Over the Easter weekend, we took one final trip together, just the two of us.
It ended up being a fairly hectic travel weekend, as we were traveling by train and massive rail works were scheduled. We had trouble both catching our sleeper trains coming and going. (In fact we missed the Thursday night train entirely). When we did manage to get in the train, however, it was a nice cosy ride.
When we arrived, we found the city was bustling with holiday weekend shoppers. There was also an international street market in town. We enjoyed eating everything from Tartiflette to Ostrich burgers in the course of the weekend.
They say that Glasgow is a gloomy, rainy city. As you’ll see from the photos, we were very spoiled. Except for some rain on the last day, we had gorgeous weather! Excellent for sight seeing and generally wandering around town! (Important as in the back of our heads we were asking ourselves if this was a city we could possibly move to some day).
We chose not to stay in Glasgow itself, but instead found our way to the wonderful Ashtree House Bed and Breakfast in Paisley (a village about 10 minutes train journey out of the city). And yes, it is where the pattern for Paisley ties and socks come from. The accommodations were superb (a great final getaway before the baby) and the hosts went far beyond the call of duty in helping us find unusual locations around the city.
We celebrated both Good Friday and Easter in Paisley Abbey (now part of the Church of Scotland), a 5 minute walk from our bed and breakfast. Easter Sunday was especially unique, as the service included the Mozart Coronation Mass. Although Rachel has heard this piece many times before, neither of us had heard it in the context of a church service before (ironic as this is the context it was intended for). Despite being away from our home congregation at St. Aldates, we still found this weekend to be a reminder of rebirth and rejuvenation of our spiritual walks.
Apart from some practical issues (certain public transport being cancelled, not being able to get all the sights/information we were hoping for, etc.) we had a really good weekend. The one major challenge, however, was Rachel’s advanced state of pregnancy. Due to this, we had to take things a lot slower than normal, but this meant doing a few things we wouldn’t normally bother with, including watching a movie in the giant cinema downtown. We realized while we were in the theater that this was probably the last time both of us would go to a movie for quite a while as we will soon have a crying baby! We also took the City Sightseeing bus around town and shot a few photographs, which are in the slideshow below. Our favourite picture of these is the decorated Duke of Wellington (statue just outside the museum of modern art–and yes, every time the city takes off the traffic cone another one is on by the next morning). Not only is it funny it its own right, it reminded us of the decorations frequently added to the Sheldonian Heads in Oxford.
