Just a Weekend in Scotland

We had a beautiful weekend! There was a house trip to St. Andrew’s planned for Friday. We took a bus about an hour and a half to St. Andrews, Scotland. It is an old university town on the North Sea. It is the “Birthplace of Golf” and home to the ruins of a cathedral and castle with a beautiful location right on the shore. We were pretty much given the day with a flexible schedule to explore on our own. We started off at the cathedral. Not much is still standing but there is a tower that we had admittance to. The spiraling staircase was lots of fun… as we imagined being monks! At the top is and observatory with a great view of the town and sea. It had snowed the morning before, but there was more than we had in Dalkeith. The day was given the name of “Where the snow meets the sand…” It was a sunny day and even with the snow it was gorgeous. For lunch I had packed a PB&J lunch with an apple and chocolate digestive biscuits and my friends, Jenny and Brittney, and I shared a park bench overlooking the North Sea. Before we could get in the castle we had time to walk on the pier and on the beach. We saw lots of people with dogs, mallard ducks, and even some swans! We also went out on some rocky juts by the castle. It was hard to traverse with the seaweed that grew on it. We finally got into the gift store by the castle and then got our admittance to check out the ruins there. The castle was really fun. I thought it would be the perfect fort to play in if you were little… but turns out its pretty fun when you are nearly 20 too! There were some secret crawl spaces and even a mine and countermine underground. It doesn’t look like too much in the pictures, but there really was a lot to still look at and rooms to get into (or imagine sometimes). After the castle exploration, we wandered into the St. Andrew’s University Museum- they had some fun interactive exhibits and it was cool to see what some of the student traditions that they have were, like walking down the pier and raisin weekend. We walked down to where we were meeting our bus, but still had some time. We discovered some rocks in the water with a pathway/wall to it. The tide was coming up, but the rocks gave us new angle to view St. Andrew’s. Brittney got hit by a wave walking back from the rocks and my friend, Kelly misjudged some waves jumping from one part of the rocks to the other… but I made it back dry!
Saturday and Sunday was spent in Edinburgh. Saturday was a lot of checking out shops and trying stuff on. The trends here are different than the styles I would say I usually try. Lots of dark colored tights with dresses and boots. But it was fun to look around. Sunday I went on a hike. Okay… so we climbed up Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Park. It’s an old volcano in Edinburgh (the castle is also built on an old volcano). I definitely broke in my hiking boots after St. Andrews and this hike! I climbed it with Kristin, Kelly, Jenny, John, Steve, and Brittney. There are trails all over this mountain! I looked it up and it’s 823 ft- I’m not sure if that exactly qualifies it for a mountain but maybe big rocky hill and cliff? We first went up on the Arthur’s Seat part before heading up the higher point. It was some rough terrain but very rewarding! On top we could see all of Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth (body of water that empties into the North Sea), the Firth Road Bridge we had gone over the day we went to St. Andrews, and the Highlands in the distance. It was really windy at the top, but we enjoyed it.
I am downloading pictures to Photobucket because I think that BlogSpot is linked to it and it takes a long time to download all of them individually onto here. There is probably an easier way that I haven’t found out yet.
I was happy to spend this weekend fairly cheaply after this past week. I’ve been planning trips and spending money on flights and tours. Our first extended weekend starts the 26th of February and goes over my birthday! There is a group of six of us heading to Athens, Greece for it! Then we got our tickets for spring break booked. We are flying to Nice, France. It is in the Riviera and one of the girls, Jonelle, has some friends studying there who offered to show us around and let us stay for two nights. They actually live in Antinibes. Then we are planning to move into Italy and there is soo much to see there! We also booked a Paddy Wagon Tour of South Ireland. A three-day trip that will take us from Dublin and loop around the Cliffs of Moher and the Blarney Stone.
Last week Thursday we celebrated Robert Burns, a very famous Scottish poet, by having a traditional Burns celebration and dinner. Robbie Burns actually had his birthday on January 25th already but we celebrated anyways with haggis, neeps, and tatties. Which if you don’t know what that is… you probably don’t want to know! For real! Okay… haggis- traditional dish…look it up sometime…, neeps- turnips, and tatties- pretty much mashed potatoes. I ate it. It wasn’t even that bad when you mixed the haggis into the tatties and neeps. Then we had cranachan for dessert… a cream, oatmeal, whisky dessert with raspberries on top. It was deceiving looking like cool whip but really not being all that sweet.
Well I'm going to try and figure out some picture stuff... Hope everything is going great in Wisconsin/Florida/Colorado/Texas... and Happy Late Valentine's Day!