When you think of Scotland, I’m betting you don’t immediately think of Glasgow. You probably think beautiful scenes in the Scottish Highlands, or the charming cobblestone streets of Edinburgh. Indeed, this is the image that Scotland likes to show to the outside world, but the largest city in Scotland is actually not Edinburgh; it’s Glasgow! With a metro area population of ~1.8 million, the joke goes that this is where Scots actually live. It could be said that Edinburgh and Glasgow are two sides of the same coin. They are the largest two cities in Scotland, and they are literally right next to each other at only 70-80km (45-50 miles). Edinburgh is smaller, but it is the administrative, governmental, diplomatic, academic, and financial hub of Scotland. It’s well-connected, it’s expensive, and it’s posh. Glasgow, on the other hand, is none of these things.
You’re gonna love it. 😉
It’s a bit hard for me to disentangle Oxford the school from Oxford the town. They are inextricably linked and have developed co-dependently throughout the centuries. The University of Oxford was actually founded in 1096. 🤯 This is so long ago that the exact date is actually unknown! To give you a bit of perspective, that makes Oxford older than the Aztec Empire, Genghis Khan’s founding of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan’s founding the Yuan dynasty in China, The Crusades (which saw the sacking of Constantinople), and the Magna Carta.
Bath is a small town of about 94,000 people in the county of Somerset. By train, it is about 2 hours west of London, and it’s closely neighbored by Bristol and the Welsh border to the northwest. By all accounts, this is one of the most beloved and beautiful little towns in the South of England. There are lots of other sub-regions of the British Isles that I’m sure have lots of other beautiful towns… but in terms of day trips out of London, Bath is definitely in the top 3.
There is more to know about Bath of course—including the super un-creative way it got its name—but I’ll cover those details in due course. For now, here’s the map. You can enter into this place as uninformed as I was when my train rolled up one morning in late October.
