Most of my travels have been confined to New England, and the furthest a field I ever traveled was to Florida. However, during the past year I  stopped dreaming of going to Scotland and started planning. I went with my brother Don and his wife, Edith. Fortunately, they had traveled quite a bit so I depended their know-how on the flight and car rental arrangements. I was in charge of finding us accommodation and planning the general itinerary. I have a number of friends who have been to Scotland and their experience was to travel around over much of the country, staying only a few days in one spot. Another friend suggested that it would be much more relaxing to rent a self-catering cottage to have a home base to roost at and concentrate on touring around one region. That suggestion suited my personality quite well. We narrowed it down to the Trossachs and Stirling area because we wanted to be in the countryside, yet be near to the many historic spots we wanted to visit. It was a perfect match.

Finally, our departure date of September 5 arrived. We rented a car to drive to Logan Airport in Boston. Since we live in Western Massachusetts, it was the most efficient and cost-effective way to get there. We were prepared for the heightened security checks and were aware of what not to bring onboard, so we got through all the checkpoints without much hassle at all. Our Icelandair flight took off at 9:30 p.m., landed in Iceland for a brief stopover, and then landed in Glasgow at 11:10 a.m. the next day, local time.

We stayed our first night in Glasgow at the Kelvingrove Hotel on Sauchiehall Street. This view of Kelvingrove Park and Glasgow University is just down the street from the hotel. As you can see, it doesn't always rain in Scotland. The weather was very pleasant.

A little further down the street is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, which has these lovely gardens in its front yard. Most museums in Scotland are free, I was pleased to learn. We stopped in and enjoyed the exhibits of ancient armor and finds from archeological digs. We didn't have much time to explore the museum thoroughly.

We took these very colorful tour buses around the city to get an overview. The tour guide was very informative. You can hop off and on these buses as you please. Here, they are parked at George Square. The pictures below are both of George Square, where we spent some time sitting on the benches and enjoying the sights, after we had walked around the central part of the city doing some window (and real) shopping.

I liked the architecture of this pub (Grant Arms) and Central Station, located on Union Street. Apparently, the remains of the Village of Grahamston is under this part of Glasgow.

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