A Quick Trip to Glasgow.

And it was a quick trip too although we managed to shoehorn a lot in.

Courtesy of the OH once again forgetting that when we go to Glasgow we do not need to be up at the crack of dawn to catch the early boat, on Friday we were up at the crack of dawn to catch the early boat. This did mean that when we got to Glasgow we had time to do our planned trip to IKEA that evening, and as we knew what we wanted we went straight into the warehouse bit without having to drag ourselves around the rest of the shop. This was a good thing, not least because I am suffering a bit with my back at the moment and trailing round IKEA wasn't going to do it much good.  

 

(The back is bad because a couple of weeks ago I decided to wash the window frames at the back of the house as they tend, being north facing,  to get that funny green stuff growing on them during the winter. I cannot quite reach the tops of the frames unaided so I need  to use the stepladder. I do not like going up and down the stepladder so I plonked it mid-window each time and stretched to wash the left hand bits and squirmed round to wash the right hand bits. The stretching was fine. The squirming round was a painful mistake.)

 

Saturday, since we had crossed off the IKEA thing already, was a free day and so we went  to Helensburgh to visit the Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed Hill House. I've been wanting to do that for a while. It was gorgeous. Here's the outside

 

 

Sadly you're not allowed to take pictures inside - although that's perfectly understandable - but you can see a photo of some of the interior here 

 

It being a nice afternoon weatherwise we drove on to Luss, which used to be a pretty little village on the side of Loch Lomond, famous as the setting for the Scottish soap (Take the) High Road. We'd been before, many years ago and I was looking forward to seeing it again. Sadly it a) had turned into a mega tourist centre in the intervening years and b) was packed with people, so after a slow drive round the car park to establish that there really were no spaces, despite its huge size, we gave up.

 

The evening was taken up with the Scottish Opera Rusalka, which was the purpose of  our trip - more of that in a separate post another day.

 

And Sunday we came back, stopping on the way to meet up with a friend in Wick where we had a rather delicious afternoon tea.

 

 

 

And no, we didn't get through it all, not even with three of us!