Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

A couple of really impressive museums today. Hopped on the Hop-on Hop-off sightseeing bus, since it was one of the best ways to get to some of the farther-flung sights. It actually turned out to be pretty interesting in itself, though it was frustrating to try to take photos from a moving bus.

The first museum was the Riverside Museum of Transportation. It houses a truly mind-boggling array of antique cars and model ships. It has (what is claimed to be) the oldest bicycle in the world, some early attempts at human-powered flight, and a number of locomotive, trams, motorcycles, and bicycles. There's even a locally-built (though repurposed several times) tall ship permanently moored on the River Clyde behind it. I think the ship was my favorite part. It's really fun to be able to go below decks and get a feeling for how big the spaces inside a ship like that are.

The second museum was the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It seems at first like a grab bag of paintings and curios, but there's logic behind it all. The curators have done a good job tying together things like a painting of a historic scene and actual objects from the period, or a stuffed pangolin with a suit of scale mail. A lot of it is related to Scotland, or Glasgow specifically. In the section on arms and armor, there were some art pieces with labels about which campaign a Glaswegian soldier had been on when he looted a particular piece. There were galleries devoted to the Mackintosh style, to the "Glasgow Boys" post-impressionists, to Scottish wildlife, to the depiction of Scottishness in art, and so on. Really well done.