Sign in with Facebook"Glasgow Travel Tips - Scotland's Only "Real" City" Top 5 Page for this destination Glasgow by scotlandscotour
Glasgow Travel Guide: 1,614 reviews and 2,027 photos
Glasgow Travel Tips - You must experience Glasgow to understand Scotland and the Scottish people.
This is a typical, if unattractive, view of a Scottish street. To explain this street-scape ...
1) The yellow taxi is unusual, normally being black, so I did the city a favour photographing this one!
2) To the left is an IKEA truck - those wonderful Swedish furnishings that look great and fall apart, luckily before your friends come round to discover you have exactly the same stuff as them. IKEA has now reached Scotland, but sadly is still a novelty for the deprived shoppers. (Where is regional identity and local crafts?)
3) SPT is the underground train system and this is Hillhead station. The Glasgow underground is tiny compared with the better known London tube, and I felt like Gulliver down there!
4) Iceland is a nationwide frozen food store, aimed at the working class. Not the country (the source of many jokes in Britain - "I'm going to Iceland" variety. Yeh, not funny.
The general sense of messy clutter this picture conveys is typical. The air was smelling of diesel fumes, like every British city. Glasgow reminds me of London or Manchester.
So much or contemporary Scottish culture is actually Glaswegian, I could say "This is the Real Scotland".
This picture is of Byers Road (Hillhead), in the West End of Glasgow, an area detached from the city centre by the University and Kelvingrove Park.
Beer and Potatoes!!!
If ever a picture summed up Scotland's urban centres, it's this one :-)
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If you want to know what a place is really like, best and worst, then read my pages.
The blue box with Scottish saltire on is potatoes - god knows what Scots did before Raleigh brought the spud back from America.
As you can see, the black wheelie bin is definitely in Glasgow!
This is the back yard of a pub, you pass it onthe way into trendy Ashton Lane, but you soon become immune to such scenes as a local, and fail to "see it".
I try to see places with the eye of a visitor.
Donald Dewer died early, but goes down in history as the first "First Minister" of the new Scottish Parliament (in Edinburgh).
He represents much of urban Scotland, especially Glasgow, gentle, intellectual, socialist and crafty. It is sad he died, but in a country plagued by high heart disease and strokes, people should perhaps start to question why most Scots are so damned unfit, why deep fried food, beer and smoking are so common place, and why the "brain drain" continues.
This statue is in the very centre of the city, east end of Sauchiehall Street. His glasses get regularly vandalised, probably late on saturday nights, when the city is transformed by drink, like a person is too. Schizophrenic Glasgow epitomises Scotland's contemporary problems and its charm.
After reading my Glasgow Tips, I really recommend reading Scotland Travel Tips
- Pros:Urban buzz, architecture, city pride, happening place, museums, university and West End
- Cons:wegies, deep fried pizza, diesel fumes, litter, drunks, nasty hostels, traffic, not Edinburgh ;-)
- In a nutshell:Glasgow is more Scottish than Edinburgh and The Highlands - Sadly
Reviews (28)
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All Glasgow Museums are FREE
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You will need lots of energy to see them all. Its very impressive - Look: The Burrell Collection. Fossil... more travel advice
Go GOMA - Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
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Thought provoking. Good to look at from the outside, as well as inside. An inspiring place to be. Opened in 1996, and... more travel advice
Gardens - Go Enjoy The Botanical...
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It is almost a relief to find spaces like the Botanical Gardens, having spent a morning or two walking the streets,... more travel advice
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Glasgow Travel Guide
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Comments (30)
Fantastic page - I saved some tips in my travel planner! A friend told me I should skip the city because it's too ugly, but I think it's well worth a visit if you know where to go! Your pictures look great and some of the museums sound really interesting.
I am hoping to revisit Glasgow next year.
perhaps you could do a similar count of one tip wonders that are negative and give some balance to your writing. you appear to have a personel vendetta which hardly does justice to your writing
you will be pleased to know decree has been served against Todd at bluesky,so he better have circa£40.000 in unpaid rent by thursday?It also proves the root problem of the situation.
You should google bluesky thief to see how correct your comments on this hostel are but the other ones in the street are super and members of www.hostel-scotland.co.uk so do not damage the good ones with your sweeping statements
Will be here with the meeting. Lots of nice info here if i would go by myself. But i will trust Gillian to take me to the best places!
Nice Glasgow pages! Your eyes only see what you let them see... :)
So Byers Road is your 'real' Scotland......come on this is a wind up !?!?!?
your biased inaccurate version of hostels especially in glasgow do you little credit.To put the s.y.h.a website on a hostel you evidently have not stayed in is prime example.Most Edinburgh hostels aren't in your org? Biased?
Nice pages. I'm organising a VT meet in Glasgow in September and hope you don't mind me adding yours to my list of helpful pages - just hope your beer and rubbish section doesn't put folks off ;o)
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