the short wanderer

It was still dark when we checked-out from our hotel and headed to the nearest bus stop, East Suffolk Road stop, which took us around 5 to 10 minutes’ walk to get there. Half an hour journey on the bus from our hotel to Elder Street Bus Station felt not that long as we were chatting with a friendly old lady which was also on her way to the bus station. And surprisingly, she and her friend are going to Glasgow on that day, too! Boarding off at the South Bridge stop, we went on separate ways after the old ladies gave us warm farewell hugs.  The journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow took us more or less an hour. We arrived at Buchanan Bus Station in Glasgow around half past nine. The weather was quite fair to be honest, even though it was a bit gloomy but at least, it wasn't raining. On our way to our first destination, we bumped into another friendly lady at a traffic light junction. Predicted correctly that we were tourists, (a group of girls with luggage and rucksack with ...

The journey continues... 3.00pm Heading to South Bridge Oh no, we got delayed while waiting for the bus after we checked-in to our room, I think the traffic was not that good at that time. We should be there 10 minutes before the tour start (to avoid missing the spot), but we got there almost 10 minutes after the tour begin instead XD Lucky enough, we still got the chance to join the tour! Another ‘blessings of the day #3: Late-comers not missing out tour’. The tour that we joined was The Real Mary King’s Close Tour, which revealed the story of the hidden closes of old town Edinburgh (my senior called it ‘the underground village’). Scottish Lesson 101 Part 2, ‘closes’ means ‘ alleyways’ . So that means the close that we visited is named after a merchant named Mary King (not to be confused with Mary Queen of Scots, that’s another Mary) who used to live at the close. We were taken for an hour guided tour to discover how people in the past lived at the close, and also other ...

8:45 am: Elder Street Bus Station, Edinburgh After spending 10 hours on the bus, we finally arrived at the capital city of Scotland. The roads and the pedestrian paths were wet as it was raining just before we reach the city. We were 45 minutes behind our initial plan as the expected time arrival was supposed to be at 8:00 am, but we were still sticking to the plan anyway, which is to get something for breakfast from a Sainsbury’s nearby (cause I saw in the map the day before that there is a Sainsbury’s close to the bus station). We walked out of the station and stopped in front of St Andrew Square. I was just about to open my Google Maps when a lady in a red jacket approached us and asked “Is everything okay girls?” I asked her how to find our way to the nearby Sainsbury’s. She showed us the direction, apparently it's just at the other end of St Andrew Square. Oh my, what a very good first impression! This is what I call ‘blessings of the day #1: Friendly Scottish’ . ...