Aug 1

Getting into the swing of things back on an Odyssey Tour.  Morning breakfast - English.  A little weird, since there is no "foreign" flavor so to be tried!  Oh well, Eggs are fine.  AIS (Ass In Seats) at 9:00 and we're off.  Nobody was late, at least not today.

We first went to the Cathedral (or High Kirk) of Saint Kentigern, better known as Saint Mungo.  He was the patron saint of Glasgow, having died in 614.  He gave the city its character in a poem:

Here is the bird that never flew

Here is the tree that never grew

Here is the bell that never rang

Here is the fish that never swam

The seal of Glasgow incorporates a bird, a tree, a bell and a fish in commemoration of the miracles performed by Mungo.  His crypt is in the lower section of the cathedral.  Weirdly, there is also a collection of Lego scenes surrounding it.  Sorta strange.

The cathedral itself was built in the 1100's, and has been in continuous use.  Obviously it started as Catholic, but then morphed in the Reformation.

Across from the Cathedral is the Royal Infirmary.  This is where Joseph Lister, a surgeon of the 1800s, was trying to discover why so many patients who had surgery died from suppuration of their wounds.  At that time, an open or compound fracture was essentially a death sentence from the purulent sepsis that overtook the patient.  When Lister was a young surgeon, he watched a surgeon perform an amputation, proceed to accidentally cut himself and a bystander.  The patient, the surgeon, and the bystander all died of infection: a 300% mortality!  Lister eventually came upon Carbolic Acid, a derivative of coal tar or creosote, to soak the bandages and keep the wounds from getting infected.  He obviously got a lot of pushback by the older surgeons who "knew" he was wrong, but the town learned that his patients didn't die so often and flocked to his door.

We the proceeded to the mansion at Pollak Park, an old mansion.  This included old Spanish paintings and an old Georgian house, including the servants' quarters.  Upstairs was a photographic exhibit of photographer Henry Benson, who had many pictures of American presidents and of Glasgow.  There was also a haunting photo of RFK just after he was shot.  Lunch at the mansion was barely edible, consisting of tarragon soup, cold meats that wouldn't cut with the butter knife they put on the table, cold cheese and salad.  The scone for desert was passable.

After lunch, the group went back to the Kelvingrove museum. I perused a few of the things I hadn't seen yesterday.  There was some more history of the city dating to the 1100s and a small natural history exhibit.

To be continued