Scotland Adventures: Day 8

Well, the hotel might not have been the nicest, but it did have a nice gym attached! I actually managed to find barbells to use for my PT-prescribed strength routine. I might have been one of only three women in the club, and the only one in the barbells section, but oh well. I just did my thing and moved on. I did get to see the sun start to rise.

Breakfast at this hotel was not included, so I ate in the room. Good thing that I packed a lot of food. It's come in handy. (Well, it's not exactly true that breakfast was not included. It came at a cost of 13 pounds, or about $17 US money. I figured eating my own food was cheaper.) I just hoped I could get "real" food at least once this day.

We debated about what to do. My mother-in-law and husband's aunt decided to go into Glasgow. We were still trying to work out conflict from the day before, and decided to stay behind and see if we could walk to the next town, Coatbridge. There are awesome (and wide!) paved paths from city to city. We did walk about eight miles total, but we saw some cool things along the way.

We stopped in at an Aldi for some oats shopping.

We tried to find some churches. (More on that in the churches post.)

We walked a long way home.

I saw quite a few kids out, which made me wonder about school. It turns out it was a bank holiday.

We debated about dinner. I had advocated for going to McDonald's, as it was so much cheaper than the hotel restaurant (where entrees started at 19.95 pounds, or almost $27 USD). We didn't want to walk after all our morning walking, though, so we nixed that. My husband heard about fried pizza, so we decided to try a delivery app for New Mamma Mia Takeaway.

My husband ordered the pizza crunch (breaded and deep fried). It was okay. All of the food got a little soggy from being shoved hot into closed boxes that got taped shut before delivery.

I didn't know exactly what I was getting when I ordered the "10" grill box." The menu said, "Chicken tikka, donner meat, aloo tikki, chips, chicken chaat, veg pakora, chicken pakora, seekh kebab served with salad & sauce and naan bread." I ordered the pakora sauce (Glasgow style), which Google described as "a creamy, cooling blend made with yogurt, ketchup, and mint sauce that balances the heat of hot fritters." I didn't order fritters, but yogurt sauce sounded refreshing. Somehow I also ended up getting a spicy sauce, and man this was good! I probably ate a whole day's worth of calories in one sitting, but oh well. It was vacation, and I needed food. Others in our group did not enjoy this meal so much, but for me, it hit the spot!

Somehow in the food shuffle, we did lock our one hotel key in the room. We visited with some nice local friends of my mother-in-law before trying to resolve that issue, though. Thankfully the front desk nicely gave us another key and we were all set. Phew! We had another adventure for which to prepare!