The New York Times (October 19, 2023) – Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, crackles with character. It’s a hub of grass-roots energy where  art shows, plant sales and film screenings pop up in tenement flats, railway waiting rooms and disused buildings. 

Here is the itinerary:

Friday

Burrell Collection

3 p.m. Wander through woodlands to a world-class museum

Start your weekend at the Burrell Collection, a glass-roofed art museum that rises out of a meadow in the city’s southern Pollok Country Park like a vast, gleaming greenhouse. The 9,000-piece collection was donated to the city at the close of World War II by William Burrell, a Glasgow shipping merchant, and opened in this specially commissioned building in 1983. The free-entry museum reopened in 2022 after a six-year refurbishment of its red sandstone, glass and wood interiors. Though it is busy, the Burrell offers a peaceful immersion in an unmistakably personal collection, drifting from Degas and Rembrandt to tabernacles, tulip-motif textiles and ancient Chinese roof tiles. The tapestries are especially wonderful, including the palatially sized “Wagner Garden Carpet” made by master weavers in 17th-century Iran.

Saturday

Papercup

10 a.m. Grab a brekkie roll, then discover a Glaswegian jungle

If it’s not raining, take advantage of clear skies with a botanic stroll in Glasgow’s affluent West End. Grab breakfast at Papercup, a small and friendly cafe that has original period details, like egg-and-dart molding and an ornate ceiling rose. Try the brekkie roll with a sausage patty (£5), or eggs on toast with a side of vegan haggis (£8.50). From the cafe, wander to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens, either directly, along Great Western Road, or take the more meandering Kelvin Walkway down by the River Kelvin, crossing the blue, steel Botanic Gardens Footbridge to emerge into the scented gardens on the other bank. Enter the domed Kibble Palace, a spectacular glasshouse in which to explore a jungle of orchids, begonias and ferns, among other leafy treasures.

Hoos

12 p.m. Browse Scandi home goods and woolly Scottish knitwear

Glaswegians have an appetite for sustainable shopping and for secondhand goods of all stripes. Hoos, next to the Botanic Gardens, stocks chic Scandi home goods, while the Glasgow Vintage Co., farther along Great Western Road from Papercup, has a thoughtful selection of second-hand Scottish knitwear alongside show-stopping coats and dresses from the 1970s. Up the hill on Otago Street, above Perch & Rest Coffee, Kelvin Apothecary sells a nice range of gifts including handmade Scottish soaps and wooden laundry and cleaning tools. In the cobbled Otago Lane is the chaotic Voltaire and Rousseau secondhand bookshop, with teetering, vertical book piles. Unlike many Glasgow shops, this store isn’t the most dog-friendly, because of the resident cat, BB, who supervises from his perch at the till.

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