TLDR – We went to Glasgow for a few nights, stopped in at Sterling Castle, Day trip to Edinburgh then flew home. – Original 4500 word post on the trip was lost, this is the post about that post.
Into draft — recovered
Whirlwind morning making it to the airport. I was up at 0330 reading a book with Khaleesi next to me on the couch waiting for Michelle to wake up. Could not recall if we were leaving the house at 0445 or 0545. Heard the toilet flush around 410 and figured Michelle would be up soon. A bit after 0436 I went and woke her up. Michelle had set her alarm for 0400 then fell sleep before clicking snooze. Oops. We wanted to be out of the house on a bus at 5 – we can do this!
The kids were amazing. Woke them up and said get dressed quickly. We were out the door by 0455 speed walking to the Clayton for our bus. We missed the 500 bus. We’re about 5 minutes early for the 0515 bus. Kids had muffins on the bus ride to the airport and slowly woke up. We rushed through security utilizing the family lane and made it the gate with about 15 minutes to spare. Now we are on the plan in seats 27 ABC and 28 ABC motoring on the tarmac about to take off for our 45 minute flight to Glasgow.
Sad face – Above words are all we have of the orignal post for this trip. Some where in April of this year someone else took ownership of our WordPress site / we were hacked. In the process of cleaning up that mess we lost the post for this trip. I know roughly what we did, and have pictures of the trip, but recreating comparable details originally in the post is not going to happen. Still being off work waiting on paper needing something to do – I’m going to repost the pictures and write the story around the pictures, and call it best effort.
Made it to Glasgow
When we arrived in Glasgow we took a bus from the airport that dropped us near our flat. Near turned out to be not too near to flat at all. Near turned out to be an office for the rental company where we were meant to pick up the keys. Our flat was not ready; bummer. They were nice and allowed us to leave our luggage there. The flat turned out to be about 1.5km away up a massively steep hill over a river up some more hills. While waiting for our flat to be ready we took off walking around the city sans luggage to explore the town and find some snacks
Model of Glasgow on the main no car shopping street
Right below our Flat down some ancient 40 stairs with a name to them I don’t recall is a trail along the river Clyde. After getting checked into our place we went out for food, like we normally do. Gotta have Milk and Cereal and apples for the kids, and sausage rolls for me because we are in the UK and Sausage rolls are a thing. After setting up the place, calling and whining about the internet and shopping we went for a walk along the river and found a nice playground.
The flat is laid out like a maze; had to draw a picture of it to capture it for future readers. You enter the door at the top of some stairs into a hallway. Off of the hall are three bedrooms. At the end of the hall, you turn right and are now facing the living room. To the right of the living room, you have to turn right again snake-like to pass the bathroom and enter the kitchen. In the middle of the U is a closet and dead space? not really sure what’s in the dead space, maybe dead bodies or money?
Headed to Costco
About 5Km walk from our flat through the middle of town is a Costco. We’ve not been to a Costco since we were in the states and Pizza and Hotdogs sounds tremendous. We took a bus to the end of the city near a park I don’t recall the name of. But it had a playground and it was near a cemetery. After the playground, we walked to the Costco. Along the way to the Costco, we stopped into a large camping store with the same ice pick door handles REI uses on their doors. Inside felt very similar to REI. Made me think they might be related somehow.
Amazing to see some similar products like red vines at the Costco. Lots of American things in the store plus some local UK stuff. In the food court, we found a few extra things, not in the states. Like a shepherd’s pie and Jacked potato. We walked all the way home from Costco, because why not and we just had a huge lunch. On the way home, we went into some Asian supermarket that smelled like fish – BAD, Powerful smells of fish. We saw all kinds of trash on the streets; Sad Glasgow you should clean up a bit, and we stopped into a petrol station for some ice cream.
Exploring the city a bit
The day after Costco we walked into the city to explore and play at some parks and have lunch in an old bank.
Day trip to Sterling Castle
Having seen enough of Glasgow we decided we’d take a day trip to Sterling to tour the town and castle. Michelle booked a train the night before and we took off early in the morning, destination, Sterling. On the way to the train station, we found a Tim Hortons for some Timbits. Hard to pass up Timbits when you can get them. Plus we needed to use the bathroom.
The train station in Sterling is at the bottom of the hill. The castle is at the top of the hill. We slowly walked up the hill, check out some shops, and some prison looking building that was not open for tours. After the prison, we stopped into a cemetery with a brilliant view of the castle. Sterling is an old looking town on a hill with a massive castle perched on top of the hill. The town is filled with loads of old castle looking stone buildings; Nice place to visit.
We did a rare for us and paid for a tour – We lucked out and the kids enjoyed the castle tour. The symbol of the castle is the unicorn and the girls love unicorns. I recall we counted the unicorns, but no clue what the count was this far in the future. They were most into the unicorn tapestries all over the castle. Maddex was into the barracks / prison feeling area under the castle.
Day trip to Edinburgh
The day before we discovered the Glasgow subway does not run too early in the morning. On Sundays starts running even later in the day, like does not open until 9 or something. Ugg.. Instead of taking the subway to the train station we walked there to catch the train to Edinburgh for another day trip. We’d planned on meeting my first Les there but he was not feeling up to it. Sadly it was only a few months later that Les met end of life. My family never had the opportunity to meet him.
Edinburgh, even more than Sterling, is a proper medieval feeling town with massive Castle in the middle of town on top of a huge stone hill. Wish we would have spent more time here, so much more to explore then we have to explore. We will come back to properly tour this city for sure.
