Glasgow (JC)

Went into Glasgow for a walkabout.

First thing was to get the money for our B&B bill. Went to Lloyd's TSB's bank machine and took out 500 pounds. The machine issued the amount all in 10 pound notes. UGG! We proceeded to the teller's window to ask for 5 100 pound notes. The idea was so that we would not run around Glasgow all day with a fat wad of paper. Sounds easy enough, right?

WRONG!

The teller told us that they could not offer 5 100 pound notes for the 50 10s as we did not have an account there. WHAT?!?!?!

MONEY IS MONEY!!

We were then sent to the Post Office where we stood in another lind to be told they do not handle big bills like 100 pound notes, and we should line up at the other side of the Post Office at the "Bureau du Change" (BDC).

The lady in front of us handed over her company's payroll, and rather than putting all the coins in rollers, she put them in baggies. I gather that this is the regular practice over there, but I had never seen it before. The clerk took the baggies and put them on a scale and weighed them. Bloody odd if you ask me.

At the BDC we waited and told the clerk our story, handed over our wad of 10s to get five rather beat up 100s. What a waste of time! Such built-in inefficiency. ARGH!

After that we took a short bus tour of Glasgow's east side. In Toronto, the distances covered would be a walking tour. Strathclyde, Glasgow Green, Necropolis, and the Barras are no more than a 30 minute walk from George Square. Those places are not the trans-Siberian treks we had been told they were.

We finalized our dinner plans for tomorrow night's pre-Kol Nidre dinner, ugh. A last minute thought of mine was to get our Scottish notes transformed into English notes as Canadian banks do not accept Scottish ones. The folks at Marks & Spencer did us this favour as I guess we had a pained look on our faces after our run-in with the bank earlier today.

We had lunch at an authentic, crappy, cheap put called The Cairns. After eating their food and seeing what it does to the customers, a cairn is the next step.

The pub was straight out of Coronation Street, complete with fat, rolly polly, sad looking people ready to down ales while they tell you about how the mill closed or how Metric is a plot by Tony Blair to bring Britain closer into the EU.

Potato jackets were naturally on the menu as you cannot be sad, fat and Scottish without a potato jacket.

The most stomach churning choices were: BBQ chicken with cheese or the daily breakfast which was egg, sausage and bacon. Frightening...