Many previous trips to Glasgow have been work-related, involving visits to housing developments and community projects across the city, so it was a pleasure to spend a few days as a tourist. Lisa wanted to visit some friends and family so I was happy to tag along for the ride.
We stayed with the Lenny Henry-owned Premier Inn chain at Charing Cross and spent most of Saturday and Sunday on foot round the city centre. Stumbled across an excellent vegan restaurant called Mono, also a music venue and record store. Its range of CDs and vinyl was unbelievable, and in a previous life I would have cleared that place out! As the husband of a most-of-the-time vegan, have to say the food was good too.
Record shops aside (and Fopp is as good as ever), its a sign of how for Belfast has come that almost all the big name stores in Glasgow now also reside over here. Although Glasgow city centre is also pound shop heaven and I hope that particular retail phenomenon doesn’t catch on here as rapidly. On Saturday night we saw Terminator: Salvation, which was much better than I was expecting. Fully expect Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to blow it out of the water later this week though.
On Sunday morning we took a walk through Glasgow Green to visit the People’s Palace, a refreshingly honest social history of Glasgow, considering it’s council-funded. Sadly our local politics is still too divided to make a similar museum a reality for Belfast. Fernhill House, the museum of the Shankill, was probably the closest we’ve got. The People’s Palace wasn’t high-tech or ultra-interactive but full of accessible information.
We celebrated our glorious fourth wedding anniversary on Sunday evening with a meal at the Ubiquitous Chip restaurant. Hey if it’s good enough for Kylie, Jay-Z and Orlando Bloom…
Monday was a train journey up the west coast to Helensburgh to visit Lisa’s aunt. We went for lunch at the Drovers Inn, by Loch Lomond. It’s Rob Roy territory and the Inn is said to be haunted. The place has a real olde worlde thing going on, but could do with a bit of Mr Sheen. We flew back to Belfast on Tuesday afternoon via Prestwick Airport. The airport’s slogan is the old slang ”pure dead brilliant.” Given these statistics, I thought it was unusual for an airport to advertise itself to foreign tourists using the word “dead.”
Though having said that, the whole weekend was actually pure dead brilliant.
