It’s been a while and a lot has happened! This week was very busy with school work but for reading week last week, I opted to stay in town since I had a few school appointments scheduled. Here are some of my nice outings:

Tennent’s Brewery

Mackintosh “House for an Art Lover” (not an actual house – built in 1990s, based on a competition design proposal drawings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret MacDonald)

Glasgow Science Center followed by an amazing walk along the Clyde River

James Bay concert at Art School

Miscellaneous walks around the west end including the discovery of a lovely community garden

Kelvingrove Art Gallery

Argyle Street Christmas Market*

*Glasgow has already been in full Christmas-mode for several weeks, which means LOTS of delicious treats to enjoy (including delicious souvlaki at the market!)

Holiday sweets here are THE BEST:

– sticky toffee everything (including lattes)
– mince pies (usually, “mince” refers to ground beef except during the holidays, when it is a sweet pie/tart filling made of fruits like apricots and raisins which are cooked with sugar and brandy, etc. Divine.)
– stollen (technically German but I’m not picky since it’s amazing and plentiful)

Mom requested to see more photos of me, so here you go:

The Pot Still, home of 500 whiskies (I drank about half a dram and had enough)

George Square at night

(Took us a minute to realize this was a fake owl, but the other birds are real)

Kelvingrove Art Gallery, as seen from Kelvingrove Park

Salvador Dali

Only in Scotland…

Best cure for a long week: tea and pecan cheesecake at school

This weekend = preparations for our big Thanksgiving dinner next Saturday!

…I can’t help you – here are some more!

I don’t have class on Tuesday’s, so I took a long walk over to the east end to check out the Glasgow Necropolis, a massive hilltop cemetery. It was really impressive, and a beautiful day to visit: mild weather, not windy, but very dramatic skies.

Some of the monuments were so old and falling over – definitely not a place I would want to be after dark! I especially liked the boldly painted gates of some of the crypts (okay – I admit that’s a weird thing to say)

George Square ready for Christmas

The Tennents Brewery

Then I went to Glasgow Cathedral, right across the street

My walk back was just as beautiful!

Our dear Mac building

The last few days have been mainly sunny, although sometimes quite cold:

…which also means tea and cake is always a good idea.

This is a Gregg’s nut (imposter cronut, I assume)

Post lunch at the Vic

November 5th was Guy Fawkes day, and an annual fireworks celebration/carnival in Glasgow Green. (Sidenote, fireworks can be purchased in supermarkets here. Yep.)

It felt like entire city was out in the park, probably also since it wasn’t raining. We didn’t try any rides, but found the most amazing hot donuts (and watery hot chocolate) to deal with the cold. The fireworks were pretty decent and were synced to superhero music – there was also a full moon!

Yesterday I ventured to Waitrose, which is a much larger and nicer supermarket than the ones closest to our flat. I found some amazing things including mince pies, pale blue eggs, and gingerbread porridge. It’s about 25 minutes from our flat but I have a feeling I will be making the trek often. They also sell Frank’s Redhot – I’m sold!

A few last beautiful things:

This week = reading week and hopefully a trip out of town!

I really love living in the West End – it kind of reminds me of Haddonfield, NJ meets Brooklyn

Love these accents:

Hard to believe how fast time has been flying! I’ve been a little bit lazy (due to the dreary, rainy weather earlier this week) and fighting a wee cold (although 95% better now) but this morning the sun is mostly shining and I woke up motivated to post another long-overdue update!

Last weekend we went to an awesome concert (Jungle) at probably the most awesome venue ever, The Arches. The venue is located in a brick viaduct underneath the Glasgow Central Train Station – I’m sure you’re all thinking that sounds terrifying and sketchy but I can attest it is in great condition/impressively renovated and structurally sound. I didn’t even see any sewer sludge ala Ninja Turtles, as expected.

I originally bought the concert tickets in July (before I had a visa or a flight or anything) and since The Arches has a restaurant attached, there was a discount if you purchased your prefix dinner along with your concert tickets. The food was actually really delicious and the restaurant also shares some of the brick archways of the main venue space so it was really cool.

We were pretty close to the front while Jungle was performing, but this is the view looking back, which gives more of a sense of the arched space.

 

 

It was a really great night and such a unique experience!

Last weekend we also changed our clocks back one hour so it’s been getting dark so early, especially when it is cloudy! It has also been very windy, which makes the rainy days especially difficult. I’ve noticed that hardly anyone wears rain boots here – I remain baffled by this and while I understand they are not necessary for the constant drizzle we have on some days, other days it downpours for hours and I see girls in Keds and ballet flats. That being said – I have no shame in wearing rain boots – before I bought them I had one day of wet socks and it was not fun.

I’ve been cooking most of my own meals lately but have also begun craving certain foods, like Dos Toros burritos, so I decided to venture to a Mexican place called Pinto that people were raving about on yelp. (Sidenote: There were even some reviews that said something like “if you are American, this is better than Chipotle!!” I personally would eat Dos Toros over Chipotle any day of the week but I figured by default, Pinto would be the closest thing to DT on this side of the pond) I was really excited when I walked in because it smelled delicious, but I have to say my “bare burrito” aka bowl was very bland and disappointing.

I think I might give them another shot sometime (perhaps with nachos?) but for now I will continue to daydream about dos toros…

Here is a bus stop on Sauchiehall Street

Buchanan Street at night

Lastly, Halloween! I finally successfully transformed into a lobster for two nights in a row – so fun! We went to a few parties around school and enjoyed the warmish and non-rainy weather, and all the weirdos that came out to enjoy it too.

(Claudia was a gumball machine – so cute!)

Happy Saturday!