Dear Green Place

Fresh as a daisy at the start of the day
at Willow Tea Rooms

Willow Tea Rooms

Having fun at Willow Tea Rooms

Wellington Statue that always has at
least one traffic cone on the top.
This has been going on for years and the council
has finally given up removing the cone
(saving 10k per year)

George Square

St Mumro my fav piece

Rocco the friendly coffee guy
in a repurposed Tardis

A good example of the Glasgow Charm
saying remember to look up not down.

Marble staircase in the City Chambers (it was closed
when we got here but the nice security guard let us in
for a quick look)

Happy tourists at the end of a long sunny day
in Glasgow

This mural is called Wind Power,
happy to report Scotland is
very into renewable energy with
lots of wind farms

Back into civilisation and the BBC morning news is on the TV, England is still in the grips of the weirdest summer ever, 30+ degrees everyday and world cup fever is intense with England making the semi-finals. All the talk is about how much the flights to Russia cost. It seems like half the country is going to the match on Wednesday night. Scotland, of course, wants to ignore anything English, but its even creeping in here.

Every day this trip Jane has been wanting Scottish Porridge for breakfast so today is the day. Willow Tea Rooms is the chosen venue, its a bit of an institution in Glasgow. Modelled after the original tea rooms designed by Mrs Cranston and Charles Rennie Mackintosh (famous architect / designer we will be focussing on more tomorrow). Everything is just perfect I could get used to the lifestyle.

Next up we are on a walking tour (highly recommended) some highlights included learning about:

• the fascinating legend of St Mungo, his miracles and how they are interpreted on Glasgow's coat of arms
• how the Tobacco Lords from America used Glasgow as a base in the UK and built homes in the 1700’s so big they are now used as museums
• a long tradition of shipbuilding, with 1/5 of the world's ships being made here during the early 1900s

But of course for me, I just go into overload with any street art and my favourite piece so far is St. Mungo (of course having two birds helps). The artist is Smug, who is an Australian who lives in Glasgow.

Every time we see a new statue Jean our guide tells us who it is, explains they had nothing to do with Glasgow, however, it was the first statue to Walter Scott etc in the world. All I can assume is those tobacco lords had a lot of money and really wanted to put Glasgow on the map.

Dr Who is another big feature here, with real police boxes to keep me snapping, one is Rocco’s coffee shop (who poses for photos) and the other with a bearded hippy who sells hemp oil.

Time to move on and rest our feet with a ride on the hop on hop off bus in this glorious sunshine. Seats up the top, ready, go, oh-oh the commentator is Glaswegian, the accent in Glasgow is super strong to my ears and I am really struggling to understand what any of the locals say.

There is only a splattering of tourists here in Glasgow and most of the locals are really suffering from the heat, last week they had 6 days of over 30-degree temperatures (think Sydney with 6 days of 40+ temperatures) plus they have no or little air-conditioning.

One last tourist spot, The Lighthouse an old newspaper building that has been turned into a design centre. There is a problem with the lifts and we meet the lift mechanic who lived in Canberra for 2 years and loves Australia, especially Manly Beach. His other claim to fame is when this building opened he had to take the Queen up to top floor viewing platform and now he escorts us. Glasgow is really rolling out the red carpet for us.

Overall first day impressions of Glasgow, its a mix of old buildings in local red sandstone, some restored, some falling down and a few modern buildings. The street art murals and flowers really add visual spice to the city.  Gentrification is underway, seems like it started with the Commonwealth Games in 2014. I agree with the marketing, people make Glasgow, they are very friendly and down to earth (when you can understand what they are saying).

The sunshine goes on and on, it's so bright and still light at 10pm a tourist could go on forever, but now its time to sleep.

NB. The title for this post 'Dear Green Place' is Gaelic for Glasgow.