Meanderings & Our Glasgow Pub Crawl

Grins, Gasps, Gripes and Gratitudes of our very full and fun day in Glasgow!!

We started out with some fresh bread (hot out of the oven baked by our AirBnB host Kenny!) ... it was soooo good. And then ... the day just got better!

GRINS: The guy at the Glasgow Central Train Station started us off with a lbelly laugh today! The terminal is enormous and we needed to exit through the right doors. So we asked him:  "How do we get down to the level under the bridge?"  "Well" ... he says without missing a beat "you hava to shovel." Never even cracked a smile until we started laughing. He was brilliant!!! And, his sense of humor is not at all rare! The Scots are hilarious ... in the driest ways possible! 😀

We headed out to the Transportation Museum and spent some time learning more about sea life aboard the GlenLee ... A famous Tall Ship from the past! it was frightening to consider that people had to climb up over 100 feet in the air to adjust the sails!!!! I will post a video if I can figure out how!

PUBCRAWL ... was a definite GRIN + a GRATITUDE!

We decided we couldn't leave Scotland without enjoying our own ...self-contrived ... Pub Crawl! It was such a great time!! One thing we learned quickly is that you place your order at the bar ... then find a seat ... and bring it back to your table with you! We started at 'The Piper Bar'... where we sampled the Stornoway Stack! Such authentic Scottish fare!! I even liked it!! And ... John did justice to his Scotch (Bowmore) with a dropper of water at the table! He probably never let it rest long enough though! Just sayin' ... he seemed a bit impatient to me!

Next on our stop was 'The Toll Booth' . Please meet our new friend ... Samuel McCaffrey. See picture below!! He'd already tipped a few back ... well ... maybe a few too many. He expressed that he had trouble understanding our accents 😉. But ... we learned his wife passed from cancer... and he's a musician ... and he could name more Canadian singers than we could! And ... he could name at least 7 left handed guitar players too!! We wanted to buy him a beer but the bartender had already cut him off. It was lovely to chat with him though. Everyone has a story. Hopefully we redeemed Canadians because an American acquaintance of his told him that he hated Canadians. I guess our rivalry is alive and well and now known to the Scots. 😉

Bar 91 ... more upscale and trendy ... we had the "mezze" ... hummous, falafel, roasted peppers, mixed olives and pitta bread. But ... POP QUIZ ... can you guess what is in the bottle in the pic below?? We had to figure it out ... ! They were on all the tables ... just like salt and pepper!

And thank goodness for the lovely lady drinking tea who saw we were trying to get the servers attention and sent him back our way. It was so loud in there that he couldn't even hear us calling to him. We chatted later and he said as the night goes on the Scots get louder ... the music gets louder ... then the Scots have to get louder ... and he speculated that before we know it we'd have a couple of new best friends sitting at our table!! Little did we know how accurate his premonition was going to be!!

In fact ... our experience of the Scots has been so stellar!! The people at the table next to us at Bar 91 looked like they had some kind of sangria... but no ... upon inquiry we discovered it was gin. The gentleman even offered for me to taste it!! Gotta love that kind of hospitality! 😁 And ... just out of interest ... John counted that out of 41 patrons ... only 2 were on their phone. In the Toll Booth ... no one was using their phone!

We also found ourselves at 'Denholms' ... and ... met some extraordingary folks! Had some really genuine conversation with Chris, Helen (his second mom) and his real mom and enjoyed some incredibly impressive karaoke. Can they ever sing!!! We had such fun with these delightful souls that we stayed until way past our bed time. I took some video ... but it doesn't do it justice really!

GASP: Its such a small world. We couldn't sit together on the HopOn Hop Off due to the rain. John squeezed in beside a lady ... and he could tell when she said the seat was wet that she was not Scottish. Turns out she was from Medicine Hat! 

And another gasp what when we discovered we were sitting on the wrong train after our Pub Crawl! Were it not for a very kind gentleman at the end of the evening ... alerting us to the fact that we were on the right platform, but the wrong train ....well ... who knows how long it would have taken us to get home! There is always always always a snaffu!

GRIPES: Only the lack of sleep!! Still have our days and nights confused. Didn't ... couldn't ... fall alseep last night before 3:00am here!! Gah. Not good. And I'm still up now ... at 11:37pm ... hoping though that once I close my eyes that the sleep will come!

GRATITUDES: Oh my ...so many! I even found a lucky penny to tuck into my shoe earlier today at the train station. Oh ...and it rained all morning ... but the sun shone for us while we enjoyed the exhibits ... and ... the pub crawl (we were on foot!). And ... check out the sign that I saw in the bathroom of the last pub! I am so grateful for the humanity so generously expressed within it!! Oh gosh ... and more of their wonderful humor can be found in the other wall posting!

And so ... it was such a great day! Hopin for a good sleep! We are off to Edinburgh tomorrow for the Fringe Festival!! Talk to you later ..... xoLäs mer