Days 1-3: Glasgow- Euro Trip Begins!

So Blake and I started the trip- packed our bags, took the bus to the airport, we were both pretty pumped for our big 2 week trip. To set the stage for the following story- you need to know a few things. Actually, you just need to know one thing. My visa for staying in Sweden expired (oh, about a month ago). I thought about applying for a visitor’s visa, but the way I interpreted the rules was that I could stay in Sweden without a visa for 3 months. To be honest, even I don’t really believe that, but my plan was to play stupid if a problem arose while trying to get back into the country. Key word is that we were worried about getting back into Sweden… no thoughts about getting out of the country. Back to the story, there Blake and I were about to fly to Glasgow, and we went up to customs, and… Holy crap- I thought I was going to get deported right then and there. Blake made the mistake of saying that we both lived in Sweden, he saw my expired visa and started asking a lot of questions. My heart was racing. Thankfully… whew, he let me start my vacation. Then we realized we were flying in and out of the “Schengen” region, which meant we would have to go through customs at every, single, stop. That’s just freaking great.(For those of you dying of suspense right now, I am writing this from Sweden, so obviously I did make it back in, but it was not fun.) It definitely added an additional level of stress to the trip.

Anyways, we did make it to Glasgow on Friday night, and stayed at a classy hostel (I joke… you had to pay 1£ for the TV and it was super super loud.) and we were ready to explore beautiful Scotland the next morning.

We started the day with a train ride out to the countryside to the cute little town of Stirling to visit Stirling Castle.




It was pretty cool, I must admit. You pretty much have to like a place decked out in unicorns, am I right?

Later that day we headed back to town and checked out the Glasgow Cathedral, the Necropolis and explored Glasgow in general. Glasgow gets a pretty bad rep, but Blake and I both really liked the city.

A cool pic by Blake from inside the Cathedral:


After dinner and some drinks at O’Neill’s (generic Irish bar in the UK, but I liked it, because, well, duh)- we met up with Tom, who was our host for the rest of Scotland. Blake met Tom while they were studying in Lund, and he was nice enough to offer us a place to stay for 2 nights in Glasgow.

The next day, Blake and I hoped on a bus to head out to the countryside again, but this time, we were going to go to a whiskey tasting. I have only just recently started slightly appreciating whiskey, but Blake is a big fan, so we couldn’t pass up trying some while in Scotland. The 45 minute long bus ride out there was absolutely miserable though. I have only been motion sickness one other time in my life, and we both felt sick when we finally stepped off that bus. The driver was just speeding through the winding hills at break-neck speeds and neither of us felt like tasting much whiskey when we finally got off the bus. Luckily we had some time to rest and drink some water before the tour started, and we were able to actually enjoy it. We went to Glengoyne Distillery, which is right at the start of the Highlands and was really cute. We toured the facility, learned how it was made, and got to taste their 10 year, 17 year, and 21 year whiskeys. Their 17 year one is award winning, and it was actually really nice.





The ride back to Glasgow wasn’t nearly as bad, and we met up with Tom who gave us a tour of the University of Glasgow, which is absolutely gorgeous.

The rest of the evening we just relaxed and made some tacos for his Italian roommate who had never eaten a taco before. Isn’t that weird?

It was a great start to the trip, but stayed tuned folks, because we are just getting started! Next up... Edinburgh!

To see more pictures of Glasgow- click here!