SCOTLAND - Part One

OMG I went to freakin Scotland!

Once upon a time, my friend and I woke up and realized that all of our other friends just up and left Mallorca (3 in Germany and 1 in Madrid). We were like Qué the f?, how did they just leave and we didn't realize it. So my friend and I decided to plan a superly awesomely AMAZING trip without them. We went on Ryanair to see what destinations had cheap flights, and if it looked like a cool place to go, we would go. Playing this game of chance, we ended up finding a round trip flight to Glasgow for only 40 euros and that's where we decided to go. Simple as that. We would leave in about 2 weeks and of course we were super impressed with ourselves for taking the initiative to plan this trip on our own. One of our other friends, one of the friends who went to Germany, decided she wanted to come too. Since I already knew she was going to Germany, I didn't hold it against her and told her she could go : )

EWW, you're gonna need to go to that line.

The big day arrives and we were finally in Scotland. I knew I would have a good time, but just waiting in line to get our passports checked reassured me. The woman directing people to the passport checking lines sees my American passport and goes, "EWW, you're gonna need to go to that line." and points to the line for non-EU citizens. I thought, what a hilarious welcome to Scotland! I know I'm gonna love this place : ) Once we finally made it out of the airport, we get to the bus stop and realize the last bus for the night left 35 minutes ago. A woman, who looked quite frazzled,  and another guy, with an enormous nose, offered to split a cab to the city center with us. The hostel guy told us another bus would be coming, but it would have been a 45 minute wait. So we hop in the cab with complete strangers and head for the city center. This trip should take a little less than an hour, but luckily our taxi man drove like a bat out of hell and we got there in about 30 minutes. Of course, we get lost looking for the hostel (it's to be expected of us), but we finally find it, shower, and go straight to sleep.

Winter Gardens and People's Palace

The next morning, we head out to see the wonders of Scotland... and of course we go the wrong way. Once we orient ourselves, we finally make it to this really cool place called the Glasgow Green, which I just found out is from the 15th century and is the oldest public space in Britain (had to go find the pamphlet for that info). In the Glasgow Green, there's this greenhouse thing, called the Winter Garden, with plants and a cafe and we go in and wait for the attached museum to open.  

SIDE NOTE:  There was some weird movie filming there which involved a priest and strangulation. I'm not quite sure what was going on, so I steered clear of that.

Anywho, I take pictures of all the awesome flowers (because my mom loves them), but unfortunately, my camera gives up on life and the battery dies. Luckily, I have two friends with me who I can harass mercilessly for pictures. Once the museum, the People's Palace, finally opens we go in and explore. I do believe it was the strangest collection of memorabilia I think I've ever seen. There were parts about dancing, bomb shelters, and my personal favorite, the death penalty. I'm not quite sure what was going on, but it was just cool to be there. AND, we randomly ran into one of my friend's hostel-mates in the museum. She's a really nice Portuguese girl who came to audition for one of the performing arts colleges in Glasgow.

Proof that nagging doesn't work. It only gets you poisoned.

After leaving the museum we walked around a bit, got lost a little, and made our way to the cathedral. Unfortunately, due to my camera's untimely demise, I don't have any pictures of the cathedral (although I will surely steal one for blogging purposes). Of course, the cathedral is amazingly awesome. I really like old things and this church was super old, I would Wikipedia some facts about it, but pfft. I felt super cultured just being there. I was touching all the columns like, OMG, this column is older than America! It definitely made me wish my camera hadn't behaved so badly. We were only in the church for a bit seeing as how it was relatively small, and then we walked around the church grounds for a bit. 

SIDE  NOTE: My bestie asked me to bring her grass from Scotland, so I got some from in front of the church. So it's not just Scottish grass...it's holy Scottish grass. 

Interior of chapel

That night, we decided to go out and find a nice bar with live music. We eventually made our way to Scotia Bar where we sat and hung out for a while. I knew I liked the and already when I heard them playing Valerie by The Zutons (I always like when I can sing along with a live band). Randomly, the group sitting in front of us spoke Spanish, so we were super creepers and tried to eavesdrop on their conversation. Then, my friend went to the bar to order a drink, because of course you can't come to Scotland and not try scotch. At this point is when I had the breakthrough moment of a lifetime... I like scotch. I poured some in my Coke and I actually enjoyed it. This is the first time I've ever had alcohol and it didn't make me want to gag. My friends were just as surprised as I was. They made it a mission to find some sort of alcoholic beverage that I liked and now mission accomplished. I don't think it will change my  I don't like to drink policy, not only because of my general love of my liver, but also because alcohol (good alcohol) is expensive, and I'm too cheap to like it.

PART 2 - To come