# Glasgow



## GlasgowMan (Jan 11, 2006)

By Victoria Brenan

Ask anyone who hasn’t been to Glasgow what they think of it and the reply is invariably the same.

The city has long battled a public perception – that of derelict buildings and despair – which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Crowned European City of Culture in 1990, Glasgow has forged onwards and upwards and was recently voted one of Europe’s top tourist destinations, with designer shops to rival Edinburgh, a host of museums, concert halls, and festivals, all set against a backdrop of stunning Victorian architecture.

Since the 1980s – when Mr Happy burst onto the scene with his “Glasgow’s miles better” slogan – the city has been undergoing something of a renaissance.

The cheery yellow Mr Man has long since gone, to be replaced most recently with “Glasgow – Scotland with Style”. And it’s a style which seems to have made an impression – the city was voted best in the UK at a national travel magazine awards ceremony this month.

The city centre itself – Scotland’s main shopping destination – is a vibrant hub of stores, restaurants and bars. Retail outlets cater for every taste – from the traditional Marks and Spencer (including one of the largest in the UK) and several branches of Next, to Karen Millen, Coast, Jigsaw, LK Bennett, and Dune.

Sitting alongside the high street chain stores is the Italian Centre, on John Street, aimed at those with a few [thousand] pounds in their pocket and home to Emporio Armani and the only branch of Versace in Scotland.

Glasgow’s main shopping thoroughfare, on Buchanan Street, houses the country’s largest Frasers department store and the unique 188-year-old Argyll Arcade, one of the UK’s oldest covered shopping areas and containing 30 jewellery shops.

Nearby Buchanan Galleries is the newest shopping centre containing 80 stores, including John Lewis, H&M, Habitat and Mango.

And if all the retail therapy gets too much, Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, situated in Royal Exchange Square and surrounded by pavement cafes and bars, is just a few minutes walk away.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum reopened this summer after a £28 million refurbishment and is well worth a visit. Home to 22 galleries, the imposing, red-brick building is situated in the “west end” – a short bus ride away on the red hop-on, hop-off tourist buses. 

Housing everything from fine art and archaeology, arms and armour, the museum (free to visit) has taken a 21st century turn and is now complete with a multi-sensory cinema and new discovery centres. And after an action-packed day around the shops and art galleries, there’s no shortage of places to eat and drink.

Dozens of bars and restaurants are packed around the city centre, serving food from Thailand to north America.

We ate at the popular and lively Cafe Mao on Brunswick Street, boasting a wide selection of Asian food, and close to our accommodation in the four-star Fraser Suites in Albion Street.

The Metropolitan in nearby Candleriggs offers an extensive cocktail range, and Blu, on Trongate, provides an ideal location for relaxing with a glass of post-shopping wine. 

Glasgow’s ongoing renaissance was celebrated at the weekend with the annual Merchant City festival, set in the district once home to the tobacco giants at the turn of the century.

More than 300 events took place across the city including performances by the Scottish Opera, international street theatre, and a French market in Candleriggs. Adam Hills and Jason Byrne, both stars of Edinburgh’s Fringe, headlined the comedy programmes in the old Fruitmarket.

Glasgow’s renaissance looks set to continue and while the city can stage events like that, it continues to “smile better” for decades .

Accommodation: Victoria Brenan stayed at the Fraser Suites serviced apartments in Albion Street (www.frasersuitesglasgow.co.uk) priced £75 per night if booked via the internet.


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## TeKnO_Lx (Oct 19, 2004)

great.. and photos?


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## GlasgowMan (Jan 11, 2006)




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## blaxxxbla (May 27, 2006)

I am just impressed of the beauty of the city, I wish I could go there!, is it expensive?


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Glasgow is considerably cheaper than London!


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## ♣628.finst (Jul 29, 2005)

Glasgow--- the finest British city.

Thank you for the great pics. I wish to visit there. 

Does Glasgow have good public transport?


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Xäntårx said:


> Glasgow--- the finest British city.
> 
> Thank you for the great pics. I wish to visit there.
> 
> Does Glasgow have good public transport?


From my experience, Glasgow is a very walkable city. There are several key pedestrianized streets going north-south and east-west, and you can easily cross the core in about 15-20 minutes. 

I see a lot of buses, but I usually walk.









What I didn't like was the subway system, because it is a loop around the peripherals, and doesn't go deep into the city centre.


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## GlasgowMan (Jan 11, 2006)

Glasgow has the best public transport system in the UK outside London. We have the subway that links the city centre and the west end, the two main tourist areas. We also have an abundance of busses and a great local train system that runs to ever corner of the city from Glasgow Central and Glasgow Queens Street.

Glasgow is pretty cheap, certainly compared to London. Hotels in the city are getting more and more expensive as tourist numbers to the city are rocketing.

Flights to Glasgow can be very cheap, just depends where you are coming from.


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## GlasgowMan (Jan 11, 2006)

*Glasgow takes its place as a top cultural and architectural draw *
If you love wonderful architecture, Glasgow is your beat. Walk around the city center and you'll come upon grand Beaux Arts buildings, ruddy sandstone Victoriana, columned Greek-style classics, onion domes and turrets, and statues, statues everywhere. 

The most famous buildings are the Art Nouveau masterpieces of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the most visible, the exuberant Italianate City Chambers at one end of George Square, heart of the city, where a statue of Sir Walter Scott atop a tall column oversees the likenesses of Robert Burns, James Watt, and other Scottish notables. 

Pubs and outdoor cafes line pedestrian streets. Art galleries, stylish shops, and restaurants fill the former warehouses in the Merchant City district. Sophisticated restaurants occupy Georgian townhouses in the city center. By evening you'll also discover that Glasgow knows how to party, and after the pubs close, the clubs open. This is a city that often doesn't sleep until 3 a.m. 

When you want to dig for the soul of Glasgow, go to the People's Palace, a domed Victorian building with an inviting glassed winter garden. It was built more than a century ago on the broad green swath of Glasgow Green as a cultural center for the then-overcrowded East End. Today its fascinating exhibits and memorabilia are a time warp evoking the city's colorful social history. 

You'll see how Glasgow's partying roots go back to the wildly popular ballroom dancing of the early 20th century; Barrowland Ballroom, one of many dance halls, accommodated 2,000 dancers and is now a vast rock band venue. You'll learn about "steamies," or public laundries, and the "patter," Glasgow's slang. You'll see how pushcart peddlers traded their wheelbarrows for stalls in the East End district named Barrowland, affectionately called "The Barras," now a teeming weekend flea market. 

You'll also discover how seafaring Glasgow prospered by importing tobacco from the American colonies and selling it to Europe. When the American Revolution ended its tobacco trade, the merchants, who liked to call themselves Tobacco Lords, turned to sugar, cotton, iron, and steel, and eventually, shipbuilding along the Clyde River, where many of the world's great ships were launched. The Tobacco Lords built their warehouses and elegant Georgian and Victorian mansions in the Merchant City district. 

By the 19th century, Glasgow was a major industrial power, often called the second city of the British Empire (after London), but 100 years later, shipbuilding had moved to more efficient ports. Unemployment and inner-city obsolescence turned Glasgow into a poster city for urban blight. 

It's hard to say just what turned the city's roller coaster fortunes around, but the British Clean Air Act of 1956 helped by revealing lovely Victorian treasures under the grime and soot abetted by a wave of energetic city planning in the '70s. 


Glasgow announced its cultural holdings to a dubious world when it was designated as the 1990 Cultural Capital of Europe and the 1999 UK City of Design and Architecture. 

Edinburgh has the reputation and the better-known festival, but in the last few years Glasgow has been emerging as Scotland's real cultural center. It is home to the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Opera, Scottish Ballet, and repository of some spectacular art. Its fine Georgian and Victorian buildings are scrubbed and floodlighted. 

Among Glasgow's several world-class museums, the Burrell Collection is its jewel. Sir William Burrell (1861-1958), a wealthy Glasgow shipowner, gave his eclectic art collection to the city in 1944, but said that before it could be exhibited, Glasgow had to meet his strict pollution-free requirements. In 1983, the Burrell Collection finally went on display in Pollok Park, about three miles south of the city center. 

Oriental porcelains, medieval tapestries, Rodin statues, and European paintings from Memling to Degas and Cezanne are handsomely displayed in an equally eclectic building that is part contemporary red sandstone cathedral and part glass-enclosed ski lodge. Somehow it all works, and to the delight of Glaswegians, it has overtaken Edinburgh Castle as one of Scotland's major tourist attractions. 

A few minutes stroll or a courtesy van takes you to Pollok House, a restored 18th-century Georgian country house, with paintings by El Greco, Goya, and Murillo. You can lunch in its Edwardian kitchen among gleaming copper pots or bring a picnic and enjoy Pollok Park's 360 acres of meadows, streams, gardens, and wildlife walks. 

British and European paintings are at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, and if you hurry you can see the fine collection that includes Botticelli, Rembrandt, and Whistler before the grand Victorian building closes in May for a three-year renovation. During that time, the museum plans to display "The Best of Kelvingrove" at the McLellan Galleries. 

Across the street is the Museum of Transport, with old locomotives, George VI's railroad car, and other trains, trams, fire engines, and horse-drawn buggies. As befits a shipbuilding city, there is also a captivating collection of ship models, including Cunard's finest, and an imaginary 19th-century cobbled "Kelvin St." with an apothecary and other shops. 

The art nouveau rose you'll frequently see as a city logo is one clue to the reverence Glaswegians now have for Charles Rennie Mackintosh, their great turn-of-the-century architect and designer. Four rooms of his Glasgow home are reassembled with his original furniture at Glasgow University's Hunterian Art Gallery. 

For Mackintosh fans, an essential stop is the Glasgow School of Art to see his addition, completed in 1909. Several rooms are open to the public. His masterpiece is the library, a complex architectural space still in use, with original Mackintosh furniture. Since this is still a working art school, you can only visit on weekdays at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., with guided tours conducted by architecture students. Book the tours in advance. 

Serious Mackintosh students may also want to visit The Lighthouse, formerly the Glasgow Herald Building and the architect's first important design, where the Mackintosh Interpretation Centre contains architectural models and complete information on his work. Another magnet for Mackintosh aficionados is the House for an Art Lover, built in 1996 from drawings made in 1901. 

If you want a taste of a Mackintosh interior, stop in at at the Willow Tea Room, re-created from Mackintosh's 1904 design. 

Mackintosh mania sometimes obscures the breadth of Glasgow's pleasures. Despite the warnings or residents, you don't have to dig all that hard to find them.


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## Calvin W (Nov 5, 2005)

Nice looking city but unfortunately for North Americans it has to compete with London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Dublin, etc for the tourist dollar.


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## GlasgowMan (Jan 11, 2006)

Glasgow gets far more tourists than Liverpool and Birmingham do.

Glasgow is the second most visited city in the United Kingdom, second only to London.

The Glasgow Tourist Board are working really hard with airlines in the US to promote Glasgow to American Visitors, this has been really succesful this year and US Airways reported a 10% increase in Americans using there daily Philadelphia to Glasgow flight.


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## cle (Jul 6, 2007)

GlasgowMan said:


> Glasgow gets far more tourists than Liverpool and Birmingham do.
> 
> Glasgow is the second most visited city in the United Kingdom, second only to London.
> 
> The Glasgow Tourist Board are working really hard with airlines in the US to promote Glasgow to American Visitors, this has been really succesful this year and US Airways reported a 10% increase in Americans using there daily Philadelphia to Glasgow flight.


Not to burst your bubble, because I very much like Glasgow and go a lot (partner is from there) but I thought Edinburgh and then Manchester were the most visited cities?

Although I would have guessed Bath, Oxford, York etc...


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

According to ONS, the top 20 cities for stays by international visitors in 2006 was:

1 London 
2 Edinburgh 
3 Manchester 
4 Birmingham 
5 Glasgow 
6 Liverpool 
7 Oxford 
8 Bristol 
9 Cardiff 
10 Cambridge 
11 Newcastle-upon-Tyne 
12 Leeds 
13 Brighton 
14 York 
15 Inverness 
16 Bath 
17 Nottingham 
18 Reading 
19 Aberdeen 
20 Chester


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## cle (Jul 6, 2007)

Thanks - although to be fair I'm sure Manchester (as well as Liverpool, Brum less so) are heavily bolstered by football fans alone.


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## iampuking (Mar 10, 2007)

No offence, but why is Birmingham so high up?


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## GlasgowMan (Jan 11, 2006)

iampuking said:


> No offence, but why is Birmingham so high up?


Probably more business tourism than leasure tourism?


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## Its AlL gUUd (Jan 24, 2006)

Jonesy55 said:


> According to ONS, the top 20 cities for stays by international visitors in 2006 was:
> 
> 1 London
> 2 Edinburgh
> ...


^^ Yep i would've thought something similar to that, didn't think Glasgow was second, nice city none the less. kay:


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## GlasgowMan (Jan 11, 2006)

We might not be second yet but we really are not far behind Edinburgh.

Already this year, Kelvingrove overtook Edinburgh Castle as the most visited attraction in Scotland.


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## Tubeman (Sep 12, 2002)

iampuking said:


> No offence, but why is Birmingham so high up?


Could be the huge immigrant population? People travelling from The Indian Subcontinent, Caribbean and Africa to stay with relatives in Birmignham?


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