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.