Travel Guide to Glasgow - Scotland’s Gritty, Buzzing Second City
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There is something special about Scotland’s biggest city Glasgow: an essence that is not precisely definable. It is not as effortlessly pretty as Edinburgh, and lacking in the big-draw scenery that lies beside Inverness, yet there is no urban experience outside of London in the UK that is so wildly varied.
There are the sleek facades of one of Europe’s most striking urban waterfronts along the River Clyde, the groundbreaking turn-of-the-20th-century architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and the astonishing Unesco-listed Industrial Revolution model village at New Lanark.
There is footballing passion, iconic live music venues, and there is a great and glorious outdoors here to see as well, from smart city green spaces to loch-riven national parks.
Glasgow’s fortunes were once tied to the 19th and early 20th century shipbuilding along the River Clyde: with this the city went boom and then, when that industry declined, bust.
Since then, Glasgow has become a specialist in reinvention, finding myriad new ways to improve itself and entice new visitors. And I guarantee you, it will draw you in too.
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Local help with your planning
If you’re planning a visit to Glasgow, or Scotland more broadly, and could use some help coming up with a great plan, consider scheduling a Scotland travel consultation with Chris, our Local Expert in the United Kingdom.
These are one-hour Zoom calls where you get to chat with Chris, a local guide and tour leader throughout Scotland and the United Kingdom, about the trip you’re planning and get his expert tips and advice, answers to your travel questions, and help you perfect your itinerary.
Why visit?
In Scotland (and in England and Wales too, if you discount London) there is no city as diverse as Glasgow. When you have experienced the metropolis’s attractions from its eclectic architecture to its world-class art museums, you can turn your attention to the sizzling energy of its entertainment scene: this means stellar dining, thrumming pubs and bars, standout live music, and excellent stand-up comedy.
Too much city energy for you? Well, thankfully, you can easily escape to the countryside for a dose of tranquillity at any time: Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park are just 22 miles to the northwest.
Alongside everything that there is to do here and nearby, for me, it’s the sort of intangible atmosphere and charm that’s really what makes this such a great place to travel.
It could be the sense of humor and lack of pretension of the city’s residents, it might be the frenzy of a football match day, and it is almost certainly partly the never-say-die spirit of a city that is always trying and therefore nearly always impressing those who take the time to explore it. It’s something uniquely Glaswegian, at any rate.
Where is Glasgow?
Glasgow, situated in central Scotland, is 48 miles west of the country’s capital city Edinburgh, 87 miles northwest of the Scotland-England border at Gretna, and 168 miles south of Inverness, the gateway to the Scottish Highlands.
The city spreads out alongside the River Clyde and forms the nexus of the nation’s largest metropolitan area.
Despite being a dense urban center, Glasgow sits close to some spectacular countryside too. Loch Lomond, one of Scotland’s best-known lochs and the beginning of Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park, is just 22 miles northwest of the city, offering a convenient rural escape.
How to get here
The main way of getting to Glasgow is by flight. The city has two airports, and the main one, Glasgow International Airport, is 9 miles west of the city center and handles flights to/from other destinations in Scotland, the UK, Europe and further afield.
The other airport is Glasgow Prestwick Airport, 32 miles southwest of the city center near Ayr, and which is mainly used to reach holiday destinations in Southern Europe.
Glasgow has good rail links to the capital Edinburgh as well as Inverness, tge gateway city to the Scottish Highlands, along with other destinations in Scotland and England. The city also has good bus connections, allowing you to easily get north to Inverness and the Highlands, east to Edinburgh, and south into England.
By flight to Glasgow International Airport or Glasgow Prestwick Airport
Glasgow International Airport is Scotland’s second-busiest airport after Edinburgh Airport.
It is the air hub for far-flung Scottish destinations including Islay, Barra and Benbecula (Outer Hebrides), Kirkwall (Orkney Islands) and Sumburgh (Shetland Islands). One-way flights are around an hour’s duration and cost $125-250.
You can also fly from here to the London airports of Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow: flights are about 1.5 hours and cost $60-120 on average.
Glasgow International Airport also receives daily flights from other European destinations including Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Prague and several Turkish airports. Further afield, Dubai and Toronto are also served.
Glasgow Prestwick Airport mainly handles flights to Southern European holiday destinations like Faro (in Portugal) and Tenerife (Spain).
By train or bus from London
London Euston is London’s main train hub for journeys to Glasgow. Journey time to Glasgow Central is about 4.5 hours. The cheapest one-way tickets can be as little as $65 but these sell out many days in advance. Likelier one-way ticket prices are going to be $140 for a ticket purchased a few days in advance.
You can easily get to Glasgow by bus from London and other places in England too. Long-distance bus companies like Megabus, National Express and Flixbus run many buses. Journey time is 10-11 hours and prices for one-way tickets start at about $20.
Most buses run with Citylink, while Hourly Citylink buses via Stirling and Perth take 3.5 hours to Inverness, with ticket prices about $30.
By train or bus from Edinburgh
The most popular destination to travel to from Glasgow is Edinburgh. Trains run several times hourly to Glasgow Queen Street: journey time is one hour and prices are around $20.
Buses are $15 return from Edinburgh Bus Station to Glasgow Buchanan Street and journey time is about 1.5 hours.
By train or bus from Northern Scotland
Glasgow Queen Street is the main hub for travel to and from Northern Scotland. Train lines run on a spectacular route to Oban, gateway to the Inner Hebrides (three hours, ticket prices about $30) and to Fort William, capital of the western Scottish Highlands (3.75 hours, ticket prices about $40). These trains run about every 2-3 hours.
There are also regular train heading north to Stirling (30 minutes, $13) and Inverness (3.25 hours, either direct or changing at Stirling, ticket prices about $30). You can change in inverness for further transport connections across the highlands.
Buses from Glasgow Buchanan Street through key operator Citylink serve destinations including Stirling (45 minutes, $8.50), Perth (1.5 hours, $13), Inverness (3.75 hours, $32) and Oban (three hours, $23).
You can change in Fort William (3.25 hours, $30) for services to Portree on Skye, Ullapool (gateway to the Outer Hebrides) and more. Inverness is another major bus changing point for services to the Northern Highlands.
By car
Glasgow is 46 miles and just over an hour west of Edinburgh, and is reached by an easy highway drive. If you’re heading to/from Glasgow from Northern Scotland, bank on a 170-mile, 3-hour drive from Inverness. Or, if you’re coming from England, in London let’s say, it’s 420 miles and about a 7-hour drive away.
Connect with Scotland travel expert Chris for help perfecting your itinerary, answers to all your travel questions, and fabulous local tips for a better visit!
Best time to visit
Glasgow gets some of the rainiest weather of any city in the UK, so this is something that you should be prepared for no matter when you choose to come. Of course, there are better and worse times though.
The May to September period sees the best trade-off between average numbers of wet days (11-13 in the month) and warm temperatures (59-66.2°F), so this is an excellent time to visit if you want the best chance of sunny and warm days.
Glasgow doesn’t see the huge summer increases in crowds that more popular tourist destinations like Edinburgh and the Highlands do, especially in the July-August peak season, so a summertime visit here is very pleasant and rarely overwhelming.
In fact, for festivals June is probably the best month overall, so if it’s culture and events that you’re after, that’s an excellent choice.
Despite the weather “issues”, the city has year-round appeal, and the variety of activities on offer means that any time of year can make for an equally enjoyable visit.
With that said, you’ll get far cheaper accommodation if you come in the winter season (October-April), and there is sure to be plenty going on still.
Summer high-season: July and August
While this is peak season in most of Scotland, tourist levels don’t seem that much noticeably higher in Glasgow. The highest average temperatures of the year (a 66.2°F that can still seem pretty cool to visitors from many parts of the world) arrive at this time, and accommodation prices are at their highest.
One of the best festivals in this season is the World Pipe Band Championships on Glasgow Green.
Shoulder Season: April to June and September
Many of the best city festivals happen in this season. May has a big food fest, Eat & Drink Festival, June can boast Glasgow Jazz Festival, the Reeling music festival and the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art and September sees the Clydebuilt Festival: a celebration of the River Clyde in all shapes and forms.
As for the weather, June could be the best month of the year with average temperatures of 62.5F and just 11 average days of precipitation.
Low Season: October to April
It may be cold, grey and damp, but in Glasgow this chunk of the year is still pretty lively and will almost certainly reward you with far-lower accommodation costs.
Glasgow has a reputation as one of the world’s funniest cities, and all the humor is showcased at March’s Glasgow International Comedy Festival.
How long to spend
While you could see much of the best of Glasgow itself in a weekend break (two days), to really get under the skin of the city and also factor in trips to some of the surrounding countryside sights, five days is ideal.
I know that everyone doesn’t have the luxury of spending 5 days in a single city though, so below is a quick itinerary for how to spend anywhere from 2 to 5 days in the city.
2 Days: City sights, fine dining, and buzzing nightlife
Day 1
Begin the day in Central Glasgow with breakfast and sightseeing all in one go with a visit to the striking Willow Tearooms, completed in 1903 by one of the world’s most famous architects, city-born Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
It’s also worth exploring some of the center’s vivid street art. Then head east of center to look around Glasgow Cathedral, the city’s oldest building, dating from the 12th century, and don’t miss the opportunity to explore down into the crypt.
Afterwards, climb up to the Necropolis to experience one of the UK’s most interesting cemeteries, topped by its monument to leading reformation figure John Knox.
In the afternoon, head down to the River Clyde to explore some of the compelling attractions along Europe’s most famous urban waterfront regeneration project. Be sure to check out The Tall Ship, one of the last vessels from the city’s once huge shipbuilding industry, and built at the turn of the 20th century.
Also pay visits to the two titanic museums, Riverside Museum, one of the world’s very best transport museums (north bank), and Glasgow Science Centre (south bank).
Dine somewhere like casually cool Ox and Finch with its variety of original small plates or the glam Corinthian Club, with its delightful domed, chandelier-hung ceiling and contemporary Scottish food.
Day 2
Use today to check out Glasgow’s West End, wandering around the vast, verdant Kelvingrove Park and its two art museums, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and the Hunterian Museum.
Experience at least one of the vibrant West End dining institutions like Ubiquitous Chip.
Take an afternoon jaunt south of the river to Pollock Country Park, where you can take a long walk in Glasgow’s largest and loveliest green space and visit the Burrel Collection’s trove of tapestries, Ming Dynasty vases, paintings by Degas and Cezanne and sculpture by Rodin.
In the evening, you could catch a live comedy show at The Stand Comedy Club or head back to the center for a dram of whisky at The Pot Still or a a gig at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, one of Scotland’s most famous live music venues.
5 Days: Add in some less-visited sights and exciting day trips
In addition to the 2-day itinerary above, you could also see some of the city’s less-visited sights and factor in some day trips with this amount of extra time.
Day 3
Make the south side a complete day, adding in Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park and the architect’s Scotland Street School Museum around a Pollock Country Park visit.
Day 4
Do a day trip from Glasgow to Loch Lomond, taking the train to Balloch. Go for a loch boat trip and head to Luss for a look around the conservation village and a spot of paddleboarding.
Consider walking from Balloch to Balloch Castle & Country Park and on along the pretty eastern loch shoreline.
Day 5
Consider another day trip to the Unesco World Heritage Site of New Lanark, looking round this superb early example of an Industrial Revolution era milling village and walking to the tumbling Falls of Clyde.
Back in the city, Glasgow Green’s People’s Palace and Winter Gardens, charting the story of Glaswegian life from the mid-18th to 20th centuries, is a fascinating way to conclude your city visit.
Where to stay
The choice for accommodation usually boils down to two key areas in Glasgow: the city center and the West End. Both offer a full range of accommodations, though the West End’s tend to be in leafier, quieter locations.
The city center is a good place to stay for its transport links and attractions such as the sights on the River Clyde, Glasgow Cathedral, and the Willow Tearooms.
The West End is a good place to stay if you want access to the likes of Kelvingrove Park and Art Gallery, and this is the city’s established fine dining destination, so is full of great restaurants.
Here are some of my recommended accommodation options in these two neighborhoods:
Central Glasgow
Rab Ha’s: There are only four small but very nice rooms at this tongue-in-cheek bar-hotel which warns a stay will be ‘not the Ritz or Hilton… more like Fawlty Towers on gourmet night.’ Breakfast is included, and there is a bar-restaurant serving a wide variety of reasonably priced food including curries, burgers and soups.
It’s one of Central Glasgow’s best bargains for quality private en suite rooms.
Malmaison Glasgow: Long established as one of Central Glasgow’s best boutique hotels, this upper-mid-range is set in a converted church. There are 72 slickly-designed rooms here, plus the Malmaison Bar & Grill restaurant.
Native Glasgow: This stay near George Square in Central Glasgow is a little different: this is an apartment hotel, offering 64 tastefully furnished apartments within a genteel early 20th-century former shipping company headquarters. There are two on-site restaurants. Prices are mid-range.
West End
Argyll Guest House: Right by Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow’s West End, this is a dependable bet for a bed & breakfast or room-only stay. Prices and standards are in line with an upper mid-range hotel, but for the sought-after location these 18 rooms offer decent value.
Hotel du Vin: This high-end hotel in the West End stands on a peaceful Victorian terrace, with a collection of 49 rooms and suites featuring the likes of roll-top baths and Egyptian linen on the beds. The Restaurant One Devonshire Gardens offers upmarket food, and there is a whisky room offering many of Scotland’s best single malts.
Outside of the city
Red Deer Village Holiday Park: Many adventurers come to Glasgow to start a camping holiday in the Highlands and this offers the closest camping to the city center. It’s in Stepps, five miles northeast of Central Glasgow and half a mile south of Stepps train station.
There are also a variety of chalets and static caravans, with ample space for RVs, all in pleasant green surrounds.
What to see & do
1. Experience one of Europe’s finest urban regenerations along the Clyde Waterfront
Once a zone of derelict industry, the River Clyde is now one of the most atmospheric and rejuvenated places to spend time in Glasgow, and has been the lifeblood of the city since the Industrial Revolution. These days it even has its own festival (Clydebuilt, September).
Attractions here include the wonderful Glasgow Science Centre, with state-of-the-art interactive installations and a planetarium, the Tall Ship, a memento from the Clyde’s celebrated shipbuilding era at the turn of the 20th century, and the Riverside Museum, one of the world’s biggest and best transport museums.
2. Have a lively night out
Glasgow is a spirited city when it comes to nightlife. Among the many choices are The Alchemist for flamboyant cocktails, Innis and Gunn Ashton Lane, the bar to complement the well-established craft brewery and The Pot Still, with one of the best collections of single malt whisky on the planet.
Among several legendary live music venues, best is probably King Tuts Wah Wah Hut, where lots of bands made it big for the first time, not least Oasis who were signed while playing at the venue in 1993.
3. Admire the architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh
Seldom can one person be said to have had as much impact on a city’s architecture as Glasgow-born architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. His influential take on modernism in his designs would strongly influence movements including Secessionism and Art Nouveau.
His projects include some premises of the Glasgow School of Art in 1897 and the striking House for an Art Lover in Bellahouston Park in 1900.
Mackintosh was able to more fully exercise his preferred working method of ‘total design’ while designing the Willow Tearooms in the early 1900s. I like to experience this with a bite to eat: where you even get to use the cutlery he designed!
You would need a full day in Glasgow to properly appreciate the above three Mackintosh works and maybe squeeze in a visit to Scotland Street School Museum, Scotland’s only museum of education, which got the Mackintosh makeover in 1904.
The Willow Tearooms. Photo: JJCMarshall, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
4. Catch a stand-up comedy show
When it comes to stand-up, Glasgow has few rivals in the UK. The Stand Comedy Club is often deemed to be one of the best stand-up comedy venues in Great Britain and should be your go-to venue for seeing a live comedy show.
5. Visit the art museums in Glasgow’s West End
Wrapped within the verdant folds of Kelvingrove Park, a leafy green space originally created in 1852, are some of Scotland’s best art museums. The ornate, multi-spired and turreted Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery (free to visit) has a fine art collection including works by the likes of Glasgow School artists, Scottish Colourists and the French Impressionists.
The Hunterian Museum meanwhile, Scotland’s oldest museum, has a superb display of minerals and fossils, including perhaps the best example of a shark fossil from 330 million years back, an Egyptology section with a 2500 year-old mummy and most of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s watercolors.
Not far away, the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) hosts excellent exhibits and permanent collections of contemporary art from local and international artists.
A real bonus when visiting is that many of Glasgow’s museums and galleries are publicly owned and offer free admission.
6. Catch a football match
One of the feistiest domestic sporting rivalries anywhere in the world is between Glasgow’s two footballing giants and Scotland’s biggest footballing sides, Celtic and Rangers. The two sides draw on the very different city backgrounds of Catholic Irish migrant workers (Celtic) and the already-established predominantly Protestant community (Rangers).
Get to see a Celtic game at 60,000- capacity Celtic Park, Scotland’s largest football stadium, or a Rangers game at Ibrox. Derby matches between the two happen at least four times in the August-May football season.
7. Tour the stunning Glasgow Cathedral
It’s hard to believe this huge, ostentatious building in the East End of Glasgow dates back originally to a 6th-century chapel founded by St Mungo. The present building is the city’s oldest, raised in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The stained glass inside is majestic, the 15th-century choir screen outstanding for its era and – my favorite – the trip down into the crypt where St Mungo’s tomb supposedly lies is an enthralling one.
There are cathedral tours at 1030am and 1:30pm. St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art lies across a small park to the cathedral’s west. Allow an hour for a visit.
Photo: © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons. Cropped from original
8. Wander among the dead at the Necropolis
Glasgow’s Necropolis is one of the UK’s most fascinating cemeteries to visit. For starters, this is a collection of striking and slightly spooky above-ground tombs, something much more common of Catholic countries.
Among the warren of time-worn memorials spilling across the hillside above Glasgow Cathedral, the most famous burial is Scottish Reformation leader John Knox, with a monument at the top. Plan to spend a couple of hours strolling around the site.
9. Take some alternative guided city tours
Glasgow is a city of constant innovation and is always coming up with ways to impress visitors in different ways. The city’s music scene is highly celebrated - it’s the UK’s first Unesco City of Music, and bands like Primal Scream and Belle and Sebasian were formed here, and Oasis was signed here.
If you want to learn more about this important musical history, the company Glasgow Music Tours runs guided tours all year-round, taking you to iconic venues and offering up plenty of little-known nuggets of information regarding bands.
Another interesting tour is the Invisible Cities Tour. This is where you can take a tour of the city guided by someone who has been affected by homelessness: it’s a novel take on the city beyond what the travel guides tell you to see.
10. Go to the theater, opera, or orchestra (or all three!)
While it may not be up to the level of some of the world’s great cities when it comes to the performing arts, Glasgow really does have a fantastic cultural scene, with many fine venues at which to catch a show.
The Theatre Royal is the home of Scottish Opera and Scottish Ballet, while it’s sister theater, the King’s Theatre, hosts touring groups from all over the world.
The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall hosts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, but also puts on shows from touring groups throughout the year. And the City Halls and Old Fruitmarket, extensively renovated in 2006, is home to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Scottish Music Centre.
There are also many other smaller venues where you can find performances of all kinds, so you will never be short of options for a night out while in Glasgow.
Inside the King’s Theatre. Photo: AlasdairW, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
11. Check out the striking street art
Glasgow is one of Great Britain’s best cities for street art and the City Centre Mural Trail lends a big splash of color to the metropolis.
Street art enthusiasts can take in vast, lavish works such as a modernized impression of city saint St Mungo, emblazoned across a house end on High Street, and Mitchell Street’s Honey I Shrank the Kids, a towering likeness of a girl looking through a magnifying glass (and with you, the viewer, looking like the shrunken kids by comparison).
Allow a couple of hours to check out some of the best works.
12. Step into the early Industrial Revolution at New Lanark
The Unesco-listed New Lanark World Heritage Village perfectly preserves the might of the Industrial Revolution like few other sites in the world. Nestled in a forested gorge, this 18th-century cotton-milling center is unique in having been overseen by mill manager Robert Owen and so transformed into a rare example of a progressive milling community and model village – where worker quality of life was prioritized as well as mill output.
Besides looking round the visitor center and many mill buildings and workings, I also love to walk from here along to the beautiful Falls of Clyde, a series of four wood-fringed waterfalls.
Get a train from Glasgow Central to Lanark, then either any hourly bus (Mon-Fri only) or taxi to New Lanark. A visit here with a walk to the falls will take up most of a day.
Corra Linn waterfall, one of the 4 Falls of Clyde. Photo: dave souza, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
13. Discover the delights of Pollock Country Park
Glasgow’s biggest green space, the 361-acre Pollock Country Park brings a big splash of countryside to the South Side area of the city. It has been ranked on a UK-wide and Europe-wide scale as the best urban park and is far wilder in feel than you would think, dotted with woods and traversed by rivers and streams.
This is the best place for a long walk or bike ride close to the city center, and also houses a Herculean art museum: the Burrell Collection.
You could easily spend half a day or more looking around the park.
14. Take a random ramble around Chatelherault Country Park
With its own train station on a direct 35-minute route to Glasgow Central, Chatelherault Country Park is a bizarre and beautiful place to come for a country walk. As well as landscaped areas, the 500-acre park features wild scenery including a forest-lined river gorge.
The former Duke of Hamilton’s hunting lodge, built in the 1730s and 1740s, is the park’s set-piece: while looks grand from the front, the magnificent facade is mostly a fanciful wall. You can also walk across Avon Water to the ruins of Cadzow Castle. Allow a half-day to explore.
The Duke of Hamilton’s hunting lodge in Chatelherault Country Park. AlistairMcMillan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
15. Relax in the Botanical Gardens
Located in the city’s West End and established in 1817, Glasgow’s botanical gardens span 27 acres, offering up meticulously landscaped grounds with an extremely impressive array of plant species from around the world.
The standout attraction here is Kibble Palace, an impressive Victorian glasshouse built in 1873, where you’ll find palms, ferns, and splendid orchids, among other plants.
Surrounding the Palace, there are a number of themed gardens and plant collections, like the Rose Garden, Herbaceous Border, and Woodland Walk, each of which showcases different species.
When you’re tired of urban exploring and want somewhere green and peaceful to retreat to for a bit, the Botanical Gardens are hard to beat.
The Kibble Palace at the Botanical Gardens. Photo: StaraBlazkova, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
16. Explore the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond
Some fine rural scenery can be found right outside Glasgow, including one of Scotland’s most famous lochs, Loch Lomond, within the Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park. To get here, it’s a straightforward 50-minute train ride to Balloch, at the southern edge of this mighty lake.
Heading clockwise around the lake, the main settlements are Luss (west) and Tarbert (northwest) both connected by train and water taxi and Rowardennan (east) connected by water taxi.
You can visit the comely conservation village at Luss and go paddleboarding from Luss pier, follow lochside walking and cycle paths between Luss and Tarbert, take a boat trip across the lake, visit the UK’s largest inland island, Inchmurrin (from Arden), or hike the remoter eastern shore of the loch on the West Highland Way, beneath the shadow of mighty peak Ben Lomond.
Another serene spot is Balloch Castle and Country Park, within an easy walk of the train station.
No matter what you choose to do here, there’s more than enough to waylay you for many days.
Balloch Castle, in Balloch on the banks of Loch Lomond
17. Hike the West Highland Way
Scotland’s most famous hike and first official long-distance path, the West Highland Way, kicks off just outside Glasgow in Milngavie, and runs 96 miles through some of the most stunningly rugged scenery in the Southern Highlands to Fort William.
It passes through some iconic countryside destinations, following the banks of Loch Lomond, climbing over the lonely Rannoch Moor and passing the historic glen of Glen Coe. You can hike the trail, including the extension to Central Glasgow, in 7 or 8 days.
To get here, you can catch a train from Glasgow Queen Street to Milngavie, or walk the 10 miles from Glasgow’s Clyde waterfront via the Kelvin Walkway.
Restaurants and dining
As with accommodation, the eating scene in Glasgow divides into two distinct areas: Central Glasgow and the West End. Central Glasgow has a good diversity of choice, especially for cafes and tearooms.
But the defining city dining destination is the West End, the area which fans out around Kelvingrove Park. Here, you’ll find many excellent, long-standing eateries that typify the Glasgow eating scene. Below are some of my favorites:
Ubiquitous Chip: One of several culinary institutions in Glasgow’s West End, the Chip has grown to be a veritable collection of eating experiences, from a rooftop terrace down through a casual, beamed brasserie to a light, foliage-draped restaurant below. Oh, and a wine/ocktail bar and a whisky bar.
Food could be hand-dived scallops from the island of Barra, carpaccio of beef from the Scottish Borders, Highland venison and other fare that prizes its Scottish provenance.
Buttery: This West End classic harks back to 1870 and is thought to be Glasgow oldest culinary establishment. The cuisine is upmarket Scottish, with a nod to France in terms of the presentation.
Willow Tearooms: This Central Glasgow café designed by famous Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1903 was the first time Mackintosh had licence to totally exercise his preferred working method of total design: expect his influence down to the very cutlery at this turn-of-the-20th-century eatery.
Ox and Finch: Small plates at this high-ceilinged industrial chic Central Glasgow restaurant are the thing: and they are eclectic too. Plump for the likes of pan-fried pork belly, charred radicchio and rhubarb, or whipped feta, banana chilli, oregano, honey and toasted flatbread.
The Wild Olive Tree: The Wild Olive Tree is a social enterprise café near George Square in Central Glasgow that does a few things and does them well: namely coffee, soups, scones and cakes.
The Bothy Glasgow: The Bothy is a long-running venue in the West End rustling up hearty traditional Scottish fare of the sort one’s grandmother might cook when you were invited round. The menus feature ingredients from all corners of Scotland: Highland venison, perhaps, or halibut from the Inner Hebrides.
