Spring Break: GLASGOW, EDINBURGH (3 weeks in US/UK/US)

Glasgow:
We went to the Willow Tea Room, designed by Charles Rennie Macintosh, and ordered a real afternoon tea: scones, cucumber sandwiches, shortbread cookies. It all seemed very British. Macintosh's designs are quite similar to Frank Lloyd Wright's in America which we also seek out in our travels.

Other than the CRM architecture sites, we ended up not liking Glasgow very much. It must be the smoking capital of UK! Curt called Blackpool the cesspool and Glasgow the ashcan of the country.

Edinburgh:
Followed the usual signs to a Park & Ride location outside the city, but it turned out that it was their Grand Opening - lots of dignitaries and speeches and reporters. I offered to be their first customer (and was secretly hoping to get interviewed by the TV station) but there were no actual buses to take us into town. It wasn't open for business yet. So we went to a different Park & Ride further along that sadly lacked cameramen, politicians and personal fame.

We liked Edinburgh. Curt found a gold fountain that he would have liked to sketch but the sun wasn't shining in the right direction.

We went to the Scottish National Gallery and enjoyed their special exhibit of Impressionists. They also had a a nice permanent collection - a Boticelli, 3 Raphaels, a Monet haystack, and even a Fredrick Church (one of his landscapes was always our family's favourite at the Seattle Art Museum).

After the museum, Curt found a well-positioned bench and sketched the city skyline while I ate lunch and walked down the Royal Mile. I found a Christmas shop, bought an ornament, and walked up to the castle. When I got back to Curt, he was done already!

We walked to the the new Scottish Parliament Building next - a modern building that doesn't really fit in with the rest of Edinburgh. Curt says it's not iconic. But it's interesting, if a little wacky.

Our #3 son, a whiskey connoisseur, wanted us to buy him a bottle of "the good shit" while we were in Scotland, but we were too cheap to buy a bottle of Scotch and ship it to US from either Scotland or New Zealand. So we sent him a (free) post card from a whiskey shop instead.