Two Nights in Glasgow, Scotland
Published March 19th, 2024
Photography by Jennifer Bain
Fiona Shepherd
Tour guide Fiona Shepherd stands on the “Album Pathway” in an East End Glasgow park and starts pointing out names of artists painted along it with dates they played the iconic Barrowland Ballroom nearby.
There’s “Simple Minds 20-11-1983” for the time the Scottish rock band shot a video for “Waterfront” in the shuttered space and then threw the impromptu thank-you concert that relaunched the building as a gig venue. There’s “Bob Dylan 24-06-2004” for a gig that Shepherd caught and saw the notorious curmudgeon smile and speak to the audience.
I see old favourites like Lloyd Cole, Paul Weller and the Pogues named along the 100-metre path that visual artist Jim Lambie designed a decade ago to look like album spines.
“People just come along and get lost in the memories,” says Shepherd, a music writer and co-founder of Glasgow Music City Tours. “And particularly for visitors to the city, once they start walking up here, then they understand the significance of Barrowland because they can see all the names of people who’ve played here over the years.”
Glasgow Music City Tours co-founder Fiona Shepherd outside the Barrowland Ballroom
Back in 2008, Glasgow was named a UNESCO City of Music Glasgow for its legendary music scene that embraces everything from contemporary and classical to Celtic and country. It was also praised for its varied venues that hosted about 130 music events a week.
Seven years later, Shepherd and two friends couldn’t figure out “why people weren’t shouting from the rooftops” about the UNESCO nod and decided to do it themselves with guided tours of Glasgow’s music scene.
So that’s how I find myself wandering the city one March morning with Shepherd on her two-hour Music Mile Tour.
We talk about King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut where a young band called Oasis bullied its way onto stage in 1993 and landed a record deal. We pop into Mostly Vinyl Micky, a Britpop haunt, and Monorail Music inside a vegan café/bar called Mono.
We stand outside the Barrowland Ballroom, with its distinctive animated neon sign, where Shepherd declares: “This is the best venue in Glasgow, and I mean that as a statement of fact, not a statement of opinion.”
Read The List and The Skinny to find out what's happening in Glasgow
Unfortunately, I’m only in town for two nights and will just miss a show by Liam Gallagher (from Oasis) and John Squire (from the Stone Roses). But I pick up free entertainment monthlies — The List and The Skinny — out of curiosity and to remember for next time.
When Shepherd and I part ways, she sends me to Buchanan Street in the city centre where buskers don’t need permits to play. And she directs me to British music chain Fopp to search for the debut release of former local busker Dylan John Thomas.
Fopp, incidentally, is steps from an outpost of Tim Hortons. It’s also across from the British Heart Foundation, a charity shop (what the Brits call thrift shops run by charitable organizations as fundraisers.)
Canada's Tim Hortons has a branch in Glasgow
It’s my first time in Scotland and while I’ve mainly come to explore Cairngorms National Park on a four-night guided walking trip with Wilderness Scotland, I squeeze in two nights in Glasgow and then two nights in Edinburgh. Let’s call it about 36 hours in each city.
WestJet has direct, seasonal flights between Toronto and Edinburgh, but since they don’t start until May, I fly Aer Lingus via Dublin. After that, it’s an easy 50-minute train ride on ScotRail between Edinburgh and Glasgow so you could even base yourself in one city and daytrip to the other.
City Sightseeing Glasgow operates hop-on hop-off buses
It’s not glamorous, but I’m a big fan of taking hop-on, hop-off bus tours when I arrive in a new city.
I do that twice with City Sightseeing Glasgow, seeing the East End area where Shepherd and I walked from a different vantage point, and earmarking the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Glasgow Necropolis and Barras Market for another time.
The bus loop takes about 85 minutes and makes 21 stops. Fun fact: Drivers pick and choose which clips of pre-recorded commentary by Scottish TV presenter/author Neil Oliver to use, so when I do the tour a second time, I get some new tidbits and notice others are missing.
Anyway, the scrappy city of about 1.7 million that goes by the slogan “People Make Glasgow” is also known for its street art.
Shuggie Bain mural was inspired by a Booker Prize-winning novel
On the side of the Barrowland Ballroom, Shepherd shows me the Shuggie Bain mural by the Cobolt Collective that was inspired by Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name that was in turn inspired by the Scottish-American writer’s Glasgow childhood.
From the bus, I see plenty of art and architecture, but also two more murals of note.
Big Yin by Rachel Maclean is of Glaswegian comic Billy Connolly wearing a kitschy Bonnie Prince Charlie-inspired outfit that references some of his famous jokes. St. Mungo, by Glasgow-based Australian artist Smug (Sam Bates), depicts the city’s patron saint with a robin and references how as a child he brought a bird back to life.
I’m surprised to learn that Glasgow’s shopping scene is considered second only to London in the UK. Its “Style Mile” is a network of downtown streets that makes up the main shopping district. From the bus, I see some famous streets like Buchanan, Sauchiehall and Argyle.
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum opened in 1901
But I devote the scant time that I have to exploring the West End area around the University of Glasgow that’s home to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.
In the Finnieston neighbourhood, I find Hidden Lane, a small community of artists, musicians and makers and home to the lovely Hidden Lane Tearoom.
Across Kelvingrove Park, I stop into modern Scottish restaurant Stravaigin for a “small plate” of local lamb rump served with peas, onions and a soft cheese called Highland crowdie, followed by a “big plate” of ox cheek with oyster mushrooms. Stravaigin is an old Scots word that means “to wander aimlessly with intent,” and that seems like an apt description for my time in this city.
My base for two nights is The Address Glasgow, a new offering from a family-owned Irish hotel brand. It just opened in a renovated, six-storey historic building that I can walk to from Glasgow Queen Street train station. From my bus tour, I am intrigued by CitizenM Glasgow, a funky chain based in the Netherlands.
CitizenM is steps from the Theatre Royal Glasgow and Ardnamurchan, a contemporary Scottish restaurant and bar where I dine on Scottish beef, ask for hand-cut chips instead of skinny fries, and eat the best of the many sticky toffee puddings that I shamelessly sample across the country during my eight-night visit. The restaurant name is a nod to one of the UK’s great unspoiled wildernesses.
It’s only as I’m packing up to leave that I learn about Pollok Country Park, Glasgow’s largest green space and home to both the Burrell Collection (a museum) and the Pollok Fold (a herd of about 33 Highland cattle).
The photogenic Scottish breed has distinctive long horns and shaggy coats. I got to pat a drooly one named Murdo at the Castle Roy ruins in Nethy Bridge on my Wilderness Scotland trip through the Cairngorms. But now I know what the first thing I’ll do is when I return to Glasgow.
Black Sheep Coffee turmeric latte and a Norwegian classic waffle with Norwegian brown cheese and mixed berry jam
With the clock ticking on my whirl through Glasgow, I pop into Central Station for a trendy turmeric latte made with oat milk and a Norwegian waffle stuffed with Norwegian brown cheese and berry jam from Black Sheep Coffee for breakfast.
The company’s fun slogan, emblazoned on my takeout cup? “Leave the herd behind.”
Jennifer Bain
After a career at daily newspapers, Jennifer began travelling the world in search of quirk in 2018. She goes wherever the story is, but has a soft spot for Canada and has been to all 10 provinces and all three territories. Jennifer has won multiple awards and written two cookbooks and three travel books. She lives in Toronto but has a vacation house on Fogo Island, Newfoundland, which some cheekily say is one of the four corners of the supposedly flat earth.