Day 11- October 24th

My dislike of the Brittania Adelphi continues this morning. Bags out was supposed to be at 8am and the porter knocked at our door at 7:40 for our bags. I was not happy about this at all. I normally get my bags out a good 5-10 minutes before deadline but 20 minutes was ridiculous and I wasn't finished pack up all the little last minute things I need in the morning to get ready. I told the porter to give me 5 minutes and then I hurriedly finished getting ready. Breakfast was not good and all told, I was so done with the hotel I couldn't wait to leave. I told Doug that so far this has been my least favorite hotel of the trip. He kept thinking that I meant because it was old. I have no problem with old hotels, indeed later on the trip we stayed at even older hotels that were my two favorite of the trip. Finally we are off and leaving behind the Adelphi. Our final destination today is Glasgow and I try to summon my excitement of reaching one of my life's dreams- visiting Scotland. Traffic was horrible, Doug told us that it was half-term for school and many kids were out so families were out on holiday. We drove through the Lake District today, made famous and protected thanks to Beatrix Potter. We passed by Lake Windemere, which is the largest of the lakes in the Lake District. Traffic was so bad that we changed our lunch stop from Gretna Green at the Scotland border to Grasmere in the Lake District. Audrey and I have decided that we are tired of making our stops about food so we have parted from Jane, Marcia and Terry. We walked to the church where William Wordsworth is buried. It is a beautiful church and a lovely river runs next to it. Audrey and I took some photos at the gravesite and then walked to an old school house to buy some gingerbread. The gingerbread there is famous and has been made there for a long time. After that we walked to the other side of the town and visited Dove Cottage where Wordsworth lived and wrote. It was a beautiful day and we still had time left over so we walked over to Lake Grasmere to find a good spot for some photos. Time was running out and Audrey wanted to get some postcards. We went to a shop and I found a coaster with my family's coat of arms. As I was buying this Jane came in and told Audrey that she found a Scottish shop with a great selection of charms. Audrey was collecting charms for the places she visited on her tours. I headed back to the coach and stopped to use the toilet. We were off again and stopped next at Gretna Green. Gretna Green is just over the border into Scotland. The old blacksmith's shop here is quite famous for marrying runaways from England in centuries past. The laws for getting married were more lax in Scotland than in England. Now there is a woolen mill here and some other shops. Audrey and I found a shop that is a whiskey wonderland. They have an entire wall filled with mini-bottles of different brands of scotch whiskey. You can purchase a nice wooden box that has slats in it to make 5 compartments. The box is big enough to hold the mini-bottles. I purchased the box and chose different bottles of whiskey because I knew that this would make a perfect souvenir for Justin. I stopped at another shop and bought a pair of earrings that looked like the Scottish thistle for Tiffany and also bought some shortbread. Eddy had told me earlier that Scotland is famous for its shortbread. Audrey was in that shop buying yet more charms. We got mixed up on the time and Doug came and found us, we were only five minutes late. As we drove on to Scotland Doug played some bagpipe music for us. When we arrived in the city we had a brief orientation tour. We staying at a Quality Hotel- Central Station. Doug joked that the name means nothing and not to expect quality. We arrived around 4:30pm. I have the room to myself tonight. This hotel is even older than the Adelphi. It's a pretty awesome hotel, which turned out to be my second favorite of the tour. It's built over the train station in the city center, but you can't hear the trains, at least I didn't from the various places I was in the hotel. The hallway where our rooms were at seemed amazingly long. When Jane and Audrey came upstairs they asked if there were mirrors, but no the hallway was really that long. I remarked that the hallway reminded me of the one in The Shining where the twins showed up as Danny was pedaling on his trike, asking him to come play. Jane started to hit me. She gets easily spooked and was convinced that there was a presence in her last hotel room. The only bad thing I have to comment about the hotel was that it took FOREVER to get our bags. I wouldn't have minded except that Audrey, Terry and I were anxious to leave and see some of the city before the sun set. We walked out to George Square. I took a lot of photos here as the square is littered with statues of famous and important Scots. It would have been nice to have had more time in Glasgow as we didn't get to visit Glasgow, we just stayed overnight here. Dinner was ok, it would have probably been better if I wasn't such a picky eater. However, it was much better than the dinner at the Adelphi. After dinner they served tea and coffee in a sitting room near the restaurant. Jane, Audrey, Terry, Marcia and I were a bit goofy this night. There was a piano in the sitting room and we all pretended like we knew how to actually play it. Down the hallway was a ballroom where people were learning how to dance. The door was open and we could see them so Marcia, Jane and I pretended to learn how to dance as well. A police officer showed up and we joked that we were getting arrested for bad dancing. None of us were ready to retire yet and we headed to the hotel bar. I got a nice pint of Strongbow, and then shared another pint with Audrey. Terry and Marcia met a nice Scottish lady and her daughter from Aberdeen, I can't remember their names though. They were in Glasgow on holiday. A bit after 10pm we went upstairs to our rooms. Tomorrow is the day I've been looking forward to this entire trip. The weather was perfect today and I hope that it holds out for tomorrow.

Hotel: Quality Inn- Central Station. Room was nice. It was set up much like the Adelphi with a small foyer with the bathroom in a room to oneside and the bedroom in a room off the other side. I was extremely happy to see that my bathtub had a shower, and a real one too, not just some handheld thing. The food was ok, but really the entire atmosphere of the hotel was great. It's centrally located in the city.




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