tea part two

On the east side of the city center, nature and development compete for primacy. Let's step back in time 100+ years.

The Willow tea rooms were a joint project of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Catherine Cranston.

Miss Cranston was a successful entrepreneur who commissioned Mackintosh to design a series of tea rooms inside and out.

Happily three of them are still operating in Glasgow after a good deal of restoration.

I visited two of them and the tea room museum, which tells the story of the tea trade and Miss Cranston's social enterprise. After Queen Victoria's death and the rise of the temperance movement, tea rooms were an alternative to bars.

I could spend more time on the design of the museum, which allows you to mix a virtual tea blend or these tea cup speakers...

Or the interactive quiz I took based on video projections of the dishes served in the tea room at the time...

But let's skip to Miss Cranston's activism. She hired orphans and young woman with no means and trained them.

She was an exacting client, and Mackintosh delivered on her demands. The museum is in the last of the tea rooms, which opened around 1904 and you can see the stylistic similarity to Frank Lloyd Wright. A lot of attention was paid to the chairs, and their velvet seats stuffed with horsehair. Sadly the seats in the tea room were something more modern, stylish but uncomfortable.

The original Art Nouveau doors

 A video showed the process of painting this gesso portrait

Finally, downstairs for tea.

Of course I got the afternoon tea, for 19 pounds 04 pence. I don't know why I keep doing this. 

I actually prefer to pick out my own sweets. But the tea and scones were excellent. Passionfruit mousse seemed a bit modern.

I don't know what this fork is for. Do you?

A quick trip upstairs to admire the top level and the glass details. They have dumb waiters, which makes the servers' job a little easier. And makes the trays of pretty food magically appear.

Every detail lovingly restored

As I continued on my way, I happened upon another Willow tea room, on the 3rd floor of the now discount Watt Brothers department store. Think Sears in near bankruptcy. It didn't seem promising, but I persevered.

The window display for Willow at Watt Brothers is much more modest. The prices are too. Who doesn't love merengues?

I wasn't hungry after the last stop. But the woman at the front was so welcoming, I decided to have a pot of the house blend. Prices were half as much as the other tea room.

The clientele wasn't all German tourists straight off a tour bus. It was a tea room in a department store doing what a tea room was meant to do: fill your stomach at a fair price and provide a place to catch up with your friends.

The tea was excellent. I finally got a bowl of Cullen Skink, which is basically leek and potato soup with smoked fish in it, served here with oatcakes. And a lot of cream. Still stuffed, I ordered a couple of simple pastries to pack for the plane.

Glasgow really does have good bones. Miss Cranston fell in love in her 40s and married. She lived a long life, and when she died, left the majority of her wealth to help the down and out of Glasgow. A truly pioneering woman.

Glad to find this fountain/environmental scold, although I wish I'd seen more of them around the country. It was a cold rainy day (versus steamy London).

Police have changed with the times too. At the city center, locals and UK visitors shopped, vaped, and took sillier pictures than on the fancy part of town with the gastropubs. It wasn't as picture perfect, but it did feel more real than lovely Kelvingrove Park and Great Western.

Gratuitous guys in kilts calendar for Lisa. No, I did not buy one despite the modest price. Use your imagination.

Time to pick up my things, return my rental car, and head south. Assuming I can figure out the subway loop.

 Back in the trendy part of town…

Rock me, Amadeus.

And so I have said goodbye to Glasgow and my adorable guesthouse by the River Kelvin. Off to London for a visit with my old friend Quee Lim and the postal museum! Much deliciousness will ensue.

timeless tea rooms

I'm staying near Kelvingrove Park along the River Kelvin at the Amadeus guesthouse (wifi network: RockMeAmadeus). Today I went for a long wander.

First stop: Kelvingrove Art and Natural History Museum. What a magnificent building and random collection!

Glasgow's favorite son was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of Scotland's most famous Art Nouveau practitioners in the Glasgow Style movement. The museum has his triptych and recreated tea room.

The rest of the museum is varied: animal skeletons and stained glass and stuffed pangolins and Scottish paintings.

 I found this old lady who lived in a shoe teapot in a mini-exhibit on shoes.

Nearby was this teapot in an exhibit of faces in objects.

This painting is called something like "that time the china at my parents' house was broken."

This is not a balloon. It's art glass. Scotland produced a lot of art glass.

Too beautiful a day to spend indoors, so I walked along the Kelvin to the Clyde, the main river of Glasgow.

 In the 70s and 80s Glasgow was in poor shape economically, socially, and architecturally. But the community dug in and the government invested.

And today it's a happy and safe city with a lot of restored old buildings alongside new university housing.

 

Next stop: the Riverside Museum of transportation, another grab bag of historic trains, streetcars, tricycles, and cars. 

And inexplicably there are rotating dresses and items from pawn shops, period dressing. 

The big attraction besides the setting is the building itself, designed by Zaha Hadid. I loved this side view.

It's kind of a mess inside with long curving stairwells that lead somewhere you can't see. The main exhibit areas are cavernous, crowded, and noisy.

The most famous view is from the water, where there's also a tall ship or two you can explore. I'm sure the shape is meaningful, but I don't know what it is. It reminds me of a cardiograph.

Usually on trips I try to limit myself to 2 or 3 things max I want to do each day. I do a lot of research, but want time to people watch and discover new things. But today I was on a schedule. Even though it's light until after 10 pm, everything still closes at 5 or 6. 

Plus I've been in Scotland for a whole week and haven't had any Scotch!

This is Sam, who led our tour at the Clydeside Distillery. It's the first single malt distillery to open in Glasgow in 100 years. Unfortunately it's only been open 18 months so you can't taste their products yet.

This copper still has a great view. See the tall ship and Riverside museum in the distance on the right?

After a lot of compulsory learning, we did get to sample three drams of lowland, highland, and peaty Islay Scotch (my personal favorite). It was a lot better than the distillery I went to in Nova Scotia last summer.

Bottom line: Scotland is in the middle of a gin renaissance. That's a lot more to my taste, and cheaper too.

Finally, I was free to go to Hidden Lane.

I blame Miriam for having to order the complete afternoon tea. After sipping peaty Scotch, I ordered a pot of lapsang souchang aka the bacon tea. The woman at the cafe asked if I'd had it before. I laughed. Not the poshest tea, but the scone was perfect.

Earlier I had Kelvingrove Park to myself. On the way back, it was packed with joggers and cyclists and people walking dogs.

As I approached Amadeus, a woman with a thick Glaswegian accent asked me the street number, and I answered it like I'd always lived here and hadn't just arrived yesterday. Passing, always a good sign.