Bryce puts in an appearance
I don’t think I can possibly describe everything we’ve done in the past 2 weeks. I have taken 7 or 8 rolls of film; I’ll probably need to take out another student loan to get them all developed. But once I do that I’ll post them and then you can ask questions if you feel so inclined.
OK, so yesterday we went to Glasgow with the Hays. There is a bus that only costs 1 pound per person, and as long as you don’t sit upstairs on the bus you won’t get car sick (we learned this the hard way). Our primary objective in going to Glasgow was to go to St Mungo Museum Of Religious Life And Art. They have Salvador Dali’s St. John of the Cross, which is a really cool painting. Other than that, however, this museum is a complete waste of time. It was supposed to highlight religious life and art in the history of Scotland, but they obviously have an anti-Christian bent. There was much more pagan art than Christian, and the Christian stuff they had wasn’t even that great. They had prints of St. John of the Cross for sale, I’m now kicking myself for not buying one. The prints were cheap, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring myself to go back into that building.
Other cool things we did in Glasgow:
We saw St. George’s Tron (Church of Scotland), the church where both Eric Alexander and Sinclair Ferguson were previously the pastors. The church is something of an inspiration to evangelical Christians in the Church of Scotland, as The Tron has remained a strong church in the midst of overwhelming liberalism. It’s also a city center church (they have a weekday lunchtime service for people who work in the area) which is really cool. It’s right in the heart of the city, the street actually goes around the church, pretty cool. Unfortunately the church was closed, as Jonathan and I had hoped to get pictures of ourselves in the pulpit!
We also walked around probably the largest cemetery I’ve ever seen. It’s on the top of a hill, and is referred to as the Necropolis (city of the dead). There’s something about the old cemeteries here that is kinda cool, I’m not sure why.
We walked through the Glasgow Cathedral, which is probably the coolest cathedral I’ve seen in the UK (pictures to come).
At the end of the day, we walked along the main shopping street for about an hour. There were so many shops that it almost felt like being in the US. That is, except for the fact that everything closed at 5pm. We found a deep dish pizza place for dinner, a rarity in this country. And it wasn’t that expensive either, 5 pounds each for all you can eat buffet. We’ve found eating out to be a waste here. Unless you go somewhere really expensive the food is not great, the service is sub-par, and it is still over-priced.
So that was our day in Glasgow. It’s not as charming a city as Edinburgh so I’m glad that we live here. But it would be worth another visit or 2.
Today’s Cultural Idiosyncrasy:
For such a small country, it’s amazing the variety of accents you hear in Scotland. The country is less than half the size of California, but you can tell where people are from because of their accents. The Glaswegian accent is probably what most people think of as a ‘Scottish Accent.’ It is often really hard to understand, even now that we’re accustomed to Scottish accents. At its worst it sounds a bit like Brad Pitt in Snatch.