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Glasgow is hard to define. This spontaneous free-spirit has cast off its industrial past to become a modern, design-conscious city with none of the sober grey stone that gives other Scottish cities a restrained, slightly austere appearance. Glasgow is a beguiling blend of old red sandstone and quirky ironwork, laced with glinting contemporary glass and steel. It is often described as Scotland’s most European city, but it could also be compared to Manhattan, with its grid of streets, its tall, narrow buildings, and its wisecracking citizens. And then it has an air of Celtic edginess like Liverpool, a distinctive swagger like London, and a lingering sense of Victorian civic pride like Manchester. Just take a stroll round the Merchant City or along Byres Road in the West End and sit in one of the many stylish bars and cafés and you’ll witness a degree of posing that is almost continental in its fervency. The country’s caffeine capital is really more Barcelona or Greenwich Village than west coast of Scotland. Definitely a different place.
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