The Riverside Museum

I also stopped at the Riverside Museum, which is actually a museum about the history of transit in Scotland.  This may not sound fascinating, but it's a really, really good museum, and it won the European Museum of the Year award.  Basically, it's a huge building full of trains, buses, trams, bicycles, cars, and (model) ships.  There is a tall ship outside, but it was closed, so I missed that bit.  There's also a really cool room with a glass wall full of revolving model ships, arranged chronologically, but I couldn't get a photo with the glare.  Definitely worth checking out if anyone's Scotland-bound.

 The museum itself is pretty cool, I think it's supposed to be inspired by the currents of the River Clyde.  This photo is courtesy of Wikipedia, by the way, I didn't get a good view.

 A horse-drawn tram car.

 This is a '34 or maybe '35 Bentley, I don't remember which, but I'd sure like one!

 Here's a bad photo of me, sitting in one of the original subway cars.  The subway in Glasgow is nicknamed the "Clockwork Orange," because the cars are orange and it runs under the city in a big circle, like a clock.  I haven't been on it yet, but according to the museum it's one of the oldest ones in Europe.  When it was built, the cars were pulled along manually with cables, although I'm sure that's not the case anymore.

 The only remaining train from the Glasgow and South Western Railroad, which was a regional line that stopped running in 1923.  Reminds me of the Ealing Studios movie The Titfield Thunderbolt, which I highly recommend to anyone who isn't familiar with Ealing Studios (producers of Kind Hearts and Coronets, Whiskey Galore!, and The Lavender Hill Mob.

 Speaking of whiskey...

This was the only functioning train in the place.  I took a photo of it for Matt, since it says Minnesota on it.

I saw a few other interesting sites along the way, too.  It's hard to cram things into a day or two, though, so I suppose I'm lucky that I have five years, although I don't think I'll have time to play tourist much after I start classes...

 Here's a lousy photo of the hospital where Joseph Lister did his antiseptic thing.  What I didn't know is that he apparently figured it out from the nurses, who routinely washed their hands in order to appear presentable.

 This is the oldest house in Glasgow, which was built in 1471.

 This is GoMA, the Gallery of Modern Art.  Outside, there is a statue of the Duke of Wellington.  If you look closely, you will notice that there is a traffic cone on the statue's head.  Apparently this has been an ongoing battle between the city authorities and the inhabitants of Glasgow.  Every day, the city removes the cone and, within a few hours, it's back.  Sometimes the horse gets a cone, too.  According to our guide, the government museum authority people have gotten quite angry about it, saying that GoMA should take it more seriously, but it seems to be an institution at this point.

Here's a statue of James Watt, a luthier who got famous for... oh yes, revolutionizing steam power and enabling the Industrial Revolution, or something silly like that.