Two very different cities!
Glasgow is more of a working town compared to Edinburgh. There is more to see in Edinburgh, probably because it was not bombed as much as Glasgow was during WW2 and so there is more history to explore.
Edinburg
In a nutshell, Edinburg is made up 2 towns – Old and New. Old Town is where the Castle is, The Royal Mile, The Historical District. New Town is just that… newer! In 18th century, Old Town became very crowded and overpopulated and so a new town was built.
New town, where our hotel was, is comprised of 3 long parallel streets, a nice square on either end, 5 shorter cross-streets creating a grid pattern, and a bunch of alleys. The yellow arrow points to our hotel:
We arrived in the late afternoon, and had just spend days and days visiting one little city after another, so after a succession of one-street towns we were happy to arrive in big busy bustling place!
We had about an hour and a half to go until we had to be on the bus to leave for the evening’s festivities, so we decided to explore “New Town” around our hotel. It was ALL SHOPPING! full of all the usual suspects like Zara, H&M… you know… all the same stuff you can find at home. I hate shopping as you know, but I bet the ladies on the tour who seemed to go on vacation solely to shop loved it!
Looking passed the store fronts, the streets were nice, wide, statues in the intersections where the short streets crossed the long ones and lots of pubs in the alleys… but since we are not shoppers after about an hour or so of walking around and exploring, then stopping drink in a pub, we checked New Town off the list. Done.
That night we re-joined the tour for on an optional diner excursion where we tried some Haggis.
New Town done, the next day was for exploring Old Town. We could not wait! The view from our room looked out over the Old Town skyline… calling us! The plan was a city tour on the bus followed by a guided tour of the castle grounds in the morning and then we’d be set free until about 4PM. Great!
Since we are early birds, we had sometime between breakfast and the time we had to be on the bus - about an hour – so we decided to go for a stroll in the Princes Street Gardens across the street from the hotel.
We came across a memorial, I think it was the Scottish American War Memorial – not sure. This one:
The “tombs” (or what ever they were) were set in a semi circle. We walked up the stairs you see here, and walked along the U-shaped path. At the “top of the U” I stepped on something and lost my footing a little. I looked down and I saw it was a walking stick. I said to my husband: “look! it’s a walking stick, I wonder what it’s doing here” and I rolled it around with my foot.
Then this man YELLED at me: “Hey!” I swung around. Some dishevelled, maybe drunk I don’t know, old man was sitting on a bench on the other side of the memorial with his friend. “That’s mine! you don’t have to go stepping on it and kicking it around with your foot!” He was not happy.
“Sorry!” I yelled back and trying to sound both cheery and apologetic as to not to antagonize him. “I stepped on it by accident!”
Now this is the difference between men and women. Had I been alone, I would have just left. My husband on the other hand wanted to confront him.
We kept strolling around the memorial, and when we got a little closer to them, we could see just how ratty tatty the guy was. He was probably harmless, just a little loud and maybe even unbalanced – but confrontational. “Hello, Good Day” he said to us nicely. “Please let me explain”. Ok, calm tone. Good sign. Then he went on and on about how I was disrespectful for stepping on HIS things, and if I see something on the ground it’s because someone put it there on purpose so I should not touch it, basically taking down to me. My husband was getting mad now : “she slipped on it! she almost fell!” he exclaimed, but that just opened the door for the guy to launch into a monologue about how I was unaware of my surroundings and I should be paying more attention blah blah…
There was something about the whole exchange that seemed charged to me. Like under the surface it was all about who was going to throw the first punch. I think rational discussions with this kind of person is pointless, so my goal was just to keep everyone calm and smiling. I was a very uncomfortable but stayed pleasant and polite. When he told me I should watch where I was going, I just agreed with him, thanked him for his advice, and wished him a nice day as we left.
The whole event ruined our mood for a few hours and my husband was getting madder and madder about it all as the morning went on but we eventually forgot about him and enjoyed the rest of our day in Edinburg – but we did not go back to the Gardens!
The “included with the tour” Castle visit was nice, it focused on the outside more than the inside which was fine with us. When the tour was over, we split from the group and strolled down the Royal Mile on our own.
It was a nice stroll, quite picturesque!
I especially enjoyed visiting the Thistle Chapel of St Giles Cathedral – it was gorgeous!
We also visited Palace of Holyroodhouse – The Queen’s Home in Edinburgh, the Scottish Parliament Building, and climbed the Scott Monument.
It was a really full day which made us wonder, if we come back for one of the 2 extra days we had booked on our own at the end of the tour… what would we do??
We re-joined the tour around 4PM for another optional excursion to go visit the Royal Yacht Britannia – a highlight for me – and then diner.
Diner was AWFUL. TEEEERRRRRIBLE! really a shame because the restaurant itself seemed quite nice! It looked like a place we might have gone to on our own, but I don’t think their forte is catering to large groups. I had a not-so-firm-almost-watery paté entree, followed by a mushy plate of tasteless pasta in a tasteless mushroom cream sauce. The food was crap! But, it was nice to have a chance to socialize with other people on our tour.
Glasgow
Our tour started and ended in Glasgow. We didn’t see any of it at the start because we arrived from Italy around midnight and hit the ground running early the next morning to go to Oban and the Isle of Mull etc., but we didn’t feel like we were missing out on anything because we booked an extra 2 nights at the end of the tour and we’d make up for any lost time then!
When we booked the 2 nights, we didn’t really have a plan. We said we’d probably spend one extra day in Glasgow and go back to Edinburgh for the second if we felt we did not see enough of it during the tour, but we ended up spending both days in Glasgow instead since the first day was rained out and we wanted one day to see the sights on a sunny day!
Glasgow was not touristy – in fact, I had to search for a souvenir shop on the last day as opposed to every other town we had seen up until then where it seemed there was 2 on every corner!
On the first day, we did rainy day activities: Museums.
We started with The Riverside Museum. We enjoyed it, but it reminded me of the automobile museum that I had visited on my own the previous week in Torino when my husband was sick, so parts of it were a little redundant.
We had to take the subway to get there, and we did get a kick out of that. The trains are SO SMALL!! Like it’s made for dwarfs ha-ha! The doors wrap around the ceiling and you have to stoop to get in!
Lunch was great – my favourite activity. We went to Jamie’s Italian and it was PERFECT for my mood on a rainy day. Casual, comfortable, friendly, loungy, delicious!
In the afternoon, we went to visit the People's Palace. I liked this museum of Social History. It was very interesting and informative and I would have lingered longer if it wasn’t so HOT inside! Stupid spot lights!
Despite the rain, we still did a lot of walking – especially along the 2 main pedestrian streets: Buchanan Street and Sauchiehall (Suck. E. Hall) Street which was steps away from our hotel.
Also thanks to this proximity, we had super at the pub in the hotel that night. We were pretty soaked from our day in the rain and the idea of changing and staying dry for a meal was too good to pass up!
On the second day, the sun came out and we were exited to see the sights against a blue sky! That took about 2 hours and we were done. What to do with the rest of the afternoon? A whole lot of nothing!
I wish I had known or rather: I wish I had realized that Glasgow is “doable” in half a day. I was so dazzled by the low price tag of 75$ a night that I didn’t really think it through. I regret it. In retrospect, we should have just gone to London if we were going to spend an extra two days anywhere! Ah well, live and learn!
