From Our Window

One thing you can say about landing on the top floor of a tenement flat in Glasgow’s West End: it affords you sweeping views of the city with the snow-covered Kilpatrick Hills in the distance and Gothic Revival behemoths like the main buildings of the University of Glasgow poking above the 4-6 story, sandstone Victorian terraced housing that dominates the city. Our search for digs was finally successful after visits to about a dozen different “estate agents” and viewings of some truly Dickensian properties, but our apartment won’t be vacant until February. Until then, we’re staying in an Airbnb flat in the same neighborhood and getting to know where the best croissants are, what time of day the roast chickens get marked down at our favorite grocery store, how to ignore water pipes that sound like melodic, tortured cats, and strategies for drying laundry (a combination of using a medieval-looking rack that pulls down over the bathtub and/or draping underwear on all the radiators, which is more efficient but not very decorative.) Since there’s no television (which, it turns out, in the UK requires a monthly license fee), Rudy has entertained himself by attacking a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle of Kate and Wills. We’ve also visited a couple of Glasgow’s wonderfully posh movie theatres and bought tickets for a number of the Celtic Connections performances: a two-week world music festival with 2,000 artists and 20 venues. There’s no lack of things to do in this vibrant (but sadly trash-laden) city.