A Walk Along the Kelvin

Today seemed like a good day to take a stroll along the Kelvin River and snap some pictures of the fall colors. Honestly, it wasn't the best of conditions for photography (mid-day, overcast) but it was nice and warm, a balmy 289 degrees Kelvin. I started my walk behind the Glasgow Botanic Garden and walked down the river to Kelvingrove Park which happens to be a nice arc never being more than about half a mile from my flat.

Behind the Botanics

I think I may have missed the peak of fall colors by a week or so and I'm not even sure in which direction. It's hard to tell if they're coming or going since some of the trees are bare and others are still green. Nevertheless, I was satisfied with the scenery today. I caught a particularly nice orange tree just north of Great Western Road.

It started to rain lightly about half way through my walk but soon it let up. All in all, it was quite dry this morning by Glasgow standards.

I tried my best to keep from taking pictures of the University of Glasgow or the Kelvingrove Museum since they're such cool buildings that they could have their own dedicated photo albums but they kept popping up the the background anyway.

Eventually I made it to this guy:

Lord Kelvin! ... Yeah, you knew something was up when I quoted the temperature in degrees K earlier. Lord Kelvin, the formulator of the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics, was named Baron Kelvin after the river that ran past his university. So by extension, Degrees Kelvin is named after the River Kelvin. On that bombshell, we'll end today's blog.

See the full photo album on my Picasa  page here or click on the link at the top of the page. I'm now uploading at 1024 pixels wide since my internet connection is faster here than Ghana... Yay!

Whoa... Fail

So I haven't written anything in my Blog for... well lets just go with for quite a while. I think I owe everyone at home some attention...

Today I went climbing at the Glasgow Climbing Centre. It's been a while since I went climbing (last summer in Louisville) but I hadn't lost any of my non-skill. My fingers were still extremely sore before I was necessarily tired of climbing so my ability drastically deteriorated near the end of the day but other than that it was a great time. The climbing center itself was inside of an old converted church so It definitely had a unique feel. There were 40 foot walls on every side and some cool overhangs and a cave type thing in the corner which was made to seem like a natural rock face rather than by adding holds to a flat wall. In the basement there was a bouldering area which was particularly cool since it seemed almost like a secret room hidden under the main rock gym. I advise you to check it out for yourself via the virtual tour (move your mouse around to pan):  http://www.pikodesign.com/tour/gcc/

Since I've been mostly out of contact (no facebook, poor blogging regularity) if you'd like to ask any questions via the comment section or email I'll be happy to answer them in a future post.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Split Pea Soup Flavoured Museums

The Riverside Museum (Museum of Transport), the newest museum in Glasgow opened about a month ago and I have to say it's walls are very minty.

Aggh! don't put cars on shelves! That's where the books go. I have no idea what they were thinking when they did this. It's kinda unnerving to walk under 3 stories of cars but more importantly, from the ground you can't really see them at all.

That being said, the building does look pretty cool from some angles...

Plus a permanent tall ship outside in the River Clyde doesn't hurt either.

I just realized that these are the first pictures of Glasgow I've put online. On one hand, this is sad because the city is not done justice by this one very bold (yet slightly tragic) building, on the other hand, some things aren't meant to be seen merely on a computer screen and I don't want to diminish the appeal of travel since sometimes vast amounts of pictures spoil the adventure of travel (Imagine seeing the Taj Mahal or Great Pyramids for the first time in person having only heard descriptions but having never seen a picture.. it would be unimaginably amazing!) So that's kinda been my philosophy for the last few weeks; if something is amazing I stop myself from taking a picture (yeah.. I know you kind of end up on the loosing end of this, Sorry). Spoilers. Hope you enjoyed one of the locations in Glasgow that can be done justice by pictures.

The Belly of the Beast-ly Clouds

A slight bit of mid day fog on the way up to St. Andrews. I imagine there would have been a good view from this bridge but I don't mind substituting for eeriness and mystery, it is October after all.