Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

Up before dawn and off to Scotland! I managed to catch a tiny nap on the 45 minute flight, but other than that it's mostly been walking around Glasgow.

We caught a tour of the Glasgow School of Art's Charles Rennie Mackintosh building before lunch. Unfortunately there was a major fire there last year that destroyed the interior of one of the wings, and the building was closed for repairs. Fortunately, there were extremely detailed plans for it and already they've started rebuilding. The tour was very interesting even though we could only see the facade, a model, and various pieces of Mackintosh-designed furniture. Unfortunately, it was mostly chairs, which I am known to not like.

Mackintosh combined elements of the emerging Art Nouveau styles of the time and characteristic Scottish design cues from Baronial Castles into a style all his own. He had a fantastic attention to detail, and liked to make every appearance of a repeated motif unique. There's a set of iron decorations along the facade that resemble flowers. At first glance, they all look alike, but on closer inspection you realize that the bud blooms a bit more in each successive flower.

I had lunch at a cute little gastropub (Tinny and crew ate at a chippie) and then we continued the walking tour. A lot of the architectural gems are currently chain stores in a shopping district. It's amusing to see a TGI Friday's or Urban Outfitters in a stately neoclassical building or to look around a mall with gorgeous Art Nouveau styling. We stopped in at the Gallery of Modern Art, which has an unusual policy: it only displays work by living artists.