Exploring Glasgow

This morning we walked over to the train station and hopped on a train to Glasgow. We saw many interesting things when we arrived in Glasgow, and I am happy to report that Jaime Oliver is opening up a new restaurant near George Square.
The first place we visited was The Piping Centre ang Bagpipe Museum.

The museum displayed everything that had to do with bagpipes. There were bagpipe making tools, music, shuttle pipes, highland bagpipes, lowland bagpipes, instruments owned by Rabbie Burns and bagpipes from all over europe.

I couldn't believe how big some of the bagpipes were, or how little some of them were. Paul enjoyed being at the Piping Centre the most because as most of you may know, he's leaning to play the bagpipes.

Afterwards we trecked through George's square

The building looks quite nice inside, with mosaic tiles and statues. My sister in law Emily got caught in the revolving door due mostly to Paul.

Anyway, we walked down the street and came upon the oldest house in Glasgow.

Built in 1471, the oldest house in Glasgow called Provand's Lordship is open for free to the public. The house displays what it may have looked like in the 17th century.





There was a room filled with pictures of influencial monarchs from King Henry VIII to Mary Queen of Scots and all the way through to..... Bonnie Prince Charlie(the picture above), then it all stopped there, hmm....I wonder why?

So we walked across the street to St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Life and Art(what an interesting place!) There were artifacts from around the world and from every religion.

As you can see there was even an egyptian mummy, with a mumified falcon next to it. There was also a Kenyan headhunter's shield, christening gowns, greek pottery, stained glass windows, a Roman sacrafice altar, a death mask of a baby, bibles, African initiation masks. All the artifacts from all the different religions were put together into sections such as birth, initiation, marriage and afterlife.

This bible here was printed in 1725 in Dutch for the Dutch Lutheran Church, it was to display the changing of the church during the reformation when people could start reading the bible in their own language.

We also went to St. Mungo's Cathedral and marveled at the enormity of the stained glass windows and arches.

In the basement we saw memorials and graves. There were three above ground tombs and two of them had lids that were badly cracked on the ends. Our kids decided to climb on top of them and peer inside(obviously not knowing what they were trying to look at) after my son shouted that he could see something we got out of there.


For your viewing pleasure I've included a couple of the grave markers. they're just so old(and there's a familiar fictional character's name on one, which is a crazy popular name here by the way).... so I took pictures of them.

Okay, I know there's a heck of a lot of pictures but there was just so much to see, so i will take you to the cemetary where I took this awesome picture (and I am using the word awesome correctly) of the cathedral and a celtic cross.

It was a nice little hike up around in this area they call the Necropolis. Paul enjoyed walking around the one masuleum, he tapped on the door to ask if anyone was home...(my mother in law joked that they were out to lunch, hahaha).

Okay so we had enough of walking around the dead for one day so we went to the Gallery of Modern Art.

This horseman with the cone on the top of it's head was probably a better depiction of modern art than the art inside the building. I'm not saying that the art was all that bad, it's just that it kind of lacked in artwork.
Oh and I found a Dr. Who style Police box!!!!!

It's probably weathered from all the time travelling......