Buses, Botanical Gardens, and Begonias

On Saturday, I ventured into the Glasgow city center, as they call it (you get strange looks if you ask how to get to downtown Glasgow).  I must admit I find the bus system, which is the cheapest and most versatile public transport here, rather difficult to navigate.  The buses run frequently and I'm sure are very useful when you know where you're going, but for the uninitiated they are downright confusing.  The main problem is that the stops each have several different names.  For example, the stop I got off at today, which I'll get to later, was called simply "Glasgow," but was also referred to, separately, as "First stop on Renfrew St," or, "Renfrew St, after Cambridge Street."  So, if you don't actually know what your destination looks like, it's a bit hard not to miss your stop.  And since the bus doesn't stop unless someone wants on or off, you have to realize before you've passed it.  Some of the buses have a little LED screen that tells you what stop is next, and that's nice, but you still have to figure out what name they're going to call it.  That said, the bus drivers do try to look after you, if you tell them where you're going.

Once I got into the city center, I found one of those "hop-on, hop-off" buses that take tourists around to different places in the city.  You've probably seen the red buses if you've ever been in a big city, and it's the same company that does it worldwide.  Anyway, it's a pretty good deal, because you pay a pretty minimal flat rate and you can get ferried around a big loop all day, and get on and off whenever you want.  There are loads of buses, so they come by the stops every fifteen or twenty minutes.  While you're on the bus, they have a guide spouting information at you.  It's a bit funny, though, because they obviously have only a very loose script, and the guides on different buses sometimes contradict one another.

I stopped at the Botanical Gardens, which are small but very nice.  They have two pretty sizable glass greenhouses full of tropical plants, and lots of lawns and landscaped areas.  There's also a massive rose garden, and they have a contest every year for the best-smelling rose.  Unfortunately, most of them have stopped flowering by late summer, so I really only got to see the rose hip garden.  Oh, well.

 Some summer flowers on the green.  Lots of people walk their dogs here... I even saw a GSD!

 They were having a fuchsia contest.  I kid you not.  These are probably the top fuchsias in the UK.  They were all judged, and there were little cards next to the winners.  What a strange hobby.  They all just looked like fuchsias to me.

 There is also an entire ROOM full of begonias.  This is only a small part of it.  Who knew there were so many kinds of begonias (and did anyone care?!)?  Still, they do look nice all together like that...

 These are rose hips.  But you can imagine how lovely the roses must be in the spring.  Perhaps I'll put up another photo of them next year.

I did get to see two or three roses, though.