Glasgow, United Kingdom

Today we are celebrating our 37th anniversary. Where have the years gone?

We’re going to start out the day on the Hop on – Hop Off bus. It’s a bit overcast, but no rain is predicted, so it should be fine. The next few days are supposed to be warm and sunny, but we’ll wait and see.

Glasgow is a lovely city. The majority of the buildings are more modern with some older more stately buildings scattered around town. It was once an important ship building and train engine building city; these days, there are more banking and call center jobs than laborer jobs.

The river Clyde lazily flows through the city. There are many parks and walkways along the riverbanks for people to enjoy.

Bridge over the River Clyde

Our first hop off is at the Glasgow Transportation Museum. Like all the government museums in Scotland, admission is free. This Museum houses a large collection of transportation vehicles including cars, bikes, motorcycles, trains, trolleys and boats.

They also have a tall ship – The Glenlee – berthed in the river. It was an interesting visit. Sue suggested we dress as pirates and take the ship out for a while, but I’m afraid I was the party pooper in that plan.

Ahoy Matey

A gaggle of school children arrived, which signaled it was time for us to head back and hop on the bus. Timing is everything as the bus was just arriving when we walked outside.

The bus continued around the route passing by sites such as Glasgow University, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the Glasgow Cathedral, SSE Hydro and The Armadillo – the two music events centers. Overall it was quite nice.

Glasgow is more spread out than Edinburgh, but the public transport is very efficient. Along our journey, we came across a statue of the Duke of Wellington; and much to Sue’s chagrin, pranksters had used a traffic cone to give him a hat.

There was a bit of a pale hanging in the air with the Manchester incident. Such a tragedy. Folks in the UK are not so happy about the policies related to letting anyone in. Sounds like being home.

So we had enough of the bus, time to head to the hotel to relax before dinner. For our anniversary dinner, we chose a restaurant called “Cail Bruich”.

Grabbed a taxi to the restaurant and our driver had never heard of the restaurant – though he knew to correct my pronunciation when I showed him the address information. Cail Bruich is gaelic and means “Eat Well” – and we did.

Inside it was not what we had expected. Given what we had read, we thought it might be a tad snobby, Instead it was just the opposite. The people were very friendly, especially our waiter who guided us through the dining experience. The meal we chose was an eight course tasting menu with wine pairings. The courses were not huge, so you could enjoy them without feeling stuffed. The wine pours were also good but reasonable; there’d be no staggering home this evening. Suffice to say, we enjoyed it very much. It was a wonderful blend of flavors and textures. Yes, it was yummy!

The cab ride home was quick and uneventful. We basically went across town for less than £7.00.

So in summary, Happy Anniversary to us. Here’s to the next 37 years. Love you babe!