Scotland 1995 Journal (Part 4)
Aug. 23rd, 1995 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperAdded as a backdated Livejournal entry 5/13/03 -- herein is the description of wandering around Glasgow the day before Worldcon actually started
Wednesday, August 23, 1995: Random Glasgow Wandering, or, Why Didn't You People TELL Us There Wasn't Going to Be Any Programming on Wednesday?!
The first words out of Dar's mouth to me on this morning were, "Have you ever considered the lifestyle choices made available by being awake?"
I sleep later than Dar. A lot later. But this was funny, so I obligingly rolled out of bed and got dressed. :)
We were in the process of getting ready to head out for breakfast and to go register with the con when I realized my umbrella was missing. So after thinking about it, I realized I must have left it on the train back from Edinburgh. At the station right by our hotel - which was Charing Cross, one hop over from the Queens Street station, the big one where the trains to and from Edinburgh are to be caught - a magazine vendor said that the Queens Street station probably would have kept my lost umbrella in their lost and found as opposed to sending it to the Central station, so we decided to go there later.
First, though, we trundled off to the exhibition hall to get registered for WorldCon. The walk was longish, registration was short since we were pre-registered, though we had the obligatory screwup with Dar's badge. They had mine alright, but for some reason Dar's had wound up at the problems desk. But we got it with no difficulty.
The obligatory freebie bag given out by the registration types had less in it than I'd expect at an American con, but this wasn't a bad thing. There was only the program, the pocket program, and a flyer or two. Near the registration desk, though, was a stack of free books of Scottish science fiction, so I grabbed one of those.
The pocket program was a little binder, well put together, but with noticeable textual problems. In the section listing all the descriptions of the various panels, many of the descriptions cut off and ran right into the list of panelists. Dar figured that this is because they had all this data in a database, and that occasionally people tried to enter a string for the panel description that was longer than the printout's format could deal with. This yielded a particularly funny result in the case of a panel on wormholes, in which the description spoke of the panelists' theory that the end of a wormhole would turn into... the list of panelists.
Another amusing typo was in an ad for Wizards of the Coast, the good folks who brought Magic: The Gathering cards to the world. This particular ad left the "a" out of "Coast," and naturally the con newsletter couldn't let WotC live this down. ;)
After registering for the con, Dar and I found out to our annoyance that there wasn't actually going to be any programming until the following day. Dar noted that if we'd known this, we could have gone back to Edinburgh and/or taken one of the all-day tours up to the Highlands or Inverness or Loch Ness.
As it happened, the day turned out to be very quiet. We napped some of the afternoon, and also went to the train station to get my umbrella back - which wound up costing me one pound, 50 pence. On the way, a helpful ticket seller noticed that we were American and interested in the various kinds of money, and told us that the bank should be able to give us a brochure with all the various types of notes and coins described therein. We also chatted with a man on the train and a clerk in a drugstore, about our trip.
We found one of the Tardis-style police boxes near the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. It turned out to be very old and ratty-looking, boarded up and clearly out of use, located in the parking lot near the Hall. But Dar took a picture of me by it anyway: "Anna Buys a Used Tardis."
We walked down Sauchiehall Street on the way back from the Queens Street Station. This led through the city center, and had a long pedestrian-only strip with several shops and restaurants. I looked for more record stores, to see if I could find the a-ha single "Shapes that Go Together." Didn't manage to do that, though I was amused to see a poster for Morten Harket's single on one wall. It was during a visit to another HMV that I happened to notice tapes of X-Files episodes on sale - yet another thing I wouldn't have found in the States. The tapes were in PAL format, unfortunately, or else I would have bought some.
We stopped at another food court and bought what turned out to be a perfectly vile chicken & cheese pizza (which was watery and sort of limp), and an equally vile chocolate milkshake (which was mostly warm chocolate milk). It almost made me go back up the street to the McDonald's we saw (which, we noticed, had a menu that looked just like it would at home, including the numbers on the prices) so that I could get a real shake, but I didn't.
We stopped at a camera shop briefly, and then went back to the hotel to nap again for a bit, then tried to catch one of the Glasgow city tour buses. We missed the last circuit, though, so I went back to the hotel to nap again as my feet were killing me, and Dar went wandering around to take some pictures of the city.
Dar came back to join me at the hotel room later. I tried to call Niall, thinking to try to coordinate something for the evening with him, but we got his answering machine and he never called back.
For dinner we went out again and wound up at a place called Sannino's, which turned out to be marvelous. We did the chicken & cheese pizza concept again, but this time more than made up for the bad pizza we'd had earlier, as the food was very well done and quite tasty. I had a soft ice cream dish with a mint chocolate sauce and some mint wafers stuck in the side. We left them a 20% tip - which to our amusement boggled them - and went happily back to look for the con's party hotels.
On the way we ran into an old acquaintance of Dar's, Jay Denebeim, and a lady with him named Cheryl. We chatted, and pointed them to Sannino's. Then, we found the Forte Crest and Central hotels, which were slated to have WorldCon's evening programming and parties, and finally retired for the night.
Wednesday, August 23, 1995: Random Glasgow Wandering, or, Why Didn't You People TELL Us There Wasn't Going to Be Any Programming on Wednesday?!
The first words out of Dar's mouth to me on this morning were, "Have you ever considered the lifestyle choices made available by being awake?"
I sleep later than Dar. A lot later. But this was funny, so I obligingly rolled out of bed and got dressed. :)
We were in the process of getting ready to head out for breakfast and to go register with the con when I realized my umbrella was missing. So after thinking about it, I realized I must have left it on the train back from Edinburgh. At the station right by our hotel - which was Charing Cross, one hop over from the Queens Street station, the big one where the trains to and from Edinburgh are to be caught - a magazine vendor said that the Queens Street station probably would have kept my lost umbrella in their lost and found as opposed to sending it to the Central station, so we decided to go there later.
First, though, we trundled off to the exhibition hall to get registered for WorldCon. The walk was longish, registration was short since we were pre-registered, though we had the obligatory screwup with Dar's badge. They had mine alright, but for some reason Dar's had wound up at the problems desk. But we got it with no difficulty.
The obligatory freebie bag given out by the registration types had less in it than I'd expect at an American con, but this wasn't a bad thing. There was only the program, the pocket program, and a flyer or two. Near the registration desk, though, was a stack of free books of Scottish science fiction, so I grabbed one of those.
The pocket program was a little binder, well put together, but with noticeable textual problems. In the section listing all the descriptions of the various panels, many of the descriptions cut off and ran right into the list of panelists. Dar figured that this is because they had all this data in a database, and that occasionally people tried to enter a string for the panel description that was longer than the printout's format could deal with. This yielded a particularly funny result in the case of a panel on wormholes, in which the description spoke of the panelists' theory that the end of a wormhole would turn into... the list of panelists.
Another amusing typo was in an ad for Wizards of the Coast, the good folks who brought Magic: The Gathering cards to the world. This particular ad left the "a" out of "Coast," and naturally the con newsletter couldn't let WotC live this down. ;)
After registering for the con, Dar and I found out to our annoyance that there wasn't actually going to be any programming until the following day. Dar noted that if we'd known this, we could have gone back to Edinburgh and/or taken one of the all-day tours up to the Highlands or Inverness or Loch Ness.
As it happened, the day turned out to be very quiet. We napped some of the afternoon, and also went to the train station to get my umbrella back - which wound up costing me one pound, 50 pence. On the way, a helpful ticket seller noticed that we were American and interested in the various kinds of money, and told us that the bank should be able to give us a brochure with all the various types of notes and coins described therein. We also chatted with a man on the train and a clerk in a drugstore, about our trip.
We found one of the Tardis-style police boxes near the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. It turned out to be very old and ratty-looking, boarded up and clearly out of use, located in the parking lot near the Hall. But Dar took a picture of me by it anyway: "Anna Buys a Used Tardis."
We walked down Sauchiehall Street on the way back from the Queens Street Station. This led through the city center, and had a long pedestrian-only strip with several shops and restaurants. I looked for more record stores, to see if I could find the a-ha single "Shapes that Go Together." Didn't manage to do that, though I was amused to see a poster for Morten Harket's single on one wall. It was during a visit to another HMV that I happened to notice tapes of X-Files episodes on sale - yet another thing I wouldn't have found in the States. The tapes were in PAL format, unfortunately, or else I would have bought some.
We stopped at another food court and bought what turned out to be a perfectly vile chicken & cheese pizza (which was watery and sort of limp), and an equally vile chocolate milkshake (which was mostly warm chocolate milk). It almost made me go back up the street to the McDonald's we saw (which, we noticed, had a menu that looked just like it would at home, including the numbers on the prices) so that I could get a real shake, but I didn't.
We stopped at a camera shop briefly, and then went back to the hotel to nap again for a bit, then tried to catch one of the Glasgow city tour buses. We missed the last circuit, though, so I went back to the hotel to nap again as my feet were killing me, and Dar went wandering around to take some pictures of the city.
Dar came back to join me at the hotel room later. I tried to call Niall, thinking to try to coordinate something for the evening with him, but we got his answering machine and he never called back.
For dinner we went out again and wound up at a place called Sannino's, which turned out to be marvelous. We did the chicken & cheese pizza concept again, but this time more than made up for the bad pizza we'd had earlier, as the food was very well done and quite tasty. I had a soft ice cream dish with a mint chocolate sauce and some mint wafers stuck in the side. We left them a 20% tip - which to our amusement boggled them - and went happily back to look for the con's party hotels.
On the way we ran into an old acquaintance of Dar's, Jay Denebeim, and a lady with him named Cheryl. We chatted, and pointed them to Sannino's. Then, we found the Forte Crest and Central hotels, which were slated to have WorldCon's evening programming and parties, and finally retired for the night.