Qel Calor - Caribbean es mucho caliente

Hola mi amigos

Well, I wont put all this entry in Spanish, but for those who do know a bit that was saying "wow what heat - the caribbean is very hot"

Arrived safe and sound, despite my Doncaster hotel being miles away from the Airport.

Here it is all hot and sticky weather, humid and wet ... just the kind
of thing to take my mind away from things back home.

Dont want to take up too much time on the hotels only laptop, so here I will leave it, except that its nice and friendly so far.

Adios mi amigos con besos y abrazos

Glasgow & Loch Ness

The rest of day two was alot better than I could ever have expected.

I met up with a new friend who offered to take me around and show me a few sights and sounds of Glasgow.

Shopping, rock music pub, cinema, restaurant and tattoo parlour were all the places which we visited for a day the likes of which i will not soon forget.

The more I wandered around the more that I found that Glasgows soul was not non-existant but far more subtle than I first expected.

There were no tartan kilt wearing men or drunken louts hanging around in bars or having bad harmony singing contests at the top of their voices. Russ Abbott has done them a great disservice in his comedy show of yester-year.

The prices of everyday things were reasonable priced regardless of this being a major city.

Back in the hotel it was a one more quiet night when I went to bed at about midnight, and gone were all my big bets - so no more dreaming of riches galore. The three world cup results had officially killed off all my chances of winning more than what I put in.

The next morning I arrived early to be at the coach pickup point for the trip to the Highlands and Loch Ness. It was very low key and unassuming but the trip did have about a dozen or so of people from all around the world.

Although I did have enough confidence to sit next to a girl that
caught my eye from the get go, as it did often stop at places for a stretch-your-legs break, it gave me a chance to open up conversation and it turned out she was a delightful girl from the french city of Quebec, Canada.

Plenty of towns with unbronouncable names come and gone, and I learned that "Inver" means in the mouth of the river ... so Inverness is the town in the mouth of the River Ness.

The other part of the coach tour was listening to a running commentary in any language you wanted. I did try some in Spanish, but it was just too fast and too obscure to understand. When I switched ot English I realised why, as it was all about the many bloody massacres and murders that fill the Scottish highland historical timeline.

<<Hardly the kind of thing you would learn about in the basic spanish phrasebook, ha ha.>>

Also a few songs and their origins, like "Take the High Road" or "Donald Wheres Your Trousers" broke up the hours of driving. The trip was a 450 miles round trip.

The only thing that upset me a bit on the journey, was that the roads were all tree lines on both sides and so it was almost impossible to take any photos from the coach window as we drove by, without just getting a blur of green.

Touchdown in Glasgow

Touchdown in Glasgow Prestwick Airport and my first thooughts were, wow ... no customs.

I'm not sure cos of if it is not an major airport or anything, but when I got off the plane there were no places to check through, no baggage reclaim desks, just a small warehouse size building where we got off and after going round some ramped stairs right into the main ( only ) terminal.

"Welcome to Glasgow" ... erm, indeed.

The airline pilot told us that it was 14 degrees outside, so much
lower thatn london, no surprise. Typically as I wandered around the terminal I overheard a few saying that it was gloriously sunny yesterday, always the way eh!

It was nice to see a few soveneir shops where I could grab a t-shirt, plus the obligatory keyring and thimble for the peeps back home ( and
they know who they are ). Shame I couldn't find any pigs!!!

<< .. This keyboard is really naff, and in order to save time I have
given up trying to spell things right as almost every other key is hot wired into a few others and I've yet to complete a sentence without a few mistakes that are not of my own making .. >>

Glasgow city does not seem to have a soul as other towns have. This is not surprising since everyone who knows Scotland has told me to go to Edinburgh and not the capital, but this for me is nto the way I do things.

Although the true country can only be seen through its art, its people, its history and its geography is the capital city if so removed from the rest of the country then this in itself says something about the place.

I had to struggle to find any kilt maker shops, and only in my own hotel have I seen anyone wearing them. The street, even the main
shopping streets, are nowhere near as busy as the ones in london and this makes the side streets look almost deserted by comparison.

The McDonald in the centre of town had nothing on the menu to suggest a more scottish flavour (like a mcmcdonald burger, lol) but they certainly did know how to make a strawberry milk shake.

The only thing that angers me a little is that I deliberately walked in and stayed meters away from the counter to decide on what I wanted to eat, yet their staff still shouted over to me to come over and order. What kind of morons are they? If i am ignoring them and still
staring up after only walking in for a few seconds it is clear that I am not yet ready to order, so why hassle me!

There were plenty of bars and restaurants showing big tv screens to watch the football, which is a bit weird since they are not in the finals and also refuse to support england in their efforts.

I had a few bets which all got blown out when the evenings games were played. It truly is a mugs game, betting, as even with trying to
spread the bets over as many different results as possible the first three still managed to have results which were so random that all hopes of a big accumulator win were dashed before even half the results were in.

I mean, when was the last time in a world cup finals game where you saw 3 red cards in one match !!!

My hotel is a bit away from the town centre and up a bit of a hill. The rooms are basic but clean and only the tiredness of my flight over made me not want to go out and explore more.

The first day was just spend relaxing and dozing, plus cursing the Yanks and the Ghanaians.

The second day started with a clear head and nice scottish breakfast, which was almost identical to an english breakfast. I was expecting porridge oats, haggis or at least black pudding but nothing more than
a standard bacon, eggs, tomatoe and an ommlete!

Its a cold and drizzly day today, so with my big trip to loch ness tomorrow, I am just going to do more relaxing. Glasgow seems to be almost shut down on a Sunday, so not much else to do.

The waitress in this coffee internet cafe made me a wonderful hot chocolate and spent ages on the pretting it up with whipped cream and
then dusting it with coco powder. If only she had the brains to NOT put a lid on it afterwards, and now its all stuck to the underside of the lid. Scottish brains eh, cant beat them.