Dearest Rachel –
They say that it takes one day for every time zone to acclimatize yourself to your destination when you travel. It’s another reason to appreciate cruising; the travel is so slow and gentle that you can only go across a single time zone on any given day at its fastest. However, in order to get to a port – any port – from a place like Chicago, you have to fly to the place, which necessitates crossing a number of time zones beforehand.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Daniel and I are still slightly out of joint with regard to our circadian rhythm. I’ve tried to force myself into some semblance of a normal routine, complete with a workout first thing Sunday morning (albeit cut a little short, as one isn’t technically allowed more than twenty minutes at a time on the treadmills, for instance – I admit to having bent the rules a bit as far as that goes).
Daniel, however, hasn’t adjusted quite as well yet. When I woke up this morning – ahead of the six o’clock alarm I’d set for us to grab breakfast and everything – he was already sitting up on his side of the bed. “Did you get any sleep last night?” I queried.
“I tried,” he replied. “I failed.” By his reckoning, he thought he may have gotten an hour or two, but no more than that.
I suppose I shoulder some of the blame; I’ve let him sleep during the afternoon on a couple of afternoons, when the opportunity has presented itself (and what better opportunity than a sea day?). With that much rest having been taken during the day, his body doesn’t require as much once night falls, as he’s already had his fill. But it worried me as to whether he’d have enough stamina for the seven-hour excursion into town, even if it is supposedly “Glasgow on [our] own,” so we should be able to go at our own pace. It might prove to be a slower pace than I’d like, or that will do the city justice (assuming that could be done for any city in such a short time frame.
I will say that, separately, we also got a wake-up call from the concierge before my alarm went off. The person on the other end of the line informed us that our room service delivery was on its way; which was strange, since we hadn’t placed an order for room service the night before, and I informed them as such. It wasn’t so much out of concern about getting a delivery that I didn’t ask for, as much as they might not deliver to someone that did request room service.
But with all that going on, we were at least well awake by the time we needed to be up and out, that’s for sure. We even could watch as we made our way into the mouth of the Clyde and pulled into the port at Greenock; that used to be something of a solitary view for me, as I recall (or maybe that’s just my recollections from the last couple of trips I’ve taken). Still, I made a point of pouring chocolate syrup into a mug and taking it upstairs to fill with two double espressos and hot milk foam (the Crown Lounge appearing to lack chocolate powder on this particular trip, for some reason – given the places we’ve yet to visit, hot chocolate will be much more welcome than on most trips), so I was more than suitably caffeinated for the day ahead.
***
I must have misremembered the timing regarding travel; whereas it’s a fifty-mile drive to Edinburgh from Glasgow, the twenty-two mile drive (and yes, they use miles to denote distance, rather than the kilometers I expected to hear, for some reason) from the port to the city center takes about an hour. Still, our guide is reasonably entertaining as he delivers various facts (and “facts,” if you know what I mean) about the town. He insists that Glasgow is more enjoyable than its stuffy eastern counterpart; “you’ll have more fun at a Glasgow funeral than at an Edinburgh wedding,” he claims. I do wonder, though, if the rivalry between the two cities isn’t a little one-sided; I can’t recall Edinburghers talking about Glaswegians at all like this when we we were there last. Then again, that was over twenty years ago.
The guide on our trip into town didn’t so much insist that we take the sightseeing bus, but he did strongly recommend it, passing out maps of the city showing the bus routes through it. And eventually, that’s exactly what we did, after first making a circuit of George’s Square (I spent way too long on camera calling it Saint George’s Square – given our drop-off and rendezvous point on Hanover Street, I should have known it referred to King George, no saint he):
We also took advantage of the hop-on, hop-off feature of the tour bus to make our way down Buchanan Street to St. Enoch’s, the local downtown mall – which, while fairly quiet when we got there a little after ten a.m., seemed to have no lack of shops, unlike many such places back home. We took note of several places that might be worth visiting for lunch there (one place offered a local delicacy it called a ‘Bridey Pie’ that had no other description than that; we had to ask a clerk for a description. Evidently, locals were just expected to know what it is; it’s a pastry filled – although I use that word somewhat loosely – with minced beef and onions. It’s not bad, but I think we would have preferred a greater meat-to-pastry ratio) before trying to pick up the bus back…
…which proved more difficult that I’d expected. Passing the nearby subway station, I headed in a southerly direction, rather than easterly like I’d thought. It wasn’t until we got to the bridges that we realized that neither of the bus routes crossed the Clyde River, and we needed to double back for a block or two. Eventually, we made it back, though, and once we were back on the bus, we realized that our guide on this particular vehicle had a similar gift of gab that our guide did on the shuttle. So I just let him do the talking as we made our way through the rest of the city.
To be fair, before I decided to turn the video camera on him, I got a few good shots of the surrounding art and architecture:
By the time we made it back to the terminus at George Square, it felt for a moment that we had the better part of an hour left before we had to make our way back up Hanover Street to return to the pier. However, by the time we got back to St. Enoch’s to order lunch (well, a snack, really, as these pies were only a handful), we barely had fifteen minutes to grab them and go. We ate while we walked (although since Daniel got two pastries, he saved the mac’n’cheese pie for once we were safely back on our transport.
You can see from the remainder of this clip that once we got back to the ship, we still had an hour or so and some £10 in cash to use up. So that’s what we did; with a supersized Tesco across the street from the dock, we wandered over there and around the place, looking for goods and brands we wouldn’t see back at home. Sure, the feel of the place wasn’t that much different from going to Meijer back at home – grocery shopping is grocery shopping, and we Americans are more familiar with these large-scale stores than Europeans, as a general rule – but it was enough to keep us occupied and burn off all but the last few pence. It’s the sort of thing you would have gotten as much of a kick out of as we did, I’d like to think.
As we were on our way back, Daniel nudged me with a sly grin. “And here you thought I was going to fall asleep today.” I hadn’t noticed until that moment, but he did indeed keep up throughout the entire day, without ever running out of energy. Ah, the vigor of youth. Granted, he’s slept in more that sufficiently this morning to make up for it, but we’ve got that sea day to do it in, and he’s finally going to get lined up with the local day time… at least, I hope he will.
For now, though, I’d ask that you continue to keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 