It’s like someone summoned half of captain planet up in here because Friday, Glasgow is mizzley windy. The wind gusts so strong that we sometimes have to lean into it to walk. Babet is not done yet, I guess.

We’re very near to Kelvingrove park, which is on the southern side of Glasgow university. It’s a lovely park with a small river (Kelvin) running through it. A physicist at the university was granted the title Baron Kelvin, after the river running nearby, so the temperature unit can trace its origins to the river in Glasgow. Neat river facts.

Arielle also attempted to befriend a squirrel, but really, she had no food, so the squirrel did not care and ran away after an indifferent but very cute sniff. Fun squirrel facts: grey squirrels are native to the eastern US and are invasive in the UK!

We popped our heads into the university because it looks beautiful and is nearby. We wandered around for a bit, wondered if “Quadrangle” on all of the univeristy signs was actually the long form of “quad” at universities. I googled it, it turns out it is, and I don’t like it.

The university is beautiful though, so we wandered through the cloisters and a few of the open buildings.

Upset that we had to learn about the word quadrangle, we wandered to the nearby Kelvingrove museu,. It holds a collection of art, taxidermied animals, and other old and nifty objects. We wanted to see the Mackintosh collection, with all of its Art Nouveau pieces, which you can also find sprinkled around the city. They had an impressive collection of furniture and stained glass.

There was also a small collection by the Scottish colorists, who were at first spurned by their fellow artists for using “too much” color. Ain’t no thing as too much color, colorists. I’m here for you.

My second favorite thing was the orrery! It was made before Neptune was discovered, so the last planet was…Uranus. They had a sign up saying it needed some repairs in order to work – boo.

Our final stop of the trip was tea in the Salon De Luxe at the Mackintosh at the Willow. It was a tea house designed entirely by Mackintosh, down to the tables, chairs, and cutlery. The only exception was the tea set, which was definitely at stylistic odds with the rest: it was blue and white china with a traditional china print on it. The tea baroness (Miss Cranston) paying the bills wanted to use the same set she used at her other tea houses. Mackintosh didn’t like it, but some hills are just not worth dying on.

The tea rooms closed in 1917, when Cranston’s husband died. The building was used as a department store and still operated as a tea room in the decades following, by various owners who tried to restore it to the best of their ability.

It was purchased in 2014 by the current owner, who spent years doing painstaking restorations. Even the velvet that was on the recreated chairs was made by the same velvet-maker in Italy, nearly a century later. If you want to buy a chair, you can – for the affordable price of $2000.

There were two amazing re-creations in the Salon De Luxe: the chandelier (which required a good amount of sleuthing to get the colors and techniques down), and the plaster artwork to one side of the room. It took a year to re-create since the Kelvingrove museum didn’t want to return the original one to the tea house (it was also really fragile to move, so there was a high chance it would be damaged).

The Salon De Luxe was the only room that was ladies only when it originally opened, and it was designed to bounce sound around the room so that you could hear everyone else’s gossip via its curved ceiling. Petty. 

The tea service was wonderful – you can try as many teas as you want, and they have a lot of small bites, sandwiches, and decadent desserts you can enjoy as you have tea. If you’re in Glasgow and enjoy fancy treats and good teas, make sure to reserve the Salon De Luxe! 

You can also wander around the restaurant after your tea is done. The rest of the tearooms and spaces are all just as gorgeously restored as the salon de luxe.

On the way home, it was time to stock up on candy, as is the tradition of my people on the last day of any trip. The downside is that I have no beast of burden on this trip: it’s just me and my big osprey backpack. It feels like I put 15 bricks in my bag, but the bricks are chocolate. It is miraculously very far from overweight. I did it!

Til next time I see some flight deals to you, Scotland. (Naturally, the sun came out as we were taking off)