Once we arrived in Glasgow we walked down a main street for a bit, then changed directions towards our hostel. We checked our bags, since check in wasn’t until three. After that we got some food at a nearby local place, where we would end up eating breakfast for the next few days. Then we walked around the city. We saw a weed legalization rally, and later realized that the date was 4/20, which didn’t make much sense to me as that would be written 20/4 here. We also so a greenhouse, and the worlds largest terracota fountain. Then we walked around a beautiful graveyard…that sound weird, but it was really pretty and on a giant hill. From there we saw the city cathedral, and great views in general. After that we headed back to the hostel to check into our room.
On our way back we came across the famous statue wearing a traffic cone! If you don’t know the story it goes as such: people put a traffic cone on the statue’s head, police took it off, people kept putting it back on, police gave up, the end.
Somehow Glasgow was even warmer than Colchester, so while it was beautiful out our room was very hot and uncomfortable. Thankfully, it was just warm inside for that day. We decided to leave the inside heat to walk down the River Clyde towards the transportation museum. We got there about 45 minutes until close so we walked through parts of it, and figured out we’d have extra time to come back if we wanted. That museum was very impressive though. Trains, planes, boats, subways, cars, bikes, motorcycles, you name it they had it. The plaques were also usually fun to read with a bit of humor which goes far for a museum. This is coming from someone who very much wanted to avoid museums for a while after France, and the one in Germany.
Afterwards, we wandered from there towards the university and botanic gardens. We didn’t quite make it to those as we had been doing a ton of walking and still had a 40 minute walk back to our hostel. In fact my phone says that I broke my walking record, which had previously been set it Paris. That should’ve been broken in Rome, but this time I agreed with my phone’s clearly defective step counter.
The next day we got up and walked down the River Clyde again in the opposite direction to kill some time. We had booked a train for a trip to Loch Lomond the previous night. After walking a bit and getting some lunch, we were off to the Loch. We walked around it some, and considered renting a 4 person bike for the three of us to try and get further along the lake before sunset. They had just chained up the bikes when we asked, so we just kept walking. The lake was beautiful and you could see giant hills and mountains in the distance. We also had an a good Italian meal before heading back to Glasgow.
As for the second half of the trip I’ll split that into a different post, like I have been recently. I know people don’t like to do too much reading. That’s why I’m uploading the pictures last Muahahaha! It’s actually because I’m done sorting through my photos, but waiting on friends to upload their to shared albums. So just wait a bit longer, they’ll be up soon.
Until next time,
Reed
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Read more from Reed at https://reedingatcolchester.files.wordpress.com/
To find out more about the Exchange program with University of Essex, visit http://studyabroad.uark.edu/exchange/essex
