in Glasgow, and we had a couple Tenants beers, at which time I realized a) I friggin love Tenants beers and b) I didn't miss the warm, strong beers served in London (Tenants was cold!).

After our beers, we sought out a dinner place... looking for something of the pub sort, and this is when we realized that finding a place to eat supper after 6-7pm is next to impossible! We did end up finding a place, which was pub style where I was able to order a meat pie and chips, and Aleksy had some haggis for the first time! I tried it too... and I actually liked it!

Day 2: Our day was pretty laid back the second day: we woke up and it was raining! So we decided to take it easy, and do some shopping. We discovered the Primark store, which is like a UK Forever 21 (they did also have Forever 21) and I bought rain boots and a raincoat (which was so handy for the UK's crazy weather!) and Aleksy bought a sweater, some pants, a "manbag", and a tie!
We then walked along the water, probably about 3 km, then headed back for our brew tour of Tenants.

We got all ready for our tour with our "On Tour" vests, hats, and headphones. We got a tour of how beer was brewed, going through the whole process (Aleksy would go on and on here about this process)... essentially, we went through where the beer was brewed and the bottling process.

And at the end of the tour, we got to enjoy "a pint" in the lounge area of the brewery. The tour guide who is in this picture on the farthest left said because it was Friday evening, that we could have more! So we had a few drinks, and got a picture with the whole gang that we toured with. These guys were from Brazil and were engineers studying abroad: such a coincidence... 7 engineers and me!

After our tour, we sought out to find a good fish & chip place for some take away... it was getting a bit late at 8-9pm, so we thought take away would be better and we knew we needed to have lots of fish & chips in the UK. The fish & chips we had were soo tasty... we saw them dip the fresh fish and cook it in front of us. And they don't serve with ketchup... just salt and malt vinegar.

On our loooonnngg walk earlier in the day (in the crazy on and off rain weather), we scoped out a good pub that was not a food pub, but a good place to get a drink later at night. We went to the Scotia in Glasgow on our last night for a couple drinks and some very drunk man saw we were taking a selfie and volunteered to take our picture: this is his masterpiece! Ha! Just a little fuzzy...





After our last night in Glasgow (Fri the 5th), we caught our pre-booked bus to Edinburgh the next morning around 10am! Next Honeymoon post is our favourite city of the honeymoon: Edinburgh Scotland!