Chase's Park: The Steps, The safety pin sculpture, The grass and pond.....This is the site of the old maternity hospital where the first c-section ever was completed.
Glasgow from the Necropolis, The Bridge of Sighs, the entrance to the Necropolis
Ok…..it’s getting closer to the end of our magnificent trip. We spent the morning packing and trying to get everything back in the suitcases. It took a while, but we did manage to get things in…..
Then we decided that we needed to go for a walk…..packing up is too sad and too exciting all at the same time. We needed to go to the post office to mail a card, then the big decision was lunch. We decided to eat at the sandwich deli in the Buchanan Gallery. They have an awesome Christmas sandwich that contains turkey, cranberry dressing, and stuffing. They also have a great carrot cake which we like to share. We watch the daily rain begin to fall….everyone carries umbrellas. Actually all kinds of places have umbrella stands where you can take an umbrella and return it when it stops raining….pretty cool. After lunch we walked back down the hill in the by now mist…no umbrellas for mist.
We headed to the GOMA……Gallery of Modern Art. On the subground floor is a branch of the Glasgow city library, which Neil and I used thanks to Pete’s library card, but we had not yet been in the museum proper. The GOMA was built by an old tobacco importer with lots of money in the style of the Parthanon, complete with the columns. It is quite large and was a private home before it was donated to Glasgow. It now has modern art. We went to the top and worked our way down the floors. Like all modern art, some of it is very interesting. There was a display of photos taken of places where events of violence had occurred…they did not show the violence, just the places. There was the black canvas painted in two different shades of black on a black canvas….strange. There was a video that showed the artists walk to school in Palestine as he went through the checkpoints. His first attempt was thwarted by the border guards, so the next time he filmed, he hid the camera in his bag. Thus, the video shows mainly feet. On the first floor the entire floor was devoted to an exhibit by Tan, a famous videographer. The entire film was of students from a Swedish high school standing in a line. The video scanned the line of students. In front of this 10 foot screen and about 10 feet in front of the super large screen was a 42 inch screen that showed individual students. Seemed like an awful lot of space. What it boils down to is that I think a lot of modern art is not so artistic…..just not the same caliber as Monet, DaVinci, and Degas.
We stopped for the last souvenir that we wanted to pick up and headed back to the flat to get the rest of the packing finished because we are off to play again tomorrow, and we leave early Sunday.
We worked until Pete got home from school. Pete, Chase, Neil and I then decided to take Chase to the Necropolis, which is the cemetery by St. Mungo’s Cathedral. It is also the highest point in Glasgow. The cemetery contains the remains of more than 50,000 people and seems to still be an active cemetery. The Necropolis name is taken from mythology and means “City of the Dead.” From the peak of the Necropolis with the monument to John Knox you can see all over the valley of the Clyde River. Entrance to the Necropolis is over the Bridge of Sighs build in 1833-1834 symbolized as the “separation between time and eternity.” Though many of the tombstones are wearing away, it is amazing to still be able to read the dates from the early 1800s.
We walked back down to the flat. Jess soon arrived from work with groceries to make dinner. Pete and Jess made two different pasta dishes: one traditional pasta and tomato sauce and the other a smoked salmon sauce in a cream cheese based white sauce. They made the tomato sauce especially for me because I wasn’t sure I like smoked salmon. However, the smoked salmon sauce was quite lovely. There wasn’t a strong flavor….just a delicate salmon taste. It was quite good.
Then it was off to bed.
Steps: 11,359 plus the GOMA shuffle
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