Glasgow to Islay, Day 8 (Tuesday)

Glasgow was a welcome relief from the chaos and hustle of London. Tuesday morning the clouds mostly cleared away and we even had some blue sky. The city center of Glasgow is compact and small, and well-laid out on wide, gridded streets. We only had a few hours before we started our drive out to the island, so the only thing I wanted to do was see the famous Glasgow School of Art building, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I have always loved and admired his work and design, and was excited to be in his city. After admiring the building and dropping some pounds in the gift shop, we strolled a bit through the city. Glasgow seemed fairly quiet, and the streets were lined with some amazing examples of Victorian architecture.


Around noon we left the city in our trusty Vauxhall Corsa and headed north along Loch Lomond for the western-most reaches of Scotland, where we would catch our ferry to Islay. The road skirted the shores of Loch Lomond for at least an hour, and around every twist and turn in the road was another breathtaking site of mountains, hills, or loch. We stopped a couple of times to take photos, stopped in wee village called Lochgilphead for lunch, and stopped at Inveraray Castle. We weren't much in the mood for castle touring though, so I took a photo of the outside of it then was much more taken with the black highland coos (Scottish for cow) in a nearby field.

We made it to our ferry dock in about 3.5 hours, where we had to wait for a couple of hours for the ferry. We boarded just as the sun was setting and two hours later docked in Port Ellen, Islay. Matt couldn't wait to start the whisky pilgrimage so he had to have a dram of the "Whisky of the month" as offered in the ferry bar. We were going to miss dinner at our hotel due to the late hour, so we stumbled across a dodgy Indian place on the way there and got takeaway. We drove along the coast and between dark fields and pastures to our hotel, and I was excited that in the morning we'd wake up in a completely new place that we'd not yet seen since it was so dark and rainy on our way in. Once safely checked into our hotel, we picnicked on the floor on our takeaway curry and watched a television show starring Alan Cumming ("My favorite gay Scotsman!" exclaimed Matt...uhm, I like him a lot too but haven't yet gotten around the ranking the gay Scotmen I know) discussing Scottish films, with a focus on The Wickerman, one of Matt's favorite movies. The coincidence was delicious and more than enough to make up for the dodgy curry.