July 4th

July 4th

What an interesting day in Glasgow. After breakfast – I've cut down from the full breakfast (same in Glasgow as in NI) to just a blended coffee (they have a great automatic machine here) and some toast as my arteries were screaming at me. Georgann and I decided to hit the library again for a few emails and I was able to post the last two posts. As we left the Mitchell Library we stopped to chat with the welcome guard and he explained that I might not want to wear my gray-green sweater today as there was a Loyalist march throughout the city. It was too late to go back to the B&B so I was stuck, but we ventured to the closest stop for the Hop-on-Hop off tour.
We could hear the drums and marchers a couple of block offs. Seems that July 4th in Glasgow is the annual Loyalists march. The marchers and watchers were all over the city and causing massive tie-up with traffic and detours. Needless to say, the Hop-on-Hop-off tour was one of the things that was really delayed. The one and a half hour tour was taking almost 3 hours. We sat at the stop for about 45 minutes walked to the next stop, waited for a while (I did call the company and they appologized, and said a bus would be around eventually) and then decided to head across the street for lunch. Near the end of our Subway lunch I saw a bus pass by. We hurried out to wait at the stop and finally after about 5 minutes another bus arrived so we hopped on.
Glasgow is a fascinating city with old and new buildings all over. The Royal Concert Hall is new, and the Chamber Building in George Square is stunningly old. Their SECC (Scotland Entertainment and Concert Center is so new it looks like an armadillo with it's multilayered shape. All the current rock concerts are held there. If we hadnt' had such a late start we would have stopped at several of the locations along the way like the Kelvington Grove Art Museum and Galway University. As it was we finally arrived back at our starting location at about 3:30. At one point our bus broke down and the sent a replacement bus that took us back to the beginning of the tour to wait for a new driver. Seemed like something was telling us not to take this tour.

We ended up at a pub called O'Neill's for dinner. Good food and drink.