Let’s say you have spent a few days in Edinburgh, seen everything that you wanted to see and find that you have a day to spare – and, rather than going to a museum or walking up and down the same city streets again, feel like venturing out of town for a day trip: what are your choices?
Popular among visitors are trips to the Highlands, but you will have to spend most of your day sitting in a train or coach. (A road trip to Loch Ness, the most sought-after highland destination, will take you almost 4 hours one way.)
Lothian coast towns such as Dunbar and North Berwick provide alternative options. But we believe that the best value-for-time day trip is the short hop to Glasgow, the oldest, largest and most storied Scottish city.
We recommend Glasgow because, of all the short journeys to choose from (“short” = less than 1 hour away), it provides the best guarantee that you will see and experience something that you have not seen or experienced in Edinburgh. It is like spending the day in a different country, a holiday within a holiday. What more – or better – could one expect from a day trip?
Four Must-Sees on a Day-Trip to Glasgow
There are a great many things to say about Glasgow, not the least of which is that the city does not waste your time.
You are in the town centre as soon as you step off the train arriving from Edinburgh at Queen Street Station, and you will already be looking at the first “must-see” on your day-trip to Glasgow: the City Hall, located on your left towards the far end of George Square.
For the last 50 years or so, the only thing that Glasgow – once one of the world’s leading industrial cities – could be relied on to produce were negative headlines.
You probably know about the sectarian hostility between Glasgow’s two main football teams, the bloody gangland rivalries (such as the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars) and the Glasgow Effect which examines why local residents are dropping off like flies (it has its own Wikipedia entry).
What gets forgotten in all these stories about misery and deprivation is that, not so long ago, Glasgow was the Second City of the mighty British Empire: proud, wealthy and confident.
The magnificent interiors of City Hall illustrate just how proud and wealthy the city once was, …
… and, although a lot less wealthy these days, how proud it still is. Guided tours of the building start at 1030 and 1430 hours from Monday to Friday, but if you have missed them, you can walk freely around the ground floor to get a good impression of the place.
You will see the city in a different light after this – and perhaps even understand it a bit better. Glasgow is a Big City, in every sense of the word. If, as we said last week, the builders of Edinburgh seem to have been instructed to shun every colour but a brownish grey, Glasgow’s architects were apparently told that they could construct buildings of any size as long as it was XXL.
And if you walk down the canyons in between the blocks of Art Deco office buildings around Vincent Street, you will feel closer to New York than to Edinburgh.
The second “must” for visitors on a day-trip to Glasgow is a trip, no matter how brief, to the Clyde estuary, which was for many centuries Scotland’s gateway to the world (and the transatlantic shipping trade) and later the heart of industrial Glasgow.
Walk to one of the bridges near the town centre and peek downstream where, in the city’s glory days, Britannia built the ships that ruled the waves of the world’s oceans.
The third must-see is Glasgow Cathedral, one of the very few medieval churches in Scotland that were not razed or severely damaged during the religious riots of the Reformation.
Also have a look at the surreal combination of objects – a fish with a ring in its mouth, a tree, a bird, and a bell – that graces all the lamp posts in this part of town and which recalls four miracles performed by Saint Mungo, the semi-mythical first bishop of the diocese.
Glasgow Cathedral may be a little out of the way, but the walk there down Cathedral Street past the buildings of Strathclyde University represents a good time investment since you get a view of the city that you will not find in the official tourism brochures …
On your walk down Cathedral Street, you also get many opportunities of familiarizing yourself with one of Glasgow’s greatest assets …
… which is its urban art scene.
If you are looking for a fascinating way of structuring an exploration of the inner city through a journey of discovery down alleyways and backyards, …
… you will love the Mural Trail.
But if you cannot find the time for this, a few outstanding works can be integrated into a shorter tour as well, including Honey I Shrunk The Kids by Smug …
… and Wind Power by Rogue-One and Art Pistol. (Both paintings can be found on Mitchell Street.)
Overall, art has been the driving force of the Glasgow Renaissance, just like it had been for its Florentine patron and namesake.
Over the past 20 years, many works have been acquired by the municipal administration to be displayed in the city streets, and a newly laid out Contemporary Art Trail provides an alternative route for adventurous day trippers.
Not everything on the list will appeal to everybody, which is why we suggest to have a look at the website first and choose the works you would like to see.
Some of them may come across as a little austere, but you will also find others – such as Timothy Schmalz’s Homeless Jesus on Nelson Mandela Square – that are more easily accessible.
For a meal or a snack along the way we recommend the Willow Tea Rooms on Sauciehall Street in the town centre.
These tea rooms were designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of the greatest Art Nouveau architects in early-20th-century Europe, and fully restored to their former glory only a few years ago after they had fallen into neglect for decades.
The building of the Tea Rooms is one of the few remaining architectural works of Mackintosh in the city centre, although not his most famous one.
This honour undoubtedly goes to his Glasgow School of Arts in near-by Renfrew Street. Unfortunately, however, the building cannot be visited at the moment as it is under reconstruction: it was ravaged by two devastating fires, the one in 2018 destroying the entire building just when the repair works for the 2014 fire were about to be completed.
The painting in the window of the Tourism Office next door to the Willow Tea Rooms shows what the School of Arts once looked like – and may look like again. This will be the crowning moment of the Glasgow Renaissance: the day when the fourth of the “must-see” Glasgow sites shall be restored to its ancient glory.
