The flights from RDU to Glasgow fell in the "yes, but" category. Yes, I got to use the Admiral's Club at RDU, but it was in the process of being moved. And BA wouldn't let me into their lounge at Gatwick at all despite my business class award. Yes, the seats in AA's business class were big with lots of leg room, but they didn't recline all the way to horizontal. Yes, the food was good, but the plastic cutlery looks ridiculous. Yes, I got a personal video screen, but there was little I wanted to watch. Yes, we arrived early, but that just extended my layover to five painful hours.
On the unqualified plus side, both flights left on time and arrived without incident. Food service takes so long in business class you have less time in which to fail to sleep (and noise canceling headsets did help). My luggage was checked through to Glasgow, which essentially meant that I skipped customs. Would-be smugglers take note that my bag was delivered to a separate carousel behind a glass door labelled for transit and foreign-origin baggage, but I didn't see any custom's officers.
An easy-to-find airport bus took me to Glasgow's Buchanan bus station. A reasonably cheap taxi took me to the Victorian House Hotel. I climbed 66 stairs to a single-with-bath tucked under the roof and collapsed into bed. With eye shades supplied by AA I got three hours sleep, which let me switch to local time for dinner and bed.
My only previous visit to Glasgow was back in the 60's, and I remembered it as grey, gloomy and gritty. I think I slept on the floor of a tenement flat, and I do remember the totally impenetrable accent of a bus conductor supposedly speaking English. After reading recent accounts in the New York Times, I thought that I might be able to write about glittering Glasgow, but no such luck. Perhaps if I had visited the newly fashionable West End my view would have been different, but with only one day I stuck to the center around Sauchiehall Street. Despite some new glass and concrete buildings, and my appreciation of the several Art Nouveau survivals, I still found the city grey, gloomy and gritty. One major plus was the St. Munro Museum of Religious Life and Art, opened in 1993. Stunningly ecumenical, it spanned the ages from Isis to Baha'i and the world from Native Americans to Aboriginal Australians. I particularly enjoyed the stained glass, some designed by Burne-Jones, and a magnificent representation of Shiva as Lord of the Dance in a circle of flames. I was interested to read that both the Shiva, and a non-traditional Christ by Dali, had been vandalized the year the museum opened.
Across the road I wandered through Provand's Lordship, built in 1471 and the oldest domestic building in Glasgow. Thick stone walls, wide planked floors and dark beamed ceilings oozed age. Upstairs I found an early bed sitting room, furnished as for the church official who lived there from 1501-1513 with a big bed, settle, chairs, velvet wall hanging and a fully-dressed altar. The nearby cathedral was interesting chiefly for the remarkable discordance produced by the juxtaposition of aggressively modern stained glass and ancient stone. I recovered at the Willow Tea Rooms, redecorated in accord with Rennie Mackintosh's original Art Nouveau-style designs. The woman at the next table told me she had grown up in Glasgow during World War II and that the reproduction was exact.
While the Mackintosh room at the Huntlerian Gallery was closed for renovation I found another Art Nouveau gem by accident - the Princeīs Square mall. A huge iron peacock crowned the facade, inside a mosaic floor was surrounded by four tiers of galleries with wrought iron balconies and art glass balls, a different color for each floor.
Glasgow proved much hillier than I remembered, my hotel perched at the top of a street that would be a challenge for cars, I canīt imagine trying it in a wheel chair. Indeed, Scotland and the north of England in general gave me plenty of exercise and train time was a welcome break, beginning with the West Highland Line all the way from Glasgow to the terminus in Mallaig. On the advice of a train book extolling the route I abandoned my reserved seat for one on the left side of the train, and was rewarded with stunning views of glassy lochs reflecting grass and gorse-covered hills. These empty wind-swept uplands were indeed a world away from steamy, teeming Saigon, two continents, 17,000 miles and seven months ahead of me.
This was clearly a hikersī and bikersī train with a constantly changing population, including a Californian woman on a "spiritual pilgrimage" who was managing to fit a laptop into a bag smaller then mine. From Mallaig I took the Carmac ferry to Armadale on Skye, beating a hasty retreat inside when I felt the force of the wind. I had to wait an hour for the ferry in Mallaig and faced a two hour wait for a bus in Armadale, with nothing in sight but a couple of shacks selling souvenirs and drinks. I wound up sharing a taxi to Broadford with a Swedish family, where I caught a Citylink bus on to Portree.
Buses are a significant expense on Skye - the bus cost more than my share of the taxi. They are also scarce. I just missed the 13:05 back to Portree from remote Dunvegan castle (I was buying a postcard of the MacLeods' lucky fairy flag, maybe itīs only lucky for MacLeods), and chose to hitchhike for the first time in decades rather than wait over three hours for the next bus. (I got rides from one elderly sheep farmer and from a family of Poles in a minivan.)
Despite the poor weather and Sunday shutdown I enjoyed Portree, whose pastel houses surround a quiet, U-shaped harbor. My B&B, overlooking the water, was easy walking distance from the bus stop and from Cafe Arriba, which offered delicious sandwiches on home-made bread and an interesting evening menu.
While I didnīt tackle the famous but steep Cuillin Hills, I did do a circular walk taking in some of the cliffs. The dark green grass, light green lichen and pale brown bones of last yearīs bracken were lit by glowing golden gorse bushes that seemed like old friends. Back in primary school I collected wild flowers and I was also glad to recognize pale yellow primroses among the still-curled fronds of this yearīs bracken, which looked like a collection of miniature shepherdīs crooks.
Riding the bus to Kyle of Lochalsh to catch my next train -- over the fairly new and seriously expensive toll-bridge -- I realized that the rain at Portree had fallen as snow at higher elevations and a distinct snow-line was visible on the Cuillins, transformed thereby from forbidding to majestic. Bad weather is clearly common here, the two thatched cottages I saw had netting over the thatch held down by many stones, and other houses had gable ends extending protectively beyond their tiles.
"Scotland to Saigon by rail" began at Kyle, with a seven-hour train trip to Edinburgh via Inverness. Like the West Highland Line, the first stretch of this line was an engineering triumph when it was first built (I hope the wire holding back the rocks is stronger than it looks) and a preservation society is dedicated to keeping it open. At Inverness the train acquired more coaches and more passengers, and the countryside became gentler and more populated. All across the Highlands I was struck by how empty the hills were -- empty of people, at least, although full of sheep. Only 5 million people live in Scotland and the population is declining. The clans were suppressed after the Jacobite uprising in 1745 (Bonnie Prince Charlieīs less than bonnie campaign), then farmers were dispossessed to make way for sheep that more profitably converted grass into wool and meat, and a potato famine was the final straw. These days a very few people control much of the land, which is kept clear for hunting as well as sheep. One plump bird I at first took for pheasant was almost certainly grouse.
My niece, a student at Edinburgh university, kindly shared her room with me, despite being somewhat incapacitated after breaking her wrist on a climbing wall (she will have an amanuensis for her exams, I think I would find dictating instead of writing quite difficult.)
I spent my first day in Edinburgh immersed in history -- regal and military at the castle and domestic elsewhere. The castle is more impressive from outside, looking up the steep-sided extinct volcano it crowns, than inside, where the most memorable sight was the Scottish War Memorial, built after WWI. The regimental names are a roll-call of Scottish history -- the Black Watch, the Royal Scots Greys, the Gordon Highlanders -- the battle honors redolent of WWI -- Marne, Ypres, the Somme -- and of the imperial past -- Mysore and Mangalore, Kabul and Kandahar and Baghdad. Plus ca change...
The much built-up and torn-down house called Gladstone Land with its shop downstairs and bed-sitting rooms up offered history writ small -- domestic details such as no water in the kitchen and secret compartments in the bedrooms made necessary by the lack of banks. I was allowed to sit in a chair dated 1610 and share a school group's lecture on life in the 17th century -- no baths, no underwear, no fruit or vegetables to speak of. I was surprised to learn that after the new town was built to the north, with its strict Georgian symmetry, the old town fell into disrepair and disrepute and the Royal Mile became a slum. To some extent it is still a slum, too noisy to be desirable.
The Georgian House was certainly more comfortable, if less interesting. Bigger rooms, higher ceilings, more light, elegant furniture, china and crystal -- if you could afford it this was good living. Even the kitchen, with four types of stoves and a gleaming battery of copper pots, seemed luxurious.
I arrived at the Edinburgh Crystal factory at 10:30. No tour until 13:00, the receptionist said, a tour group was booked. Taken aback, I asked if I could join the group. Good question: for the price of the regular tour I shared the VIP tour with a group of 10 Irishwomen. As VIPs we got to blow glass (although since we didnīt blow into a mold the result was a wafer-thin balloon) and even make a few cuts in a souvenir glass. I had trouble pressing hard enough against the spinning wheel, but produced reasonable cuts even so. (I gave the glass to my niece.)
A reminder to check return/onward transport times before leaving a stop: I just missed the once an hour bus I needed to reach Roslin, I waited out a hail storm in the bus shelter. Roslin chapel was worth the wait. A sculptor's playground, the inside dripped ornate stonework, including the apprentice pillar, so-called because the master carver reputedly killed his apprentice from jealousy when he saw it.
Outside, the chapel was covered with scaffolding and a protective cover while the roof was restored. A bonus -- I was able to walk the scaffolding at gallery height for an up-close look at the flying buttresses. I crowned a long day with a "literary pub walk". Scottish literature, that is, which the guides mostly translated for us foreigners. We spent quite a lot of the tour in pubs. Fun, but not worth 8 GBP.
I did not eat haggis. I did not eat porridge. I did find the food very variable -- from a bad buffet breakfast in Glasgow to a good fresh-cooked bacon and eggs in the Ben Tianavaig B&B in Portree, from burnt veggies in the Isles pub to a huge portion of excellent crab tart in the Cafe Arriba (both in Portree). Glasgow produced a good Italian meal at the Antipasti -- chicken breast with asparagus and gnocchi in a cream and white wine sauce -- with a glass of Italian Chardonnay and a view of a kiltmakerīs shop. In Edinburgh I enjoyed mussels at the Mussel Inn (where else), although the prawn appetizer was tasteless.
Sent from Leon, Spain, May 20, 2004
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