The software I use to produce this blog through a wobbly so the pictures for this and the next two pages were added a week later.
Where do you take an OAP on her birthday - how about a cemetery! The Glasgow Necropolis has a great view of the cathedral and the city and it was a pleasant walk across town to reach it. It also worked up an appetite before we ate lunch in the Willow Tearooms, one of the four tearooms designed by Rennie Mackintosh for an enterprising lady called Mrs Cranston.
The chairs look good but are not very comfortable but at least you get real tea with a strainer. We then caught the bus out to see the Mackintosh Church which he designed for the Scottish Free Church in 1898. It is no longer an active church but is the HQ of the Mackintosh Society. Like all Mackintosh buildings he spent as much time on the detail of the internal fittings as the buildings structure and it has lots of nice, simple detailing.
We also visited the Provands Lordship House which is a thirteenth century building associated with the cathedral. For a number of years it was run by the Provands Lordship Society who had generous benefactors and a great deal of imagination.
They decided the Mary Queen of Scotts had stayed there and spent a great deal of money buying paintings associated with her. There is no evidence that she did visit the house and most of the paintings purchased turned out to be not by the artists who they thought so a bit of a fraud. Despite this it is a nice house and does have some excellent furniture.
Gills birthday dinner was a real treat, sometimes Trip Advisor comes up trumps and the Two Fat Ladies in the Buttery was one of those. Apparently the restaurant has been there for ever but in 1970 it was cut off by a motorway but they just carried on. It is now in a very scruffy neighbourhood and from the outside looks like a run down Victorian pub, as we walked to the door we certainly felt over dressed, I was even wearing a suit! Once through the door we changed our minds and felt a little scruffy, we had entered a calm oak panelled room with tables laid with nice linen and high quality cutlery, quite a surprise. The food was very good, a bit pricey but it was a birthday treat and the price makes sure the locals don't drop in. The waitress seemed surprised we were walking home, clearly she thinks it is a dubious area.