tim&chhay

We are in the middle of a busy 6 weeks, and currently are broadbandless at home (not such a bad thing for a household that spends 8 hours a day in front of a screen anyway) so I’ve been a bit lax with the updating.

Reaching back into the end of June our friend Howe visited for a weekend from Copenhagen (via Saigon via Adelaide via Malaysia), unfortunately he lucked out with the weather so we ducked showers all weekend but still managed to catch a fair bit of stuff.

After a late night repast at favourite haunt Pintxos on the Friday night after he arrived we did our usual customised walking tour on the Saturday - including taking in the excellent Haptic exhibition at the Lighthouse, and dinner at Malaysian Chinese gem Rumours.

Sunday we made yet another attempt at getting to Pitlochry to visit Scotland’s smallest distillery, however a late start and some poor weather saw us turn back at Loch Tay. An overly long diversion took us to the Falkirk Wheel (above)for the first time - faintly disappointing in a typical Millenium Lottery Funding sort of way.

As Chhay & and I have somehow managed to keep each other entertained, annoyed or otherwise occupied for approximately the last eight years, we dumped our surrogate child Claire for a weekend on the Ardnamurchan peninsula.

We had a pleasant drive up on the Friday night stopping at the very elegant Kilcamb Lodge for a somewhat surprisingly fancy supper.

We were based in Acharacle which was an unpreposessing town at the edge of the peninsula. The surrounding countryside however was absolutely magnificent. Quite depopulated with hidden coves and bays and the odd sandy beach to surprise.

There was even the wildlife promised by the tourist people - chhay spotted badgers, hawks and multitude of deer.

We trekked out to the very end of the peninsula - which also happens to be the westernmost mainland point on Great Britain, alsthough the islands sitting just offshore don’t give you a great sense of achievement. Having satifies our extremism we hopped on a ferry for an afternoon in the very picturesque Tobermory on the Isle of Mull.(below)

On our last day we did a big loop up to the gritty ‘gateway to the isles’, Mallaig - a proper fishing town, with a proper somewhat stinky harbour. The road up however was breathtaking - starting with beautiful harbours complete with ruined castles, and hidden yachts, follwed by clear aqua water backed by snow topped mountains, more beaches and views out to the small isles of Eigg, Rum and Rhu with the brooding presence of the Isle of Skye in the background.

I spent most of my time over the whole weekend wildly speculating on boat purchases, as every turn revealed yet another brilliant opportuinity for sailing. I think a six month trip up the west coast of Scotland may be the fitting way to finish our time here so if anyone want to join in a couple of years just let me know!

Having attempted to show Ashley Glasgow in one day - we then packed a mini cross section of scotland into the next.

First up was our trip to St Peters seminary that I have mentioned previously. Once we had finished with the modernist ruin we headed for more typical scenic country (although not before passing the Faslane nuclear sub base). Our first stop was for a quick introduction to the Scottish culinary delicacy of the bacon roll - one of the better propents of which sits by the highway at Arrochar. this lead to a tour of the west coast sea lochs - Long, & Fyne with a quick stroll around Inverary, before we cut across to the port of Oban for lunch.

In the afternoon we followed the coast road north past islands into the highlands proper. Returning through Glencoe,snow gave way to brilliant sunshine creating a magical atmosphere.

Cutting back towards Edinburgh we retraced routes from easter through the spectacular Pertshire countryside including Killin.

We even managed a quick stop in Queensferry for the Forth Bridge and a late dinner in Leith at Diner 7 - great food with a casual atmosphere and still buzzing at 10 pm on a Sunday.

My battery ran out at St Peter’s so will post some photos when I get them from Ashley.

glasgow school of art detail, originally uploaded by tim&chhay.

Our friend Ashley from Brisvegas visited us a couple of weekends ago - having scored a free trip courtesy of Her Majesty. We had hired a car for the weekend, so after a coffee from our favourite weekday haunt where the monkey sleeps, we snuck up to the school of art building (above) & the CCA, before taking off to the southside - giving Ashley a rather skewed perspective of our Glasgow.
We popped in to the Queen’s Park famer’s market, wandered about at the tramway for a bit (although there weren’t any exhibitions open as they were preparing for gi), and as the weather was holding up, (and it has a Queensland architectural connection) we took a tour to the Burrell collection, and Pollock House & gardens.

With storm clouds gathering the wonders of vehicular transport let us also squeeze in a guided tour of the new Chipperfield started/Keppie completed BBC building courtesy of Claire, very crisp inside with an impressive red sandstone “street” rising about 5 storeys up through the central atrium.

bbc scotland, originally uploaded by tim&chhay.

Daylight saving even allowed us to wander about the merchant city for an hour or so before a late dinner at Grass Roots which was quite delicious, and a place we intend to return to.

Continuing our partyish season up to Christmas, our friends Mike & Emma took us all to catch up on the famous Christmas tale ‘It’s A Wonderful Life”, which by some quirky twist of fate (or general avoiding of Christmas movies) none of us had seen before. Our favourite movie watching institution the GFT (Glasgow Film Theatre) puts this 1946 movie on every day for at least two weeks, every Christmas!

In the final wash it was great - slapping on the sentimentality layer by layer, with not a dry eye in the house by the end. Although aparently having seen it 10 time previously, as most of the audience seemed to have done, only increases the effect.

We followed the movie with a choice discovery of a fantastic new basque restaurant called Pintxos in supposed new dining hotspot of Thornwood (I couldn’t acutually see anything else open at the time), before chilling out in front of a roaring fire at Mike’s sisters Christmas party at her fantastic new house in the somewhat gritty southern suburb of Govan.