The organist at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow played Life on Mars today as a tribute to David Bowie and a chap called Gordon Wilson was smart enough to film it on his phone. The organ obviously isn’t the best instrument to play it on, but he makes a good job of it I think. The organ is played every day at the same time, but the last time we were there, when we had Peggy from the US with us, we weren’t lucky enough to hear it.
On our recent stopover in Glasgow I had thought that we might have our lunch at one of The Willow Tearooms in the city. But we were too busy photographing the loads of gorgeous buildings nearby, so we ended up just having Cornish pasties – on the go. Next time we’ll be more organised.
These tearooms were designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh – as I’m sure you will have realised. The photos above are of the tearoom at the bottom of Buchanan Street. You can read about them here. The actual tearoom is upstairs I believe.
The photos below are of the tearooms at the top of Sauchiehall Street. These have only fairly recently been opened as a tearoom again as the building had been taken over by a jewellers for some years.
I think the windows of this one are wonderful. You can see images of the tearooms here.
It was Miss Cranston who commissioned C.R. Mackintosh to design her tearooms for her and you can see the original interior in the Kelvingrove Art Galleries in the west end of Glasgow. There are more images of The Miss Cranston interior in the gallery here.
Nowadays of course there are gift shops alongside the tearooms. There’s so much Mackintosh inspired ‘stuff’ around that we have taken to calling it Mockintosh.
In fact I couldn’t resist buying some Mackintosh inspired fabric from the nearby Manders shop. I got a couple of yards in their sale, at a seventh of the original price! I have no idea what I’m going to use it for though.
This is a bit of a linky-fest for places of interest around the west-end of Glasgow. More parts of Glasgow will be featured at a later date.
It’ll be the school autumn holidays soon, so I was having a look to see what we could do in Glasgow during them. We usually like to visit The Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University. It’s always interesting even although it’s very small, and it’s free!
It’s just a short walk from Kelvingrove Museum, which is my favourite museum and art gallery – in fact it’s a home from home for me.
At the moment they are celebrating Black History Month at the Hunterian but there are exhibitions in other parts of the country too, if you can’t manage to get there.
The Hunterian Museum is tucked away at Glasgow University but the Hunterian Art Gallery is easier to find and is just a few minutes’ walk from the museum. There are always interesting art works on display but my favourite bit is the Charles Rennie Mackintosh part, where they have reconstructed an interior.
After that we’ll have a stroll along Byres Road ending up at the Botanic Gardens, which Michelle really enjoyed on her recent trip to Glasgow. A Son of the Rock has some nice photographs of the glasshouses there, which you can see here.
Sadly the Glasgow Museum of Transport closed recently and is moving to the new riverside setting. I’m sure that it’ll be great when it’s finished but I will really miss the old place, which was very handy, being just across the road from Kelvingrove.
So, that will be the most important parts of the west-end of Glasgow visited, unless you’re into shops. Byres Road leads you from Kelvingrove all the way to the Botanics and there are plenty of independent shops of interest.