Saturday with Shakespeare

Again Laurie beat me to writing most of the important parts of the day. The darn pictures take too much time!  Well, just a few items that require correction.

I did not sprinkle salt on the bride-to-be.  The Maid-of-Honor grabbed me and brought me into a the party of girls helping ot celebrate the up coming wedding.  Now keep in mind that the music was very loud and that I'm still not throughly used to the Glaswegian accent, nor do I have any idea what the customs are for such things here.  Anyway, I gave the bride-to-be a kiss on the cheek and wished her the best of luck.  Then I was told to give her some silver, which really puzzled me.  Apparently, one is to give a small silver coin (5 pence will do) to the bride.  In this case, they had a bowl to put it in, apparently filled with salt.  I looked this up and all I could find was the old rhyme:

"Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, and a Silver Sixpence in Her Shoe.

"The silver sixpence in the shoe is to ensure wealth to the couple in their married life (most people now opt to put a penny in their shoe)"

Anyway, they seemed to be having a lot of fun!

Visit to Stirling

Laurie did such a fantastic job writing about our trip to Stirling so I just played photojournalist and added links to what she wrote.  There were just a few additional comments I had below.


Driving
I am getting adjusted to driving here.  I love the roundabouts. They keep you going without having to stop (or at least usually the stop is shorter than it would be otherwise.

I am surprised that people seem free to park facing in either direction on either side of the road.  Since the traffic inicators aren't as obvious as they are in the US where you can tell directionality as opposed to lane separateion, this is a bit disconcerting to see cars facing you as you turn down a road—though so far I have not turned down the wrong way once so far.

The Stirling Castle
I thought the castle was amazing.  I'm getting a bit better about making panorama pictures with the digital camera and Photoshop.

Particularly impressive is how much research and work they have put into the returning the castle to the way it would have been originally. For example the Great Hall has a stucco like coating over the large stones made from limewash which is "flicked'on with a brush.  It is stunning and not at all what you might have expected a castle of that time to look like.

There are also excellent examples of period cooking and costumes.

Stirling Silver

Since we went to Stirling, I was currious about Stirling silver. I thought there might have been some connection, but I was wrong. At I. Franks Antique Silver, they have a nice history as does the WikiPediA which presents alternate theories of the history. Sterling was once the capital of Scotland. It's geography makes it both a natural fortress and a natural delimiter between the Scottish highlands and the lowlands.

Museum of Transport

Laurie did a great job of relating our adventure in the museum. There are now pictures. The museum is a very unusual collection of ship models, children's scooters, carriages, baby carriages, cars, trains, horse drawn carriages, etc. Quite a variety of brands from the past and present including Harley, Indian, and Bentley, VW, and Morris Cowley.

There was a fascinating model of bomb used in the Lockerbie incident that shows how it was probably done. It was made by a relative of a victim built inside a tape recorder. I have been to the Smithsonian and several other transportation museums including Chicago. I don't know what I was exactly expecting in this museum, but I was impressed. A very nice collection well presented.

After the museum we walked quite a ways to Battlefield Rest. I had a really good Calzone, we took a nice picture from Queens Park looking out over the city of Glasgow.

Oout and aboot…

We went into the West End of Glasgow today to see the Charles Renee Mackintosh House and the Hunterian Gallery. I like the Mackintosh style  It felt like it has a Japanese influence to me  I assumed I had to be wrong because what do I know? But I wasn't too far from the mark  Pretty neat.

Right near by is the Glasgow Transportation Museum  This was pretty neat, but we ran out of time to see it all so we'll have to head back over.

We took the underground to get to the West End  The underground has no exits, however they do have a “Way Out”. I love the differences in terminology.

We had dinner at a place called, Gamba's which was excellent  Laurie had fish with a yummy ginger sauce and I had Chicken with sticky rice and a delicious sauce, the ingredients which I can't remember.

On the way back, we saw some funny nappies in a car window…



and then a familiar man on the front of a garbage truck wearing some nappies of his own!



Jargon of the day—snog:French (or Freedom if you prefer) Kissing.

Other observations…

We kept seeing store fronts called “Amusements”.  We finaly went in and checked them out to see what it was all about.  They are basically casinos or arcades.  Card games were not allowed in the one went into, but apparently some have them.  I don't know if it requires a different license or not.  something to investigate.

Ordinary observations

Just some random observations today since Laurie had all of the fun.

I learned that you don't make right turns on red here. Don't worry, no tragedies.

I noticed there seems to be a difference in various accessibility requirements from back in the US.  There's no braille on the ATMs or street buttons.  There's no closed captioning on TV, but they sometimes have a person standing in front of a bluescreen of the show, signing. I can't make any determination why some shows are interpreted and others are not.

By the way, “Plaid” is really just a Galic word for blanket.  Tartan is the pattern we think of when we say Plaid.  Now you now.  For another interesting fact, see Nevin's comment and my reply.  You won't be sorry!  Or should I say “sorrrry” (I'm working on mee Scottish.)

If you plan a trip to the UK, check out this slang dictionary or this one, which is even better.

More tomorrow.

Pictures!

I've posted some pictures of the trip so far. Laurie is going to enjoy a day out while I get some work done today.