Scotland, day 3: Glasgow.

This morning we visited the House for an Art Lover. It's a house designed in Art deco style. The website says "The exterior of the House for an Art Lover has been realised, in materials, craftsmanship and dimensions, as closely as possible to the Mackintosh designs of 1901". I have to admit it looks pretty groovy!

Lamps in the main hall.

Decorations in the dining room. I love these pictures. She is an opening flower.

Marjolein surrounded by art deco.

There is also an amazing little garden. It's very private and quiet in there.

There was a baby magpie trying to get its parent's attention.

I sat on this bench in the sun a while. Totally relaxing. I nearly fell asleep :-)

We continued our walk to the Pollok country park. We tried to make funny pictures with this mushroom but mine didn't work out very well, couldn't focus properly. Marjolein was striking a pose but I took too long and she fell over hehe.

Pollok country park is a bit bigger than I thought.

Mom and dad and their baby. Well, not sure if it's technically "theirs" looking at their respective colours... Hmmmm.

Somewhere else a magpie was catching a ride.

The Pollok country park also houses the Burrell collection. This man, Sir William Burrell single handedly acquired a very wide variety of art from all over the world and from very different time spans and civilizations.

The figure above is a figure of a Luohan. Luohans are Buddhist disciples who have attained wisdom but who remain on earth to help others gain enlightenment. This particular figure was made in 1484 for the Wang family by someone called Liu Zhen.

Burrell didn't just collect paintings or statues. He also acquired whole doorways from buildings. This particular one came from a church that was going to be scrapped if I'm not mistaken.

Egyptian art from the period 1085 - 332 BEFORE Christ. That's old!

More Egyptian art. This is from the period 1304-1200 B.C.

They also had a temporary exhibition on Jean-Francois Millet, who painted the above. I love the peace,  calm and togetherness of this picture.

Walking a bit further I spotted this Lotus Esprit in the parking lot. What an awesome car! They are reasonably rare I think since this is the first time ever I've seen one "in the wild".

The last thing on our to-do list for today was visiting a special tree that Marjolein had been to once before. This tree is called the "Pollok beech". It's about 250 years old and stands where once a castle was where the Maxwell family lived for about 300 years. Usually beech trees grow straight up but nobody knows why this one has such a peculiar shape...

In 2002 the Pollok Beech was named one of Scotland's 100 Heritage Trees.