As I mentioned earlier, Catie and I were lucky enough to have not one but two old friends living in Scotland and willing to house us for a couple of days. So, after getting a thorough taste of Edinburgh, we hopped on a train and sped across (the skinniest part of) Scotland to Glasgow in the West. Hilary graciously lent us her aforementioned air mattress and Adriane (perhaps even more graciously) allowed us to cover 95% of her studio apartment floorspace with it. Glasgow is a much bigger city than Edinburgh and has a more modern feel. We had a great time walking around the city, the highlights including the Glasgow Cathedral and adjoining Necropolis, as well as Kelvingrove Park (most of which to be detailed in additional coming posts).
One highlight that unfortunately went undocumented altogether was our night out eating amazing Indian and Bengali food (there are apparently just as many such restaurants in Glasgow as in Edinburgh) including the best dal I have had since Bangladesh (reason enough to move to Glasgow right there, in my opinion). That amazing meal was followed by an opening night viewing of one of the best most hilarious Bollywood (actually, Kollywood, if you want to get technical) movies I have ever seen entitled “Enthiran” (although we saw the Hindi version, which goes by the title “Robot”). The movie stars Rajinikanth aka Superstar who plays both a genius scientist and that scientist’s robot creation Chitti, as well as Aishwarya Rai who plays their (collective) love interest. It is the highest budget (B/K)ollywood movie ever made. There was no way we could resist once we read the movie description:
Rajinikanth is a human who is not born but created. He can dance, sing, fight, is water and fire resistant. He can do all that a human can and more. He feeds on electricity. He takes instructions literally. Where a human can lie to save himself this andro-humanoid robot Chitti cannot lie. He has razor sharp memory and can memorize an entire telephone directory by just running through the pages, yet he cannot understand human emotions.
It was every bit as ridiculous and spectacular as I had hoped. The leftover dal was delicious for breakfast the next morning, too. It all made for a fantastic South Asian experience in Scotland.
Photos taken in Glasgow, Scotland between September 30 and October 1, 2010.
