St. Andrews

Straight off the bat I want to say that I am writing about St. Andrews the town and not the saint, although I heard he was a nice guy. The weekend before last, a small group of Americans and my self went to the town of St. Andrews on a bus for a day trip. So to start off the day I fell asleep at 4am sunday morning and then woke up at 7:15am so that I would be able to get across town to the bus station in time to meet my group. Funny how that worked out, so I was running late so I was basicly running down the streets of Edinburgh dancing between sleepy church goers and speeding cars to get to "the meeting place" on the corner of a square near by the bus station. So I get there a minute early and found a rain covered bench to lean on. So thinking that they would be there at any time I was looking over my things in my bag, undoughtivly scaring some of the older people walking past. About ten minutes after I had arived my phone started to ring. Completely surprised people still called other people I let my phone ring a while. When I got tired of the ringing in my ears I answered to hear the other guy of our group on the other end. He started saying "where was I" and other things that I don't remember and finally told me he and the two girls would be about 15 minutes. So 23 minutes later, after I had had a nice little chit chat with a old person walking past and a very sad looking police officer, they finally came around the bend. We went to the bus stop and relized the next bus was going to be in a hours time, so being Americans we went to Starbucks that was around the corner, naturaly. While there they told me of there exploits the night before and of all of their tom fouleries. But we finally caught a bus and got to St. Andrews at about 11am. We started off going to the ruins of the very very old church their which was beautiful in its own right. One side of the walls of the church was facing the ocean and the surf was what the Californians would call "up." So we walked down a man made sea wall/ dock at the mouth of a small tributary that they seemed to use as a birth place for boats (bay). Walked around there for a while then headed over to the castle down the came stretch of coast. The castle was also in ruin and is run by the Scotland historical society, which I am a part of so I got in free. Best 32 pounds I have ever spent. The castle was very cool, there was a large court yard that became witness to the girls and my own attemps at swing dancing, that ended in tragity. The castle had some very interesting different things about it aswell other then swing dancing Americans. There was a tunnel dug though the bed rock under the castle made by an attemped siege about 500 years before. The castle was also facing a small beach which had its own tide filled swiming pool man made into the rocks that went directly into the ocean. We had lunch at 4pm at some French food place that was not bad I geuss, but we rushed alittle so that we could go to the golf corse while it was still sunnyish out. The golf corse looked exactly little it does on tv except less people and at ground level looks like someone made a mistake and forgot to put buildings there. On one side of the course is the ocean and the other side are three story tall buildings. So we took so pictures there and then continued to the beach while the sun was setting. A couple hours later we went back to the bus station and all slept on the ride home.

The town of St. Andrews is much smaller then Edinburgh But has its pluses. Food was much cheaper there then in the city and there was less people, which made for less dancing on the sidewalks.