I woke up bright and early the morning, at the crack of 5:30am. All the clocks in Amber's house are all set to different times, and I couldn't figure out what time it was.

Ergo, I decided I should probably be awake. So I was.

Of course, then I discovered it was five thirty in the morning, and was less pleased about being awake.

So I puttered about on my computer for a while. Got to see the milk delivered to the little grocery store downstairs. It amused me, though I'm not sure why. Possibly because I was awake at five thirty in the morning.

Just as I was getting ready to recklessly and enviously abandon Amber to her glorious sleeping, she awoke! Stumbling forth from her bower, she gazed upon me blearily, muttered something about headaches, and dissappeared into the bathroom.

Anyway, long story short, I did go to the shop. Discovered that there are no laws about which direction the doors ought to go (I always pull outside doors, because in Canada you have to have fire exits swinging in the direction people will run). Poked around a bit. Discovered that Hindu and Scottish accents mixed together are harder to understand than French and Scottish together.

Bought mango juice.

Back at the flat, Amber was significantly more coherant, and we discussed the day over not burnt bagels (her toaster is temeramental). We decided we were going to go see the Burrell Collection. It's a collection of art gathered by a millionaire (now dead, I'm sure) who bequeathed the lot to the city of Glasgow upon his death. He collected a SHIT TON of stuff. I read somewhere it was upwards of 20,000 pieces.

But first! Tottering through the back lanes to look at a well filled with water and garbage (no pic, because it was raining too much for me to pull out the camera). It was a well originally belonging to some poet, whose birth house was across the street. I don't know which poet (NO, it wasn't Robbie Burns), and I didn't much care. I don't like poetry, and have little interest in learning about it.

Next to the plaque commemorating the apparent exact point where this poet was born (Amber and I speculated it must have been a barn), was this lovely sign here. We were very good. Neither of us played with our balls in that particular parking lot.

ROSEMART. OBEYING THE LAW SINCE THE LAST TIME IT WAS CONVENIENT.

Anyhoo. After getting off out turquoise bus (we can only ride the turquoise ones!) on our way to the Burrell Collection, we saw these fine ladies. The horses weren't bothered by the crazy traffic.

Oh! That's another peculiar thing about Scotland, which I rather enjoy.

That is, traffic doesn't wait for pedestrians, and pedestrians don't wait for traffic.

If you want to cross the street, you wait until there's a break on your side of the street, then you scurry to the center line and wait until there's a break on the other side.

In Canada, I've found, drivers get really nervous when you do that and will often stop and wave you across, no matter how busy the road. (I hate that.) Here, they just barrel along and assume you know how to take care of yourself.

Also, NOBODY waits for cross signals. Everyone pushes the button for them, but nobody waits. It's a little bit hilarious.

After seeing these fine ladies, we got a little lost. And it started raining REALLY hard. Hard enough that my lightweight rain jacket (which is perfect for that delicate misting rain that seems to be purpetual in Scotland) was entirely useless. We darted from store to store, trying to find rain cover, and finally located a plastic poncho and an umbrella with cat paw prints on it at a second hand shop. There's a lot of tiny second hand shops here.

Of course, by this time we're both dripping wet. Amber has discovered the water proofing liquid she used on her hands was, in fact, not. I was merely pleased I wore my knee high socks. Of course, I forgot about the dry sweater in my backpack.

Anyway. We asked the nice old lady at the shop if she knew where Titwood Road was, and she said something like:

"Ach ya ye joost goo aboot thar oond turrn lift un yell be raht tharrr," and so we assumed she didn't know where we were talking about and kept walking in the direction we were going.

Got reeeeeeeeeeeeal lost. The time was pushing 4pm, and the place closed and five, and yet, we persevered. Finally, down a long lane lined with trees clipped like cubes, we found the damned place, in the middle of a bloody forest.

I'm not even kidding.

We had half an hour to spare, so we skimmed the map for what we wanted to see. I got to see this fellow right off the bat:

Whom I'm sure you recognize. He was a lot smaller than I had expected, and so I showed my distinct displeasure.

See what I mean? I always thought The Thinker was roughly man sized.

He was not a man.

In fact, I checked. I suspect he was thinking so strongly about his mutilated androginous genitalia.

Poor thing.

We skimmed through Medieval Europe and I tried to take as many pictures of the tapestries and needlework as I could before the security guards chased us out. I'll upload all the pictures to Flickr when I get back home, but here's a little teaser. It's an embroidered skirt panel, they think was made for Anne of Denmark, around 1610-1620.


Unfortunately I did not get a whole lot of great photos. It was very dark in the textiles room, for obvious reasons, and my camera does not like the dark. These photos turned out quite sharp because I put my camera face down on the glass.

I gotta sleep, though. I've been feeling like crap, and this cold has moved into my chest (though out of my sinuses, hooray!) and I've taken a lot of drugs and drank the witches brew Amber so kindly made for me (ginger, honey, lemon, lime, and garlic). I actually tasted quite nice. It just needed a handful of salt to make a good chicken basting. I feel better for having drunk it, though. I may make myself one tomorrow.

So I leave you with the archetectual porn of the day:


It was stuck to the side of a very normal looking, older building. We called it the Albino Tower.

That is all. I am very sore from walking so much. It is sleep time now.