Glasgow

  Glasgow was our starting point.  Why Glasgow you ask?  Well, the basis for this whole trip was in Glasgow!  Kimberly, our soon to be ordained friend, lives and works there.  Not to mention that the ordination took place there.

  Our first experience with Glasgow was not great.  We had some problems at the car rental desk - namely that the car was going to cost about twice what we'd expected.  (Don't forget about the insurance costs!!!)  By the way, I think the guy there did us a favor because the bill we got a week later was much closer to what we expected.  Once we had the car, things were even more interesting in trying to find our way to the hotel.  The rental desk had no driving maps of the area!  We had some written directions from Kimberly which would have worked perfectly had we had a driving map.  To make a long story short, we got lost.  Under a bridge.  Seriously.  So Kimberly brought in the reserves, and two of them came out in a car and rescued us.  The experience wasn't all bad (although Melissa was getting hungry, and she was tired, and, shall we say, a little cranky) because our knowledge of the area came in handy when we got lost trying to get OUT of the damned city.  We swear we were on the onramp to the motorway we needed, and the next thing we knew we were dumped back in the city.  In the end, we triumphed and Glasgow was fading in our rear view mirror!

  Now that you've heard of the end of our stay in Glasgow, I'll go back to the middle bit.  We were staying at the Ewington Hotel (It's a Best Western of all things) which is essentially built into what looks like a row of brownstones.  It was a decent place; the room was large and the breakfast was included (although that depends on your room rate!).  Across the street was Queen's Park which, in nicer weather, would have been a great place to spend a lot of time.  Melissa and I ventured a walk around there on our arrival day during some down time where we were afraid we'd just fall asleep if we didn't stand up.  We only saw a small piece of it, but it was a very nice (large) park.  This was our first glimpse at how many things were flowering in September too!

  Early on Saturday Jen, Melissa and I took the train into Glasgow center (Central Station, in fact) to poke around the city a little bit.  Our first target was a Border's Books to get some maps for the rest of our trip.  Sorry we wasted your time Jen!  Then we walked around a bit and headed towards the river Clyde (What a great name for a river!  We were wondering where the river Bob was) and then back towards the train station.

  The main event - the ordination - took place Saturday afternoon.  You know, so they can get more work out of the new priests and decons the next day.  I'd never been to an ordination before and I suspect most people haven't.  It was an interesting event.  I'm not very religous but I found it fascinating none-the-less.  Melissa and Jen received communion from Kimberly which was pretty cool.  After the ordination a bunch of people went out for Indian food at a pretty good place just around the corner from the hotel.

  Sunday morning it was off to Edinburgh.  As I previously mentioned, that was a huge adventure too.  Once on the motorway we managed to make it to Edinburgh with no problems and, in fact, didn't get lost again until trying to return the car at Heathrow.

  All in all, what we saw of Glasgow would probably not take us back!  If we happened to be in the area, we'd visit Kimberly, and perhaps the Burrell Collection.