The visitors

At the request of a friend who, along with some others, visited Glasgow last weekend to see me I've decided to right a quick post on what we did - hope this makes you happy Claire! This post will probably be fairly dull and should be ignored by most unless you want to read a list of pubs and restaurants in Glasgow.

For the duration of their stay my four visitors rented out a swanky flat in the centre of Glasgow - my flat isn't quite big enough to cope with that many guests. I was, however, required to show my friends around Glasgow. On our first night we started off at a bar called the Butterfly and Pig, where we saw a rather good cover band. We followed this with dinner at a Spanish Tapas restaurant called La Tasca - this is part of a small chain of restaurants, but does decent food for a very affordable price. After dinner we went on to Firewater on Sauchiehall Street, where after being asked for £5 entry fee, which we thought was a bit steep, and starting to walk away we were let in for free. We were all pretty knackered by this time, so we didn't get out clubbing and just went back to the rented flat for a couple of more relaxing drinks.

On the following night we decided to go out in the West End of Glasgow. My friends came by my flat to check it out briefly and then we walked down to Byres Road. Our first drink was in the Oran Mor, which is a bar/restaurant/club/theatre in a converted church at the top of Byres Road. My friends were pretty impressed by this place so we stayed for a couple. Next came the problem of finding a restaurant on a Saturday evening in a popular part of town without having a table prebooked. We tried the Salon, Bar Budha and Mimmos, before finding a table in the Ubiquitous Chip. However it wasn't until we got seated and given a menu that we realised how much a meal was, in any case we decided it was beyond our budget and quickly made our excuses to the waitress and left. Further down Byres Road we tried a few more restaurants, all in vain, until we eventually got ourselves a table in the Japanese noodle bar Ichiban. Following dinner we headed back up to Aston Lane where we had a pint in the Loft, but moved on fairly quickly as it was a bit to busy. We decided to have a final couple of quiet drinks back a the Oran Mor, before heading home for the night.

It was a fairly sedate visit, in that we didn't have any wild nights clubbing or drinking huge amounts, but we all had a good time and hopefully I was a decent guide to Glasgow.