10 | September | 2015 | The Cannon Family's travel blog

The revelry of last night led to a much longer lie in than we had anticipated but we eventually roused ourselves and made our way into town to catch a train to Glasgow. I suspect the “normal” tourist thing to do would be to go to Edinburgh but we’ve done that loads of times so this was chance to do something different. Forty-one minutes on Scot Rail and we were at Queen Street station.

And if you wander about 15 minutes east of Queen Street station you get to Glasgow Cathedral. (Which was open – so there Exeter!) It’s been standing since 1136 but the site has been considered holy ground since sometime around 930. The stained glass is fabulous – all of it in a traditional style and all created since the second world war. The tomb of St. Mungo (aka St.Kentigern), Glasgow’s patron saint is in the lower church. The most recent bit of the building was completed in the late 1500’s.

We then wandered over to the Necropolis – a Victorian cemetery on a hill next to the Cathedral. The monuments are incredible and the view from the top magnificent even under grey skies. The most prominent monument is one to John Knox, the father of the Presbyterian Church (Church of Scotland here).

Then it was off to find a spot of lunch in town. One of the things I still find interesting is the set 2 or 3 course lunch menu that you’ll find in most restaurants. In my youth it was colloquially known as “the businessmen’s lunch” and it’s a subset of the menu where you can pick a combination of starter, main and sweet for a set price. We found a place that had lots of gluten free options and so I had pea and mint soup for my starter, kale salad for my main and a warm GF brownie with cream and chocolate sauce for my pudding. All for the set price of £11.95. (TMI: Frank had a gruyere tart, paprika chicken on corn cakes, and a banoffee pavlova).

A short wander to Exchange Square brought us to the cultural event for the day: the Gallery of Modern Art. Only 2 of the 4 galleries were open so it wasn’t a long visit but it was long enough to reinforce my belief that I don’t understand “modern art”. There were several pieces that appealed to me but others? I just didn’t quite understand how they were considered art. But we keep trying.

A quick tour up Sauchiehall Street led to Marks and Spencer. I had seen a jumper in the the M&S in Exeter that I quite liked but didn’t do anything about it. I thought it might be nice to try it on so I went to the M&S in the Thistle Center in Stirling but they didn’t have it. So we had a minor quest to find the jumper in Glasgow. And we did. And I tried it on. And I didn’t like it on me. So I bought another jumper instead. 🙂

Then back to the train so we could have Frank’s mum around for dinner. I whipped up a holiday version of spaghetti bolognese – which means it was pretty much all tinned ingredients because I don’t have any spices or anything here. I got no complaints from the diners though and we even followed it up with a raspberry meringue roulade (also courtesy of M&S) which was lovely. Then it was time to get mum back to the home. We did a bit more visiting in Broomridge and heard all about the lovely wee flat my niece is hoping to buy (keep your fingers crossed for her!). And we hit the hay at a much more reasonable time.