Glasgow International Airport is in Scotland, in the region of Renfrewshire. It is west of the city and in its surroundings there two other smaller towns, Renfrew and Paisley.
Currently, this airport is the second busiest one for passenger traffic and enlargement works are scheduled until 2030, when a huge increase of passengers is foreseen.
In this airport many local and international airlines operate, with connections to the main European cities, and it is a hub for EasyJet, Loganair and Flyglobspan, besides being one of the bases used by the British Airways for the maintenance.
After having picked your rental car up at Glasgow Airport, booked on RentalUp before departure, you just have to drive along the M8 and then take the A739 to reach Glasgow city centre and start to discover it.
Glasgow: points of interest
Among the most important points of interest in the Scottish city, there is certainly George Square, the largest square in the city named after the English King George III. Its construction began in 1872, but the work was slow during the first years and only in 1820 the square began to have the definitive shape, to which many buildings in Georgian style were added, such as houses, the railway station with the route connecting Glasgow to Edinburgh, a series of hotels and the GlasgowCity Chambers, that is perhaps the most important building in the square.
In the middle of the square there are the statues of famous figures such as the writer Walter Scott, the inventor of the light bulb, James Watt, and the poet Robert Burns.
The most important religious building in the city is the Cathedral of Glasgow, which, over the centuries, survived various religion wars, some of which characterised by a great destructive fury. The first foundations of the Cathedral were laid by Saint Mungo, who ordered the construction of a chapel in the VII century, that was ampliated over the next centuries until it got the current aspect, with a Gothic style.
Within the majestic church, you can admire the altar that, according to the legend, is the tomb of Saint Mungo. Near the Cathedral there are the Saint Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art and the Monumental Cemetery whit 3500 funerary monuments and 50 thousand tombs, so that it is considered a small “Père-Lachaise” in Scottish version.
During a vacation, taking advantage of the car rental service at Glasgow Airport, you absolutely must visit the Burrell Collection, nowadays hosted in Pollok Park, after having been in various other seats in the city. This collection, very variegated, is the biggest one that has ever been created and collected by only one person, the entrepreneur in the maritime field Sir Burrell, and it consists of about 8 thousand objects that Burrell in person collected over the years and then gave to his city.
A collection that goes from the Chinese ceramics to the Etruscan pottery, from the papyruses to the Greek sculptures and the rugs; it also includes an enormous vase taken in Italy, in Tivoli, from the villa of Adrian. Paintings by Degas, Cezanne, Rembrandt and Renoir are part of the collection, too.
Glasgow: art and culture
Glasgow is also a city that gives art and culture great relevance. In the latest 20 years, the city has focused its attention on the enhancement of its museums, with the interesting collections proposed to the visitors, and of its architecture, without forgetting the youngest generations with the Science Centre and the food offer.
Thanks to the car rental at Glasgow Airport, one of the attractions you must reach is the Glasgow School of Art, the school of design and artistic disciplines existing since 1845 and hosted in a palace with a splendid architectonical style, projected by Charles Rennie Mackintosh at the end of the XIX century.
This palace is considered the most beautiful one throughout Great Britain and represents the synthesis of the thought of the designer, one of the greatest exponents of the “Glasgow movement”, besides being the main exponent of the Modernism in Great Britain.
Characterised by a futuristic shape, bright and roundish, the Science Centre of Glasgow is among the most beautiful architectures in the city, easily reachable thanks to the car rental service at Glasgow Airport. This centre offers above all to the kids, but also to adults, numerous possibilities to discover its 300 attractions, almost entirely interactive.
Within it you pass from the experiences of the tactile laboratories to the watching of the secret life of the cockroaches and to the discovery of the functioning of a light bulb. The Science Centre of Glasgow also includes a jumbotron for projections in 2D and 3D and a planetary.
Art and culture in the Scottish city are also in the Modern Art Gallery, the most important one of its kind throughout Scotland. The gallery is in the palace of the Royal Exchange, the former seat of the trade of goods.
Here, you can admire permanent and temporary exhibitions of the greatest worldwide artists of the XX century since 1996. Among the various areas of the gallery, we must mention that dedicated to the American Pop Art, with works of art by Andy Warhol, and that about photography with shots by Cartier-Bresson and Salgado. Out of the palace, there is the statue of the Duke of Wellington.
