"Glasgow Travel Tips - S ..." a Glasgow Travel Page by scotlandscotour

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 :-)

View Full Size.

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