Our Scotland and England Adventure: Day Eight (24 August)

Even though we were still using £s, they were now Scottish £s, which we rarely see in London (we'd actually never seen them until a week after we got back from our trip),

and we felt slightly strange using our leftover English £s in Glasgow! Anyway, even though it felt like we had just arrived, it was almost time to leave again, and we only had a half-day in the city before we had to be at the coach station later this afternoon. We decided to head south across the River Clyde to the Burrell Collection, the donated private collection of William Burrell, and see if we had any time afterwards for anything else. It was nice to get across the river and see more of Glasgow outside the centre, and the Burrell itself is set in a quiet park in which we spotted some of the magical creatures that I had hoped to see in Scotland (although I didn't think I'd see them quite so soon):



After quite a bit of time with the Highland cows, we finally made it to the Burrell, where we entered the light-filled courtyard and walked through this 16th-century doorway from a Yorkshire castle
on our way to the main gallery rooms, whose full-length windows and surrounding forest provided an unexpected and pleasing backdrop for the pieces on display.

The tapestries were impressive,
I liked this Degas, entitled Reading the Letter,
and something about these images from 15th-century England struck me.
By the time we were done in the Burrell, we were almost ready for lunch, and although the on-site restaurant looked nice,
we decided to get back into the heart of Glasgow for our last taste of the city. We ended up at the Horse Shoe pub, which that touchstone of "greatness," The Guinness Book of World Records, has deemed the longest continuous bar in Britain--the pub itself retains its original Victorian decor and is equally well-known for bringing in a wide variety of people and for being the ex-workplace and rehearsal space of a Travis bandmember (apparently, there are platinum and gold discs at the bar, but I didn't see them). Anyway, even better is the extremely cheap bar food, with both of our satisfying lunches, an ale for Bob, and a juice for me coming in at under £7--at first we thought they'd made a mistake! As predicted, we didn't have much time left after lunch, and just went back to the hotel to get our suitcase and then went to the bus station, but as we ventured back and forth across central Glasgow, two last sights shone with the personality of the city: this simultaneously decrepit and fascinating building, practically oozing time and history,
and this glorious Art Nouveau letter box, with typography that made me wish I had a reason to put a letter in the slot.
We were sad to leave Glasgow so soon, but were also eager to get back to the country after two days of city life. The 3.75-hour bus ride to Inverness proved to be a good way to ease back into the joys of rural tourism--I kept thinking that I would read a bit of our Scotland guidebook on the bus, but every time I considered looking away from the window, another incredible sight would race by. In the end, I didn't get any reading or writing done, and I looked out the window for the entire trip, amazed at everything that Scotland has to offer, even from a bus doing 100 km/hour. I wasn't always sure what I was looking at, and taking photos when speeding past objects in the distance isn't ideal, but after looking at the photos and guessing our route, I think I can now identify most of what I saw! (Feel free to correct me or identify the last sight, if you can.) We went past Stirling Castle,
the Wallace monument,
gorgeous fields of heather,
the lavish Atholl Palace Hotel,
the picturesque town of Pitlochry,Blair Castle,
more lovely heather,
and this last sight is the only one that has me stumped (help, anyone?)--I may not know what these ruins are, but they were a lovely sight from the bus!
We arrived in Inverness just past 8:00 P.M., where Bob's cousin Anne (I think officially second cousin, twice removed, but I'm not very good at figuring out those types of things) and Jim kindly met us and took us out for a yummy dinner of fish and chips at their favourite Inverness restaurant. Tummies full, we did the 45-minute drive to Burghead, and arrived at our home for the next four days in the dark of night, curious about our surroundings and excited to see more of the countryside tomorrow when the sun appeared again.