STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - RECITAL

 

Didn’t get any editing done on the plane from London yesterday. Big meal, watched a movie, fell asleep. Flight from Chicago to St. Louis two hours late (bird strike on the inbound plane on landing!). Anyway, doing some fill-in today. This is the great hall of the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow, a wacky collection of fine art, natural history and Scottish bric-a-brac. It has a huge organ and there was a recital starting when we entered. Hard to see here, but the organist is in a blue and white plaid shirt in the center. Quite a treat.               

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - GLASGOW CATHEDRAL

Glasgow Cathedral is said to owe its roots to a chap named St. Mungo, a 7th Century priest sent to convert the heathen Scots. Never heard of him (but wasn’t there many years ago a one-hit-wonder pop singer called Mungo Jerry?). Anyway, what became a major Catholic church turned to the Church of Scotland during the Reformation, but now is maintained by the state. Well-preserved Gothic. 

I’ll edit more on our long plane rides today.              

STL DPB IN SCOTLAND - THE SPIRIT OF GLASGOW

It’s been a long time since we visited this city. Some of it feels more modern and elegant, some even more gritty than I recall: the Hugo Boss store across from our hotel and the homeless man cocooned in a nest of blankets just down the street. Posh hotels and boarded-up storefronts. We passed a wall where it was written:

We are not from the left.

We are not from the right.

We are from the bottom

And we are coming for the top.

The city has a wonderful sense of cheeky irony. The photo above is in front of the modern art gallery, a statue of the Duke of Wellington with a traffic cone on his head. It was there when we visited ages ago. The council took it down. People put it back up, and so over and over. The council proposed to make the plinth much higher. There was a huge public outcry and the authorities relented. It is now a local symbol.

The picture below is the water cooler in our hotel lobby. Whisky flights are available at pubs and restaurants at almost every corner.

Edinburgh airport hotel tonight, long journey home on Wednesday.