Saturday, March 10:
Saturday was a day of activity since we knew we were leaving the next morning. It was an early start and we drove back to Glasgow in time for the 10 a.m. opening of the House of an Art Lover, which is a house that was designed in 1901 by Charles Rennie Mackintosh as an entry to a German architectural contest asking for modern residence designs. The house was never to be built, but Mackintosh’s design was disqualified since he didn’t submit enough drawings as required. However, the judges were so impressed with Mackintosh’s submission that they awarded him a special prize that they created just for him and his design. So needless to say he would have won if he had just sent in the right amount of drawings!! In the 1980s or 90s some folks decided to try building Mackintosh’s design so that it could be enjoyed in 3D instead of just on the drawn page. So they spent years constructing his design right down to the stained glass and stenciling that Mackintosh included in his drawings. The exterior of the house was way to modern for my taste, but the interior was absolutely wonderful and well worth the price of admission (which was modest). We spent almost an hour there and the part we loved the most in the whole house were the Gesso paintings (pictures) that were designed by Mackintosh’s wife, Margaret McDonald. I’ve decided to try my hand at that particular form of art – not the details drawings she did – mine would be more abstract since I can’t draw – but the TYPE of art was wonderful and I’d love to give it a shot and appreciated that the exhibit about her drawings explained exactly how to do it.
From there we headed to The Burrell Collection, a huge museum that was near the Mackintosh house. We arrived 15 minutes after they opened and spent a good two hours wandering around. It had an amazing array of art, tapestries, furniture, armor and swords, and statues. The museum was situated in the middle of a huge park that had soccer fields, a police station, horse riding stables, and bike trails. Kind of a weird place for a museum, but it was a pleasant walk to and from the car since we parked quite far away from the museum. After that we headed back into the main city centre of Glasgow and visited the Glasgow Cathedral, which opened just as we arrived (I was so impressed with how we stuck to our schedule on Saturday). The cathedral was very gothic and dark, but had lots of little caverns that were turned into small sanctuaries, and of course, lots of burial plots.
At that point it was lunch time and we popped into a nearby pub that had some good food. We had been seeking seafood the entire week and never had any luck, so I was happy that we finally found a place that had mussels on the menu! From lunch we opted to go to the airport to check into our hotel and get a quick nap. Since we had to be at the airport at 4:00 a.m. on Sunday, and since we were seeing a play on Saturday night, I knew I needed sleep. So we checked into our hotel (a 30 second walk from the airport terminal) and I immediately passed out while Denis went down to the bar to watch Rugby and have a drink or two. When I woke up a couple hours later I came thisclose to backing out on going to the play, but in the end we hopped in the car and drove over to the show. And it didn’t disappoint! I already posted on that day about how what we were seeing, so I won’t go into it again, but it was a nice performance and I’m glad we went.
Then it was back to the hotel where we dropped off the rental car (after four circuits around the airport since the signage for after-hours rental car dropoffs was abysmal). Once in the hotel room at 11 p.m. I showered, dressed, packed and basically got into bed ready to get up and go at 3:30 a.m. Our travel home was going to be LONG.