Scotland Road Trip: Glasgow & Edinburgh

Travel Diary

Day 7-9

We've pretty much completed our road trip now. Now leaving Isle of Skye,  it's time to see a bit of Glasgow and try out the different vegan food available in Glasgow. 

We stayed in Kumar Suites which we found on Airbnb like the other places we stayed on the trip. The flat had everything we needed. It was very spacious even by North American standards. 12yearsavegan's friend join us in Glasgow as well.

After looking around the place we headed to Mono which is a vegan pub/music venue and had a nice dinner. There was so many options that it was hard to choose. Scottish pub food made vegan. We aren't used to having so many options so it took us awhile.

One of us got the chickpea salad vegan cheese melt and the other got a buffalo tempeh wrap. They were both excellent. Plus we got apple pie with ice cream and chocolate avocado cheese cake..

We must have been a bit tired from the road trip because we went back to the Kumar Suites and watched some TV before heading to bed.

The next morning we drove to Kind Crusts which has vegan donuts, pastries, and sandwiches. We got some donuts and then ended up preordering some donuts for the next day.

We walked around the city centre of Glasgow exploring for awhile and then headed to a place called Stereo for lunch. This is yet another vegan pub/cafe/music venue.

One of us had a rasher and onion sandwich and the other got a Shamuchan wrap (Turkish wrap with Spicy Vegan Haggis) both with the soup of the day. The soup was a Roasted Mushroom and Butterbean soup.

After lunch we went to the Lighthouse which is the national centre for design and architecture. They have a tower with a good view of the city.

We were impressed by the view and then noticed there is an older but taller tower in the lighthouse so we headed over there.

We climbed the stairs to the top.

Yeah the view was much better from the real lighthouse viewing point at the top of the tower. The tower used to be a water silo to use in case of fires as the building was the home of the newspaper The Glasgow Herald.

We walked around and went inside the Gallery of Modern Art which was a good place to get out of the rain but the art work was questionable. Why is modern art always so ridiculous?

The Duke Wellington statue with the traffic cone on his head was much more entertaining than anything inside the GoMA.

The Christmas lights were out and we headed to the Christmas market. Every city has a Christmas market but we like to check them all out. There was some rides and a big Christmas tree. The big shopping street had a lot of lights as well. It was really busy with people cramming in some last minute Christmas shopping.

We packed it in for the night and made some dinner at Kumar Suites since we had some food left over from our supplies earlier. We watched some TV and relaxed. Our friend 12yearsavegan and his friend went out on the town and didn't come back until late. 

We went to Glasgow Cathedral afterwards to see inside. It is a pretty nice cathedral.

The next day we went to Kind Crusts to get some breakfast sandwiches and pick up our donuts. One of us got the Full Scottish breakfast bagel and the other got the A.L.T. (Avocado, Lettuce, Tomato)

We drove to Edinburgh and found a place to park near the Castle. We walked towards new town and went to the Scottish National Gallery. Edinburgh definitely looked a lot different this time of year compared with when we went during the Fringe Festival.

The Scottish National Gallery was pretty cool. We liked the art a lot more than the stuff in the GoMA.

We went inside this one bar called The Dome just to take some pictures since it is always decorated really well. It was fully booked and really pricey so we went to Nova Pizza to get some food.

It was very Italian looking inside and we really enjoyed the pizza there. The vegan cheesecake was really good as well. One of us had a pepperoni pizza and the other had a quatro fromaggio white pizza. Both pizzas were really tasty but we each liked our own the best.

We ended up getting an Uber back to the car park as it was chucking down rain and we were pretty far from our car. We parted ways with our friends who were headed back to St. Andrews. We went to a little art gallery to escape the rain for a bit while we were waiting for our train. We headed into the station Edinburgh Waverley.

The train fare we paid for the trip was such a good deal. We paid £40 return for both of us which is really cheap if you compare it to what it usually costs to travel to Edinburgh from Birmingham.

The Scotland Road Trip was epic and we were very satisfied with how it worked out. It took quite a bit of planning but it all worked out in the end as we got to see many wonderful sights. We were really thankful that 12yearsavegan was able to do the driving since neither of us have a valid UK drivers license. It was a lot of driving and we saw a lot more of Scotland than we ever imagined we would see. I think we've explored Scotland more than just about anywhere else.

We would very highly recommend that anyone go on a Scotland road trip. It is one of the best road trips you could go on and you would not be disappointed.

Want to take this trip?
Check out our Itinerary "9 Day Itinerary for Road Tripping Around Scotland"