Contiki England & Scotland – Days 8 & 9: Sterling & Glasgow

Hi All,

We left our hotel at 8:30 AM to embark for Sterling on the final day of my Contiki England & Scotland Tour. The drive to Sterling was beautiful & we even stopped to pet some Highland cows! They were the most hairy animals I’ve ever seen.

After our stop at the makeshift petting zoo, we continued onto Stirling where the group had two options. The first option was to go into the Sterling Castle & the second was to visit the Wallace National Monument, dedicated to the same William Wallace that is the protagonist in Braveheart. The majority of the group chose to visit Sterling Castle, but I was one of three people that elected to visit the Wallace National Monument. We had less than an hour to visit the monument which meant that we needed to climb up a pretty steep hill, up 246 steps on a spiral staircase, visit a few exhibition rooms, enjoy the amazing view, climb down 245 steps & down a pretty steep hill in just under an hour. It was tight, but we made it and the sweating was definitely worth it. I learned a lot about William Wallace & was even able to do my Braveheart impression at the top of the monument.

After the monument, we headed back to the town of Stirling to grab some water before boarding our bus for Glasgow.

Glasgow itself is a much more modern city than the ones we visited throughout the tour. Given this, there were not as many sights to visit once we arrived. We did walk down the main pedestrian street of Glasgow, Sauchiehall Street, to the main square, George Square.

We also grabbed dinner at a restaurant named Waxy O’Connor’s on the way back to the hotel. The atmosphere was very cool & almost reminded me of Disney World – the restaurant was 3 stories and had a giant model of a tree in the middle of it. Tree branches were all over the place.

After dinner, our tour group met up one final time and went to an American bar. I think the lack of sleep finally caught up to me because I was exhausted. I stayed for around 45 minutes before saying my goodbyes and heading back to the hotel.

I slept for a good 11 hours before waking up to explore Glasgow one final time. I walked to one of my company’s office buildings to look at the exterior before heading back to George Square and Sauchiehall Street to enjoy the wonderful street musicians of Glasgow.

I then headed back to our hotel to meet up with 3 other people that had similar flight times and head to the airport. Unfortunately, my flight to London was delayed over an hour and a half, but I didn’t have anything planned.

I’m on the plane now, but will update again once my London adventures are complete!