Glasgow

Getting to Glasgow took much longer than I thought. The ferry from Belfast arrives at a place called Stranraer (I still don't know how to pronounce it), and on the map it looks like it's right next to Glasgow. Boy, did I make the classic tourist mistake. Us Australians make fun of foreigners for this all the time. After the three hour ferry trip I have to take a two hour bus trip and a further one hour train trip before I'm finally in the city. Including waiting times the whole trek lasted 8 hours. I would have been better off just taking a plane... However I did get to see some nice scenery along the way. The sun was even shining brilliantly the whole way. Shame I'd lost my sunglasses the day before.
So today I spent some time getting to know Glasgow. Again I'm afraid there's little photo evidence, and this time I don't have an excuse like shitty computers. No, today I kinda just couldn't be bothered. In the night a thick band of rain rolled in effectively extinguishing the sun I had so enjoyed the day before, and it has been raining almost constantly all day. I did a guided bus tour of the city, which was nice, but for taking photos it's not particularly useful. But it's not such a great loss, because as far as spectacularly photogenic landmarks are concerned Glasgow is a little bit impoverished. Sure, it has some beautiful old buildings - it's supposed to be the best Victorian era city in the world - but you've seen one Victorian building you've seen them all. The only building I regret getting a photo of was the Clyde Auditorium, known affectionately by the locals as the Armadillo. To my, and a lot of people's eyes, it actually looks like the Sydney Opera house, but supposedly it was supposed to look like the hull of a ship. So there you go. I don't think there's a building with a bigger identity crisis anywhere.
The reason for the ship iconography is because Glasgow is famous for its ships. In much of the 19th century it was the biggest ship building city in possibly the world. As such it also has an impressive transport museum which naturally focusses a lot on ship building, but covers everything from skateboards to trams to automobiles and everything in between. Going through the museum you could be mistaken for thinking that the Glaswegians are a little bit transport mad. They also had the third underground railway system in the world. The interesting thing about it was rather than steam or electricity it was powered by giant cables. The cables pulled through the underground system and the cars simply had to latch on when they wanted to move and let go when they wanted to stop.
In the afternoon, after the tour, I went to a tent in the main middle square where some piping championships are currently being held. So in addition to the depressing rain I also got to feel inadequate.
Okay, to be fair I was simply impressed. I just wish I could pipe like that...