Adventure in West End
Today Pedro decided to show me around West End, near the main campus. This is the part of the school that is a lot older, built in1451. First thing was to decide how to get there. We've walked that far before, but its a 5.2 mile roundtrip without all the exploring we wanted to do. So I found a bus route that, luckily, goes from our street, down Great Western Road, passes the University and then goes on to Merchant City (another place we want to visit). After browsing several bus apps I found a 24 hour unlimited bus pass for £2.90. Sold! We got off at the University and Pedro led me around the giant Hogwarts-like campus.
The courtyards were beautiful, especially with the fall colors.
Then Pedro guided me down to this little hidden street filled with restaurants, where we decided to eat at The Gardener.
Our waiter suggested a walk down to the park since it was such a lovely day, so we headed to Kelvingrove, just south of the university. The park is even bigger than the botanical gardens, full of hills and monuments. The wildflowers have pretty much gone away at this point, but the fall leaves alone were worth it. Seasons!! We've never been able to enjoy such beautiful autumn scenery where we lived.
Ok, this was a total accidental picture of tradition I didn't know I captured. As we were leaving the park, I saw this statue with the traffic cone and laughed. Pedro insisted I take a picture because it was too funny. We then went back toward the University and Bryers Road to see the shops. I stepped into a handmade shop and saw a bunch of prints and paintings of different statues with orange cones on their heads. This has to be a thing! I thought, maybe it was a protest? I looked it up, it's just a hilarious tradition. It started in the 1980s, with a bronze statue of the Duke of Wellington on his horse. Overnight, someone (most likely a drunk someone) scaled the 21 foot sculpture to top it with a traffic cone. Of course the city took it down right away, but not before the locals decided it was so ingenious that they must replace it. It became a game of tag between the locals having fun with traffic cones placed on statue heads, horses, and even swords, and the city trying to round them all up. Eventually, the traffic cones became so recognizable that tourist shops were putting traffic coned statues on t-shirts! One act of a drunken man was so funny that the whole city decided to carry it on as tradition. Classic Glasgow.
We're planning on going to Merchant city tomorrow, can't wait to see if the Duke of Wellington statue is sporting an orange hat!
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I have a bank account! And hopefully a GP soon! My copy of the apartment lease came into today, along with my council tax notice, both serving as a proof of address for most places. I walked down to the bank and with both my passport and BRP, they made copies, and done! My card should come in the mail soon. I uploaded everything to the local doctor's office as well to get that process started.
With all this, I keep thinking about my BRP. It is my only UK recognized identification. The letter that it came with talks about storing it much like a Social Security Card in the US, not to carry it around. But like I said, it's my only UK ID with my name and photo. My passport was issued outside the UK/EU. My visa is for entry purposes only, so I can't use that. My Florida license isn't likely to be recognized either. So I looked up identity cards, and the UK government says ID cards were 'scrapped' in 2011. This makes me very uneasy, but here it's no big deal for everyday life, especially when you're not driving. It's not like America, were having ID is so ingrained in your mind, you carry it around for everything. I suppose it's just something I'll have to get used to.
