Finland

We arrived in Turku, Finland, in the evening, and picked up our rental car from the railway station. I was able to see a double-decker train there - the first in my experience! The rental car pick-up was also interesting; our car company didn’t have an office at the actual train station, so they sent a man with a car at the appointed time to hand it over to us. We were glad our estimated time of arrival had proved accurate! For once, he didn’t try to sell us any insurance policies, or encourage us to upgrade to a better car for a dearer price (for obvious reasons) - it was the most informal handover we’ve had, and he was the friendliest car guy we’ve dealt with so far.

The next day we passed an absolute multitude of speed cameras on our way up to Kuopio, where we were staying with friends of Mum and Dad, Helena and Teuvo. Mum and Dad had started a friendship with a Finnish girl 30 years ago when they were all in Moscow, and now this girl (or woman, married and with three sons around our age) kindly offered several days’ hospitality to a couple she’d never met! We had been unsure how the time would pan out, but they were both so warm, lovely and friendly that it didn’t take long for us to feel right at home - if home is where you have great company and all your needs are lavishly supplied. We had some really good conversations, and also relished the meals...

Get ready for food descriptions: the first night we had numerous little gourmet tomato, chicken and courgette stacks, with new potatoes and salad and blueberry pie for dessert. The next day we had a typical Finnish dish for breakfast: cooked rice wrapped in rye bread, warmed in the microwave and topped with slices of meat and cheese. For the main meal we enjoyed bacon-topped mushrooms, with smoked salmon, wedges and salad, finished off with white chocolate and strawberry parfait for dessert. This sounds delicious on its own, but surrounded by the packaged meals we are used to these days, it was even more amazing.

We did also get out and partake in Kuopian life; we went along with our hosts to their Pentecostal Church, which thankfully had a volunteer interpreter and some headphones you could wear to hear the translation. I don’t think the interpreter this Sunday knew how to translate everything, but we got the gist of the sermon. We also recognised a couple of the songs, which was nice!

Our hosts had a lakeside cottage, so naturally their normal house was also by the edge of a lake!

mirror-clear water

That evening we all visited the Puijon tower, one of the town’s key tourist attractions, and beheld the great 360 degree view. Looking at a map of Finland shows you how many lakes there are in the country, and the area around Kuopio is particularly lake-rich, which was confirmed at the top of the tower. There was so much water around us, interspersed with some really tiny islands, and lots of forested areas too. Our main impression of Finland was of forests and lakes, and it’s a very scenic combination.

 view from the top

even better view from the top

The next day we ventured out on our own, investigating some handmade Finnish craft at the central market area, exploring the town, and going for a 2km walk in the area around Puijon tower. However, with the hot weather having continued all throughout our time in Scandinavia, it was still really warm during our time in Finland, which made even shortish walks quite uncomfortable!

 pretty forest walk

Random sight on the way back - two guys comparing their sweet rides. We presume.

That evening the four of us, along with Helena and Teuvo’s youngest son, all headed off to the lakeside cottage they own. They were kindly letting us stay here by ourselves for a couple of nights. It was a beautiful setting; the cottage was about 20 paces from the edge of the lake, surrounded by forest. Typically, Finnish people require their cottages to be completely remote, with no neighbours anywhere close by, but this one happened to have one reasonably close, as the two cabins were originally built for the one family.

part of the wooded area by the cottage

Helena, Teuvo, John and me outside the cottage, by the lake's edge.

The cottage itself was spacious and surprisingly well-equipped, as it was built fairly recently; it had a shower with hot water, a full kitchen, even a dishwasher! There was also a separate sauna, right by the lake. Before they left us to it, we all enjoyed some delicious “fire soup” (actually not spicy at all, some of you will be sorry to learn), and then they cranked up the sauna for us to experience a quintessential Finnish pastime!

Our comfortable yet cosy dwelling!

The traditional way to do a Finnish sauna is to go in naked, with dips in the lake between sauna sessions. Once we learned this, the desire for isolated cottages became clearer to us. Anyway, we weren’t quite that bold, but went in with our togs on. In a few minutes we were sweltering. I felt like I couldn’t breathe properly - how could people do this for enjoyment? With regularity? We stuck it out, until we were sweating pretty much all over. Again - not the prettiest thing to describe, and it felt weird, as well, since having numerous rivulets of sweat running off me is normally something I would avoid, rather than aim for.

The view from the back of the cottage, with the deck, the sauna right beside the lake and John in a hammock to the right.

The lake looked quite inviting after saunaing it up! Look - it's literally sparkling!

I bravely plunged waist-deep into the lake after our first session, finding my desire for cooling off was adequately met without going in completely (we’re still sissies when it comes to cool water). John went for a somewhat proper swim, although that was due to losing balance on the lake bed more than any desire to completely submerge. Then it was back in for round two! To our surprise, it seemed much more manageable this time round. I found that lying down on the towel-covered wooden ledge worked well, as my face didn’t get all the hot air. Once we had worked up a good sweat again, we washed off in the shower, in the next room, and then rejoined our hosts to bid them farewell. We had spent about an hour in total. My skin felt quite smooth afterwards!

The next day was a proper holiday on this busy six-month trip. We slept in, relaxed, read our books, and enjoyed the surrounding scenery. There were no traffic sounds; just the light breeze through the trees and the gentle lapping of the lake. It was a beautiful day, mild but warm, with dappled sunlight shining down through the trees when we sat outside. We had another go at the sauna in the evening, with the requisite dip in the lake (up to my shoulders this time!), and cooked up a smoked salmon for dinner, eating outside on the deck while watching the sun set. It was a pretty perfect day.

 sunset on the lake

The nights were just as quiet as the days, so we slept well and felt rejuvenated for the next leg of our journey. It was lovely to meet some actual Finns and sample some actual Finnish traditions and cuisine, and we were so glad we had set aside these few days to explore the country. And now John wants us to get a summer cottage, by the lake, with a sauna. We’ll see.

Another big lake we saw on the drive down.

A smaller lake on the drive back down.

Oslo and Stockholm Syndrome

Capital Cities #4 and 5

Oslo
We arrived in Oslo, stepped off the train and were immediately assaulted by a wave of heat. A typical Scandinavian summer - or not! Apparently the high 20s we experienced while there were way warmer than they are used to. Thankfully, a light thunderstorm had just passed over Oslo when we arrived, which cooled it down a bit and gave us a delightful jandal backsplash as we walked to our accommodation.

Upon arriving at our Airbnb apartment, which looked nice and comfortable, we were informed that the floors were brand new, and were requested not to wash them. We agreed reluctantly, unsure if we would be able to suppress our all-consuming floor-washing urges.

We were treated to another thunderstorm that night, and also realised that the apartment had no curtains or blinds, which makes it a little awkward when the sun comes up at 5am. Thank goodness for sleeping masks!

The next day dawned hot and muggy, with crows cawing and bells tolling in the distance. It seemed quite last-day-of-your-lifeish. Maybe that was the terror warning preying on my mind, though - we had just learned of a security warning issued by the Norwegian government. 50 or so Norwegians had been trained in Syria as terrorists, and apparently were on their way back to Norway, and had issued threats which were deemed a real concern. Consequently, several of the typical tourist attractions were closed to the public - mainly the free ones, too! We contented ourselves with viewing them from the outside.

 The Stortinget (Parliament)

:-(

Radhus (City Hall). Yep, totally rad.

On the other hand, the buses were all crowded, mainly thanks to the Oslo football tournament we mentioned in our last post. Often two football teams would try to cram themselves onto an already rather full bus, and everyone would end up uncomfortably close to one another, so if a terrorist was going to attack public transport, the buses would be a good option. (By good option I mean bad option. It would be terrible.)

Happily, though, we were there on a Sunday, the day of the week the National Gallery has free admission. We saw Edvard Munch’s “Scream”, amongst other works by Norwegian artists, and tried to work out why it’s such a renowned painting.

We visited our first International Church that day, so were able to enjoy a sermon in English. Thank goodness for expats, and for English being the lingua franca.

We also walked up onto the roof of the Opera House, which is an activity we can recommend.

The opera house and its roof

The next day we made good our time with visits to four attractions, starting with the Akershus Fortress. We had quite an interesting tour around the place, which is still in use for state ceremonies.

 A loooong room in Akershus Fortress

One thing we’ve noticed about Scandinavia is the boats. Boats everywhere. It makes sense when you see the countries, though, filled with and surrounded by bodies of water, so it’s not really surprising that they’ve produced such epic (saga-worthy even) boats.

Look at the size of that thing!

The ships themselves were unearthed in the 1800s. They are huge, beautiful things, and seeing the actual boats in all their restored glory really gave me an appreciation for their great size. You can almost imagine how it would feel watching a handful of these gliding down the river bristling with Vikings. Unfortunately the period in which they were dug up means the conservation techniques used haven’t actually helped the artifacts, and they’re disintegrating from the inside out. Go and see them while you still can!!

Continuing the boat theme, we also visited the Kon Tiki museum. For those of you who don’t know the Thor Heyerdahl story, here’s the Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl), but basically he investigated some (probably erroneous) anthropological ideas, and undertook daring experimental voyages across oceans in boats made out of papyrus, or balsa wood, sailing across the Atlantic and from South America to the Pacific islands respectively. Whether or not his ideas are true, he’s one of the legends of modern adventures, and the Kon Tiki museum was a great look at the boats he used, the initial scoffing of his contemporaries and the challenges his crews faced on their epic journeys.

Ra 2 - sailed from Morocco to the Caribbean

Kon-Tiki - sailed from Peru to French Polynesia

Oslo also has the Vigeland Sculpture park, full of statues made by the one guy. They're all nude statues, except for the self-portrait statue (which we didn't actually see). The statues seem to depict the range of human experience, often violent, although one depicted a fight between a man and a handful of infants, which I can't imagine is part of the human experience all that often.

Straining figures hold up the fountain bowl.

The centrepiece: a column of writhing naked human figures (taken from afar, out of respect for their modesty).

At this park there also happened to be a Kongoland exhibition. The purpose of the exhibition is to promote discussion by recreating Kongoland - basically a zoo for humans that actually existed in Oslo a mere 100 years ago, as part of the wider 1914 Jubilee Exhibition, celebrating the centennial of the 1814 constitution. In the original exhibition, they brought Africans, ostensibly from the Congo, to put them on show like curios by supposedly recreating a village in Africa. In the current exhibition, they had called for volunteers to populate the various huts and buildings. This exhibition has attracted some controversy, with some commentators asserting it was perpetuating the very racism and objectification it sought to condemn, but it informed me about an event I hadn’t ever heard of before - and a relatively recent one, too!

All in all, we really enjoyed our time in Oslo, and liked the city, despite the criminally expensive prices. Also, cliffhanger resolution: we ended our stay there having successfully contained both of our raging floor-washing inner beasts.

Stockholm

The bus to Stockholm took about 8 hours. Buses in this part of the world are pretty nice, especially the long-haul ones. Most of them have wifi and a power outlet, which on an 8-hour trip is very useful. If the internet works, that is.

Upon our arrival in Stockholm, it became apparent that John’s bag wasn’t going to make it any further. Ever since, well, Canada, we’d been expecting the wheels to give out on it. Once we hit Stockholm, though, they finally did. John now discovered that carrying the bag on his back was uncomfortable and far too heavy, too. Here’s a tip if anyone wants to follow in our footsteps - don’t buy a bag off Trademe for $11 and expect it to last for six months of rolling over cobbled streets.

We didn’t actually do too much in Sweden, other than get a replacement bag for John, and wander around the atmospheric Old Town looking at all the buildings and the goods for sale. Mostly this was because John was unwell for both days we were there, as well as a couple of days on either side. In fact, he had a man cold (which is just a regular cold that a man has). We got through it though, just like we made it through Norway under security alert.

St George slaying the dragon in Stockholm's Gamla Stan (Old Town).

One thing we did manage to see was the changing of the guard at the Palace - such a great ceremony! There was marching, and the Swedish Navy band playing, and much pomp.

Another notable sight was the royal chapel, probably the fanciest building I’ve ever seen, which we weren’t allowed to take photos of. Such a lavish interior. You know how some things are so fancy that they’re garish? This one was far fancier than that, which pushed it into the realm of the magnificent.

We also visited Ikea, since it seemed like an appropriate thing to do in Sweden. There’s a free bus that takes you from the central station to an Ikea on the outskirts of town. We scored some free stubby pencils, and wandered around looking at things, almost all of which would be completely impractical to bring back.

Finally, we completed our boat education at the Historical Museum, which featured more information on Vikings, including a reconstruction of a Viking town, as well as a walk through Swedish history and a section on prehistoric finds.

From Stockholm, we caught a ferry on the appropriately-named Viking Lines across to Finland (incidentally, getting up at 5am to do so). The nice man at the check-in counter asked where we were from, and told us to send him a postcard! Dude - a) my postcards are precious things; I don’t just strew them round everywhere, and b) the principal objection: I don’t even know your name.

Anyway, what Viking Lines seems to be trying to do is make the ferry trip more like a cruise, so you can book cabins (which would come in handy on an overnight voyage) and they have entertainment options.

We were able to sit in an area that had a power outlet. This area also had the dance floor, so we were treated to a soundtrack with pop songs (first time I’ve heard “Waterloo” in Swedish!), then live music by a Finnish band, then a bingo game, followed by Finnish karaoke. For the first song or two I couldn’t tell if this was a proper performance still or not, as the singers were just about as good as the band that had been playing, but by the middle it was abundantly clear it was karaoke. It was kinda like being back in the train to Oslo with the wailing teenagers. Neither of us decided to join in on the karaoke session - they didn’t seem to have any songs in English.

Never mind - the ferry ride was only 11 hours long!!!

We passed mighty close to lots of islands in the Swedish-Finnish archipelago!

- Special thanks to John, with whom I harmoniously wrote this blog post.

Norway in a nutshell

We arrived in Norway in a city called Bergen. We didn't stay there very long, though, since we were really only there for the scenic trip to Oslo via Flåm.

The tickets we organized for the journey to Oslo were from what's called the Norway in a nutshell package. Ordinarily we don't do package tours, but this one wasn't quite a package tour.

The Norway in a nutshell tickets (NIN) are a set of tickets comprising various modes of public transport, mostly scenic. We chose the one which goes from Bergen to Oslo via Flåm - the famous Flåmsbanna (I say famous, but I'd never heard of such a thing before).

Booking websites can be such a pain. The NIN website didn't give us any options as to what train we would catch - the one we ended up booking actually left before our plane arrived in Bergen, and we were booked to arrive in Oslo the next day at 11:45pm or so. This state of affairs obviously wasn't going to work, but other websites suggested that the tickets were flexible, only needing to be used on the correct day.

Arriving in Bergen was easy enough, as was arriving at the train station. Not so easy, however, was finding out how to get to Flåm, where we were booked to stay the night. Eventually asking the right questions got us success. The tickets were flexible - to a point. The train to Voss was fine, as there is no assigned seating, the bus to Gudvangen, ferry to Flåm, train to Myrdal were all fine, just the last leg, that pesky train to Oslo had assigned seating. Which was all booked. We were repeatedly told that we'd have to ask the conductor in Myrdal if there were any free spaces available, so we'd have to chance it.

The train to Voss was uneventful, if a little scenic. The bus to Gudvangen however:

Views like this.

The photo might not show it well, but this is probably the steepest road that I've ever driven down (in a bus at least)

The bus stopped for various photo ops with various waterfalls, and then we were in Gudvangen.

Leaving Gudvangen

The fjords: Nærøyfjord and Aurlandsfjord are world heritage sites, and are rather narrow at points.

Kayaks for scale

It was raining on and off while we were on the ferry, hence the misty look in some of the photos.

It was all very majestic

There were a few other boats on the water, but on the whole, it seemed quite empty.

The ferry stopped at little fishing villages along the way.

 

Arriving in Flåm (which is pronounced Flom, like flop) this is the view that we had from our (expensive - booking early can be a good idea sometimes) accommodation:

The next morning we left early to catch the earlier train from Flåm, which would link to the earlier train to Oslo, just in case we could get on.

Yay!

The train goes up the side of a mountain, and was originally used to transport goods to the fjord, for shipping elsewhere, but these days it seems to only haul passengers.

Rail journeys are a time for contemplation. Will we get on the train to Oslo?

They're also a time for looking at scenery like this

and this.

We arrived in Myrdal, and the first thing we find out is that the train to Oslo has been delayed by half an hour or so. So we wait.

When it finally arrives, I run up to a helpful and official-looking guy, who informs me that he is the conductor, but that they have no seats left.

Anna, with a stroke of genius, asks if we can stand. The helpful and official-looking guy says yes, as long as we don't get in anyone's way. We ask no more questions, in case he changes his mind, and climb aboard.

The thing about not having an assigned seat in a train full of assigned seats is that you're at risk of being unseated at the next stop. We found a place for our bags and wandered down the carriages, looking for a likely couple of free seats, ready of course to vacate them when asked.

We found a carriage full of rowdy teenagers who were on their way to Oslo for a football competition, and who spent most of the trip butchering the lyrics to English language pop songs.

Ordinarily that would mean we were annoyed with them, but this time it seemed they kept whoever owned those seats from coming down to claim them. We were very thankful that we were on the train, let alone with a seat, so the music seemed like a minor inconvenience, barely mentionable. We were able to sit there for the whole trip to Oslo, although for the first few stops we kept standing up, and standing in the area between carriages, so as to avoid an awkward confrontation in case someone came to claim their rightful inheritance. When the man checking the tickets came around, he mumbled something in Norwegian, and stamped our ticket anyway.

Of course, the train journey to Oslo was scenic too, with:

Lakes

Glaciers

So many lakes.

There were tunnels too.

It was good to arrive in Oslo in time to get the keys to our AirBnB apartment. While we appreciated being able to sit in their noisy carriage, we were glad when the train rolled into the Oslo central station, so we could at last get some peace and quiet. Unfortunately we hadn't seen the last of the rowdy football-playing teenagers.

Edinburgh - Dunedin of the north.

Capital City #3

I expected that it would be difficult to understand people in non-English-speaking countries. One thing I didn't expect was difficulty in understanding people who have spoken English their whole life.

My theory is that people who speak English as a first language don't put any effort into pushing their accent to the middle, where most people will be able to understand, whereas people who speak English only secondarily have to work at it. I imagine the universal point of understanding lies somewhere between the Queen's English, and Midwestern American English - in other words, the English that's spoken in movies. I think this generic English accent is what the Scandinavians and Slavs I've spoken to since are trying to emulate.

I think Edinburgh was the worst for this, but with so many accents all throughout the UK, it was a problem everywhere. I'd have to really concentrate to be able to figure out what people were talking about. (The hardest accent I've encountered so far though, has to go to the dude who decided to talk to me while I was washing my hands in Halifax. Newfoundland apparently has the most unintelligible accent ever. This guy was harder to talk to than the road worker in Canada who only spoke French, and who persisted in ignoring Anna - the only other person who actually spoke a little French. I digress.) I found myself paralysed when talking to people - I knew that what they said was in English, but even if they repeated it for me, I still couldn't quite recognise the words as recognisable words, but with a little more thought, perhaps I wouldn't have to get them to repeat themselves, so I'd just stand there, with a puzzled look on my face until they repeated themselves anyway.

Edinburgh was swelteringly hot when we arrived, and we were tired as, hoping to check in to our accommodation, and get a good night's sleep. The room we got was probably about the size of a small bedroom. The double bed was up against one wall, and there was enough room to walk around the side to get to the bathroom. The window, which only opened a quarter of the way, was closed, and the sun was streaming in, giving us an unwelcome object lesson on the greenhouse effect. Not the most comfortable place we've been in.

Anyway, on to the attractions.

Edinburgh Castle.

Looking around the castle was cool; we managed to get in on one of the free guided tours of the castle - the tour guide was intelligible, he wore a kilt, didn't play the bagpipes and he kept making jokes. The crown jewels were rather impressive, the stone of scone not so much.

A Ferris Wheel, the Scott Monument (Sir Walter) and some clock tower.

One thing we did that I recommend you don't, is going to pretty much every tourist shop in town. Tinned bagpipe music. Tinned bagpipe music everywhere. Harder to avoid, though, would be the numerous buskers also playing bagpipe music on street corners everywhere. It definitely made it less heart-wrenching to say goodbye to Scotland when we left, though.

On the hill overlooking the city there is an eclectic mix of monuments and buildings. My favourite would have to be the National Monument.

More neoclassical mumbo jumbo.

Yes, it's unfinished, but I think that means there is so much scope for making it something other than yet another grandiose neoclassical megalithic architectural monstrosity.

Weirdly enough, we didn't really take all that many photos during our time there, so I'll just leave one more for you.

Cairn

This cairn commemorates the founding of the new Scottish parliament. It's made from stones from a bunch of places, including Auschwitz, Paris, and various locations within Scotland.

Leaving Scotland behind, our next stop was Norway. No more sleeper buses for us! Only a 4.30am wake-up time to catch a 7.55am flight.

Deepest Darkest Glasgow

We've been booking our travel as we go. Normally this means we've got the next destination's accommodation booked, and one ticket via bus/train/plane to the new destination, or we book it a few days before we need to go. This means we have extra flexibility, but it also means that some modes of transport become vastly more expensive than they would otherwise have been.

When people heard we were going to visit Glasgow, the reactions ranged from confusion (Why are you going there? Do you have family there to visit?) to trying to warn us off going there (There's not much to do there, I wouldn't bother, personally...) but we decided to go anyway. We thought we had booked a sleeper bus to Glasgow. The thing about booking transport (and to a lesser extent, accommodation) is that for each new company you use, you've got to try to understand how to navigate their website, what the different type of tickets mean; not too difficult, but when you've done it ten different ways on ten different websites, you're bound to make a mistake. Can you feel that big heavy cloud descending right now? That's foreboding.

We arrived at the crowded Victoria bus station on time for our bus to Glasgow, which was scheduled to leave at 11.45pm, and boarded what we thought was the correct bus, and sat on our seats. No one checked our tickets, but the angry bus driver who complained about how heavy my bag was had a Scottish accent, and we did line up where we were told to, so we were presumably in the right place. I peered around looking for where the beds might be, but didn't see any. The angry bus driver who complained about how heavy my bag was began to talk over the loudspeaker, and we were on the move.

Sitting upright while trying to get some sleep isn't one of the skills that I've mastered (I'm looking at you, Nathan) and the lady opposite me kept stretching out her legs into my space. Also (things just keep getting worse, don't they?) I'd very foolishly washed our earplugs the day before. A warning to all - do not wash your ear plugs if you want to use them again, as they'll refuse to work, and pop out of your ear at the next inopportune moment.

One of the things I'd like to put on the blog once we're done is a list of things to bring/do if you ever follow in our footsteps. One of these things is (SPOILER ALERT) sleeping pills. Without sleeping pills, I don't think we would have survived the next day. As it was, we managed to have a 5-6 hour snooze on the 8 hour trip, which was good, since we had a long day ahead of us.

We arrived in Glasgow at 7:30am, or thereabouts. Thankfully the bus station had lockers, so we locked our bags away, and left to explore the city.

One useful thing to do in a new city is to visit the information centre and grab a map, and depending on the helpfulness of the people working there (thanks Montreal!) perhaps get some ideas about what you want to do. Arriving in a city that early means that nothing is open yet. So we wandered around, watching people go to work, visited the info centre once it opened, and then left to visit the cathedral.

Unbeknownst to us, Glasgow was about to host the Commonwealth Games. The tourist pavilion is in the main square, selling games memorabilia like shirts and umbrellas emblazoned with the games logo, and/or the mascot. This pavilion had just opened and we were their first customers, if you can call us that when we were just wandering around, looking at stuff, with no intention of buying anything.

We arrived at the cathedral to see elderly people milling about, carrying boxes of things, and official looking people standing around looking official. We did what any self respecting tourist does in such a situation - we decided to walk around the building to see what was going on. We followed another group of people who weren't carrying things through a side door and stepped inside. The whole inside of the building was filled with people arranging greenery, wheeling in potted plants, carrying cut flowers in little boxes shaped like coffins.

One helpful lady came up to us and explained that the Queen was going to be visiting the church the next day, and that we could still have a look inside the church. We promised not to get in anyone's way.

Getting ready for a visit from the Queen.

The building was a pretty big one, and all of the different nooks, crannies, and alcoves were being filled with flowers, including the crypt. It would have been nice to see it when it was done as well.

Just across a bridge from the church is the Necropolis. It means City of the Dead and it did look like a small town. Victorians apparently had different ideas to us as to what's appropriate for commemorating the deceased. It's an interesting place, with plenty of little statues, and buildings that are bigger than some of the rooms we've stayed in.

Not a little bit spooked out. Not me.

On the way back through George Square, there was a protest going on. I think it was to do with the Sri Lankan involvement in the games, but with Girls just wanna have fun as the song that they were prancing to as they blatantly disregarded the No climbing sign, it wasn't obvious.

I've spared you the close-up.

We visited another couple of museums (don't bother with the modern art one, but do visit Kelvingrove Art Gallery and see Salvidor Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross. It's definitely worth it) and then it was time to leave on our bus to Edinburgh. All in all, Glasgow wasn't quite the hive of scum and villainy that we'd been led to believe. It was rather pleasant, especially with things being all set up for the games. We're glad we went, even if it was just for the day.