Day 19: Ridin' that train!

Woke up this morning, had some tea and packed my bag, and headed out to see a little bit of Glasgow before I jumped on the train to the Highlands. Glasgow is actually an interesting city, with some nice buildings and charming streets. I wasn't in town long enough to meet any Glaswegians (my hosts were from other countries) but I'm sure they would have been nice. I was looking at a streetmap and a gentleman walked up and offered to give me directions to the tourist information center which had apparently moved since the map was made, which was extremely kind of him. I saw the Gallery of Modern Art and actually found a piece I liked, which was a pleasant surprise. This guy had taken the Edinburgh Yellow Pages and found all the listings under Places of Worship and then constructed cardboard models of them. It looked really cool.

Pseudo cardboard mockups for daysss!

The rest of the gallery held more typical strange things but I was really pleased with this find.

I got on the train to Inverness and wound my way to the Highlands. The landscape was beautiful: stark hills rolling off into the distance, covered in dark red heather. Although the hills (fells? mountains? I'm not sure what the Scots call them) faded as we approached Inverness, it was still extremely pretty scenery.

I checked into the Dionard Guest House and went downtown to explore a bit and also to have dinner. I tried Lamb Stovies at a delightful pub called Hootenanny and then strolled back for an early night. On the way through the town I came across a Highland band, complete with bagpipes and drummers twirling their pom-pom things! It was a real treat, although I only caught a couple of songs before they started moving off and I continued on my way.

Real Highland band!

Then it was time for sleep in a nice, lovely, private and impersonal room with ensuite shower and nobody asking me any questions about my life. It's surprising how nice that can feel when you've been staying with chatty strangers for a couple of weeks.