Sabbatical Day 10: Filling Time

 Sabbatical Day 10: Filling time

Aside from Thursday, when I ran a slight fever and felt congested, I have had almost no symptoms from COVID. I’ve had colds worse than this. But, I know this is only because I continue to mask and am fully vaccinated and twice boosted. My immune system is working well. 

That means, however, that I’ve had to find ways to fill my time while remaining mostly in this hotel room and feeling like I could be doing just about anything else. Except I also feel a bit like a pariah, an infected person carrying a potential deadly virus. 

To fill my time I am once again thankful for my careful planning and packing. I thought I might want to do some yoga while here, but wasn’t sure how to make that happen since I was not going to bring a yoga mat. (And doing yoga on hotel room carpeting is a bit gross, not to mention one still slips on carpeting making it impossible to hold some postures). 

One of my many wanderings through Amazon led me to something called Yoga Paws. 

These are grippy open fingered and open toed strap on’s for hands and feet that allow one to hold poses. They are small and lightweight, perfect for travel. I use a hand towel for my face so I am not face down on the carpeting, and I have yoga videos that offer me a full yoga class. It’s a good way to fill an hour of time while also helping my breathing and mild congestion. 

The other way I am filling time is coloring. Unfortunately I decided not to bring my coloring pencils and coloring book - even unpacked them! But here I was, wishing I had them. Luckily I found pencils and a Millie Marotta’s “Woodland Wild” coloring book at a nearby school supply store. I’m working on one of the images now. It’s a peaceful way to watch a little television and do something that entertains and relaxes me. 

The third way I am filling time is listening to an audible book while knitting. I started listening to the most recent book in the Outlander series, “Go Tell The Bees That  I Am Gone (Diana Gabaldon). I’ve read all the other books, this is the first one I’ve listened too. I have not watched the television series. The book is narrated by Davinia Porter. I have to say that both the writing and the narration are a bit cloying and annoying. Yet, Porter does do a terrific job of narrating in different voices. The story line meanders through too many characters across too many different landscapes from North Carolina to Savannah, Georgia, during the Revolutionary War. But it doesn’t require one to pay a lot of attention to detail to follow along. It probably could have been half as long and still told the story well.

Another way I am filling time is going outside for walks. Or, at least I was. I have now walked every where I wanted to go. Yesterday I attempted a walk following the Glasgow City Center Circle on the All Trails app. I followed about half of it, going through parts of the city I had not yet been too. This included a long walk along some of the high end shopping district on Argyle Street, and finally the Museum of Modern Art. 

I took this photo because my granddaughter loved  a little sing song show where one of the characters sang a song called Marmalade Skies….

I wondered where this statue was. Glad to have found it at the Museum of Modern Art

A center for Italians in Glasgow, the statue says “Italia”

I’d go in to the museum if it weren’t for COVID. Eventually though the app was going to take my back up to the Necropolis and the Cathedral and I didn’t feel like doing that again, so I turned off the app and walked back to my hotel. I know have a decent sense of where I am in the city so I found my way back without using google maps. 

I got the All Trails app on my phone for the trail I was following yesterday. I know a lot of people who use it. However I don’t think I’ll use after I leave here so I cancelled my trial subscription. 

My plans for today include walking to Queen’s Station to pick up my train tickets to Oban and then from Oban to London.

I leave here tomorrow and can’t wait to get to a seaside town. The only hotel room available is in a Best Western a bit north, about a 20 minute walk from the train station. It’s an old Victorian house built for an Episcopal Bishop, I later learned. The hotel gets mixed reviews. But then so have all the other one’s I’ve stayed in. The most alarming though was the review that said that personal items aren’t safe when left in the rooms. YIKES. I guess when I go to Iona I’ll take my backpack with my iPad and headphones. I didn’t bring much else of any value, they are welcome to my dirty clothes. :-). I always wonder about reviews, good and bad. So many reflect the personality of the person doing the review. I tend to form my own opinion. We’ll see what I think of the place. I wouldn’t give great reviews to either of the places I’ve stayed so far - except that they served my purposes - mainly by being centrally located and close to bus lines and train lines - easy to find. Plus I accrue point via IHG. I already had a bunch left over from my travels to Chicago for conferences with the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center. Now I’ll have a lot more. Should be good for something in the future, maybe a stay in Ireland? Now, that would be a good way to redeem the disruption in this trip.