Posie’s Place

As I said we really enjoyed our trip to Glasgow, as I posted before we were really quite worried that we wouldn’t reach Scotland for Christmas due to weather problems in London but thankfully by last Sunday all was well and our trip ran very smoothly. It was rather strange in fact as things turned out I had never seen Heathrow Airport so quiet.

After the festivities and the majority of the visiting was over it was time to get down to some nitty gritty shopping, since I don’t sleep late it was a perfect we took the opportunity to hit the shops and buy lots of clothes and things for the baby in the sales. During my last scan we found out that we’re having a boy so now we can really buy clothes and start to think of names. I know some people prefer to wait to find out but I’m really glad we know, I love being able to refer to the baby as him now instead of the baby or it after all he is a little person.

Before setting off for Glasgow I ordered some decorations for the nursery online and got them delivered to my grans house, the theme chosen for the room was Winnie the Pooh since it was unisex. I have some really nice stickers for the walls, a room thermometer, the changing mat, a little towel insert for the mat, a Tigger sleep suit, the light shade, a couple of pictures for the walls, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Eeore soft toys and a Piglet rattle. Katie wants to make us some curtains so I’d like to see if I can get matching material. We got a call from the shop in Germany where we ordered the nursery furniture to say that it is now ready to be collected so Stewart is planning on starting to clear the room this weekend. I really can’t wait to get everything in the room organized!!

I should also mention the wonderful little cardigans that my mother-in-law Isobel has knitted for the baby they are absolutely beautiful!! We brought three back with us and on the day before we left she went out and bought some blue wool to do a couple more. Isobel also knitted the most beautiful blanket which we will treasure. We certainly have a very lucky little boy on the way.

In between shopping and running around mad we got to catch up with most of our other friends, it was really great to see them as many of them I have not seen so far this year. Stewart was also determined to get a deep-fried pizza from a chip shop to photograph for Wikipedia as someone had posted that this was a food folklore and that they didn’t really exist in Scotland. Unfortunately deep fried pizza and it’s cousin the deep fried mars bar is what people associate with Scottish food and the abundance of food high in fat is also one of the reasons for the high heart disease rate in Scotland but this does not typify cuisine in Scotland this is only the stereotypical image. Above you see a picture of said deep fried pizza and chips and also a portion of curry sauce and chips from the chip shop.

So now I have dealt with the subject of deep fried foods in Scotland I can now move on to the wonderful food we enjoyed whilst eating out in Glasgow in some of the excellent restaurants there. Glasgow has some of the finest restaurants in the UK, whilst you may think I am slightly bias since it is my home town I do fully believe this is true. One of the recent trends in popular eateries is harking back to traditional Scottish/Irish food using locally sourced, seasonal ingredients. During our trip back I ate in two of these restaurants. The first was “The Sisters” and the second was “The Arisaig”.  Both excellent!

Stewart was delighted to find on visiting one of friends flats a cyberman helmet and couldn’t resist trying it on, one of the kids had been running around on Boxing Day with one of these and Stewart was thoroughly disappointed when he didn’t get his hands on it. For those of you who don’t know what a cyberman is I won’t bore you with the details have a look at the entry on Wikipedia here, lets just say it’s a legendary Doctor Who villain and leave it at that.

Our second last night in Glasgow was spent at my brother-in-laws house, we christened the raclette grill which we bought for Stewart’s parents for Christmas. My in-laws were over here at Easter and it was then that we introduced them to a traditional Swiss raclette and they loved it, after finding out that raclette was available in Glasgow we decided it would be the perfect Christmas pressie and it really went down well.

The raclette night was a huge success and it was really lovely to spend some time with my sister-in-law Shirley as we have always been quite close. We rounded off the night with another round of Singstar and a great time was had by all!

Our final day in Glasgow was topped off by a really good lunch at Wagamama where we ate the most unusual by strangely moreish dessert – a Tamarind & Chilli Pavlova – described as a sweet spiced tamarind parfait with a crunchy meringue base served with a sweet chilli sauce.

I think it’s safe to say that both Stewart and I returned to Basel sated and quite a few kilos heavier!!

It was a great trip, we had a wonderful time seeing our respective families, most of our friends, shopping and eating some really excellent food. We’re not sure the next time we’ll be back to Glasgow once the baby arrives so we thought it would be worthwhile making the most of our visit and I think we certainly did that!!