Willow Tea Room on Sauchiehall Street
We are getting to know our area of the city pretty well. We have since discovered we are in the heart of all the action on the border of the “Centre City” and “Merchant City” sections.
Today we slept in yet again, mostly because we don’t get to sleep until after 1:00 am.
It was all things Mackintosh today plus a side trip to a middle class tenement house. We picked up a few street art photos along the way. It is the furthest afield from our home base that we’ve been yet.
First, we headed up the hill to the original and restored-to-its-original glory Willow Tea Room on Sauchiehall Street. Now owned by the Scottish National Trust who funded the renovations and run the restaurant tea house therein. (It’s not to be confused with the Willow Tea Rooms on Buchanan Street where we stopped the other day, which is also decorated in the style of and has furniture and decorations of Mackintosh and offers up some very nice food and tea options.) Originally, there were four such Mackintosh-designed tea houses around the city back. We got ourselves a hearty breakfast-lunch to keep up going as we traipsed all over the city seeking out our landmarks.
Mackintosh designs stand out in contrast as unusual pieces of architecture, standing tall and brilliant white in the rare sunlight. Very dramatic with the dark clouds behind it. This building seemed almost art-deco like. Especially standing so tall next to its warm stone brethren. It was closed up tight, though Paul did try his best to find a way in.
Close up.
We found a few other interesting non-Mackintosh buildings and picked up some small pieces of street art that were on my list as we headed for our next stop, the Tenement House museum, also owned by the National Trust.
Click me for a better image
Click me for a much better view.
The Kitchen Sink in the Tenement House Musuem
It being a middle class flat or apartment, it had three rooms plus their own bathroom. There were probably no Jellie Pieces being dropped out the window to their children on the streets below. Our young docent fresh out of art conservation grad-school was so enthusiastic and very knowledgeable you could tell she really loved what she was doing and made the visit very enjoyable and informative.
Next it was back uphill to the Mackintosh-designed Glasgow School of Art. It tragically caught fire not once but twice, the second being the most devastating. We were lucky to have visited one of his most famous works twice before it was lost. They have embarked on a length reconstruction project with an estimated completion date of 2030, if all goes well.
We had another Mackintosh building to locate on this side of town. It was a non-descriptive as far as his designs go. Not really sure if this was one of his own or one that was constructed by a company he worked for. We knew were right near it, we kept looking but couldn’t find it. I suggested we go down the alley way for a peek and sure enough we’d been standing right in front of it the whole time.
It had been raining on us off and on throughout the day. So we headed back to change for our musical night out with Altan.
In the interval between our last stop and the apartel, we decided to head up there early, because we recently discovered Celtic Connections hosts a free event featuring up and coming musicians from 5-7pm. Apparently a good number of these preformers go on to play at future Celtic Connections stages.
Now for our night’s musical show with Altan. Firstly, having already walked up the road and the steep stairs to get to the early music, I was not huffing and puffing as we entered the big auditorium. We were directed to row E center, 5 rows from the stage. We noticed right way that there an awful lot of chairs and music stands up there to be for Altan. We sort of wondered if we were in the right spot. Then someone walked out to put a buzuki on its stand so it seemed we must be in the right spot after all.
First a female fiddle group called RANT appeared on stage. They got the audience all warmed up with some amazing fiddle playing. When they were finished, more stage setting commenced as audience expectations grew. After a bit, in the darkness of the stage, you could see more people moving about with the stage hands, and then more, and before you knew it there was a chamber orchestra sitting on the stage, checking the instruments. This was obviously not what we expected. Paul asked the gent next to him (who had seen Altan many times) if he had ever seen Altan play with an orchestra before and this was a first. Altan came out to the cheers of the audience and told us all that they really loved being there and brought their big band who turned out to be the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
All the tunes were great. The orchestra blended seamlessly with the group, apparently the accordion player scored at least some of the music played together. Whooping it up was strongly encouraged with the band leading everyone in a yip before getting started.
The orchestra and conductor seemed to be having as much fun as the audience as each medley change was right in sync with the band. Last song of the evening was Dulaman which brought both Paul and I around to thinking of how Gwyn would definitely be singing along with the audience, like she’d sing along as a young child.
