Scotland's largest city by far, Glasgow has all the traits of a proper big city: a subway; a plethora of cafes, pubs, restaurants, shopping and nightlife; extrovert fast-talking locals; bombastic historic buildings alongside ambitious modern architecure; traffic problems; urban blight, social problems and suburbia too. All this probably makes it the best place to get a feel for contemporary Scotland. (Edinburgh is too cosmopolitan and its natives more introverted).

Glasgow straddles the River Clyde and beyond the city's fringes the broad valley and surroundings provides the city with both gritty satellite feeder towns but also spots of genuine rural tranquility. New Lanark, a living-history museum in a former cotton mill is one stand-out attraction.

Meanwhile, the green hills and inky waters just north and west of Glasgow – in today's Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park – is where Scottish tourism first took off in Victorian times.