Hitting the city

Today was mainly concerned with one of our lunch dates with my cousin and his wife, so we had to plan for being out of the house shortly after 11am. I actually managed to fit in the shopping before this - I was laudably early for a change, though this meant I had hapless shelf-stackers rummaging in badly-stacked trolleys for the box of small bunches of coriander. They were polite enough not to curse till I'd gone ...

The ferry was slightly delayed and very busy - they're having issues every low tide, and they tend to leave a backlog even though we were sailing at high tide. And Greenock was a nightmare of traffic and slow-moving people crossing at lights that had already turned green ... but eventually we were scooshing along the M8, from which I took the upper photo in the collage - the view from the approach to the Kingston Bridge. 

The other four photos take us through the day - the view from The Ivy in Buchanan Street, my delicious dessert (frozen berries, ice cream, butterscotch sauce), one of Glasgow's amazingly tall buildings and the Buchanan Galleries, at the foot of which is the Isle of Skye Candle Company, which Himself said sounded like a front for a spy ring. Or something. 

After our lunch and much talking, we finally emerged around 4pm and made our farewells along with the next date to meet. Then to the Apple store to buy myself another connection cable so that I can leave one permanently in the car (I'd forgotten it today). I also wanted to be shown how to open up my AirTag to put a new battery in it - and ended up with a Genius (their official title) who was from Dunoon and was currently in his final year at University and being a Genius in his spare time. We had quite a jolly chat about the Grammar School and common acquaintances, though he's far too young to know who we were. And as I took the photo of the candle store we were surprised by a FaceTime from Split, where #2 son was on his way to a dinner after a day of running workshops at a conference - I have to say it all looked rather lovely.

Then to buy a pair of trainers for Himself and we were done. Getting out of the city centre at rush hour is always interesting, but Waze took us a very efficient, if unexpected, route to the M8. We arrived at the Western Ferries terminal in a wonderfully luminous afterglow of the sunset, and I did all my Italian before the boat arrived and on the crossing. 

Confession: I had  a lump of (my own) Christmas cake instead of any other sensible food. It's still excellent. (See - I was really quality testing ...)

And now it's after midnight again and I'm dropping. Fun day, though.