DAY 171 - Glascow or Edinburgh?

Sept 6 - What?  Only One Day in Glascow?
Since our Sweden Extended Visa was up, we had only three weeks to tour England, Scotland, and Ireland before we could back into the Schengen countries of France, Spain, and Portugal.  We had decisions to make and couch surf hosts to find.  We were on the internet every chance we could to line up the last month of our L-O-N-G European adventures.

We left early from York, after our host, Heather, fed us some porridge with raspberries from her garden.

 We walked quickly to catch the next train in Scotland.  We covered up our backpacks with rain gear, put our umbrellas out, and we were off.   We have been lucky as the whole time we've been in the United Kingdom so far, it has not rained.  YEAH!  Along the way, we took some pictures of  the York City Walls.  Since Roman times, the city of York has been defended by walls of one form or another. To this day, substantial portions of the walls remain, and York has more miles of intact wall than any other city in England.

 The original walls were built around 71 AD, when the Romans erected a fort occupying about 50 acres near the River Ouse.

These double decker sight-seeing buses are in EVERY major city.

                              

Yeah - the rain has stopped!

View of the city looking north-east from the city wall, near the railway station. The brown spire in the middle distance is the Catholic church of St. Wilfrid, and York Minster is visible behind it.

This was quite the site to see in the bus station....crazy!

The lady is walking up on the right - uh oh!  It was very confusing to know which to do.

A rare treat that we bought to take on our trip.  Yummy cheese pastry!

We enjoyed the bus ride, but wished we could stop both in Newcastle and in Edinburgh.  They were beautiful coastal cities, but our destination was Inverness and it was a LONG way.  If we went straight through, it would take about 9 hours.

Enjoy some photos of our bus ride.  We don't know what anything was, but we have some nice pictures of the countryside, cool houses, storefronts, churches, and castles.

LOVE the grass on some of the roofs.

Funny name for a store!

BLUE doors are popular

This looks like the famous Edinburgh Castle.

These kind of stone walls with the crags on top are common.

 Edinburgh has the strongest economy of any city in the United Kingdom outside of London and the highest percentage of professionals in the UK.  Edinburgh's economy is  based mainly on financial services, scientific research, higher education, and tourism. It also has the highest gross income per employee of any city in the UK outside London.  Unemployment is only 3% - it's really too bad we didn't get a chance to stop to see this lovely city.

Interesting - very interesting.

A teeny tiny bathroom on the bus, but it worked.

All this 'looking out the window' really wears a person out!

Glascow is the largest city in Scotland having grown from a small rural settlement on the River Clyde to become one of the largest seaports in the world.


We arrived in Glascow about 5 p.m.  No time to really see the city, so we walked and walked to get to our host's house.

We slept on their couch and in the same room as their three dogs.

 We were exhausted and very hungry.  They fixed a fabulous "Mexican" meal - beans and chips and salsa.  They were so nice and very talkative.

Meet Bailey and Lisa - our Scottish hosts.  Her pink hair is very popular here - about one in every 10 women seemed to have this color of hair.  Interesting?!