Glasgow - Harry Potter Mania

Thursday 12 July 2007
Yang attended Monckton Chambers' summer party in the walks at Gray's Inn today. Unfortunately there's nothing terribly exciting to report about a bunch of lawyers standing around in a tent.




Friday 13 July 2007
I met up with Yang, L&T, and Ryan at Royal Albert hall for the Opening Night of the BBC Proms. Like Wimbledon, the BBC Proms is something I have been to for the last three years. The soloist for this concert was performing Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor. This piece has been one of Yang’s favourites since I flew him to Sydney to listen to it in the Sydney Opera House. We have also heard it at the Concert Hall in Perth. After this Concerto, which Yang said lacked the “urgency” required not to mention the soloist's difficulty with his intonation in places, we all trotted down to El Gaucho in Kensington for some Argentinean steak. It was not the fanciest of restaurants, but given the clientèle were mainly Argentinean and the steaks were flown from Argentina (okay, not a very carbon neutral restaurant), it didn’t disappoint in terms of food quality.

Saturday 14 July 2007
We took a 5am mini cab pick-up this morning to Gatwick for our flight to Glasgow. On our itinerary this morning was:
- St George’s Square







- Glasgow Necropolis, graveyard of famous Glaswegians








- Glasgow Cathedral







- Kelvinhall Museum, which is like the Science, Natural History, British, Tate Modern, and Tate Britain all in one



Then we stopped for lunch at Two Fat Ladies, a seafood restaurant. No, no one at the restaurant was fat. It has its name because the address is 88 Dunbarton Street. After lunch we continued to:
- Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), and not being a fan of Modern Art, this museum did nothing to change my views
- Shopping on Buchannan Street (where Yang picked up his 31st Birthday present 3 months in advance), Buchannan Galleries (where I picked up another hat…I love hats!), Princes Square, Ingram Street and the Italian Centre.
-The People's Palace and Winter Gardens.





Dinner this evening was at Rococo, which uses only locally sourced produce and apparently has the best haggis in Scotland. Fortunately or unfortunately, there was no haggis on the menu as their menu changes daily. Rococo has also won several AA Rosettes.

Sunday 15 July 2007
Finally…what I had been waiting excitedly for all week….Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in 3D at the IMAX in the Science Centre. Not only was the movie really quite enjoyable (although the book is still better), it was so cool to see the final scene (from when they fly to the Ministry of Magic) in 3D. I can't wait until the final book comes out this Saturday as well...Yang bought me the special edition so I am going to be spending all weekend reading I think!

After the movie, we headed back to the City Centre for a quick lunch at Red Onion before catching the train from the Central Station to Pollock Country Park for the Burrell Collection and Pollock House, an 18th century mansion.. The Burrell collection consists of 9,000 works of art collected by Sir William Burrell from his teens until his death in his late 90s. In the Pollock Country Park, we got to see a Scottish highland cow grazing.

We then headed back into town and went back to our hotel to pick up our bags and head to the airport. Having seen some of Charles Rennie Mackintosh's work in the Kelvinhall, we didn't find his architecture terribly exciting so we skipped this part of our itinerary.

Overall Glasgow was not as horrible as people make it out to be. We found it quite clean and modern and the people were generally quite nice. We certainly didn't receive any Glaswegian Kisses! We would probably still consider Edinburgh to be the place to visit in Scotland if you were only going to one city in Scotland, but Glasgow was certainly worth a visit.