A Tourist in my Own Town

The problem with blogging is, the busier you are, the less likely you are to blog, but the more you have to write about. So this is going to end up either being an extremely long post, or a quick overview of everything. I'll see how things go.

Last Sunday was taken up with a highland bus tour. Though we spent much of the time in the bus, we saw beautiful highland scenery everywhere, including Loch Tay, the longest loch (lake) in Scotland, and tasted some whiskey.

Wallace Monument in Stirling:

The southern highlands in Perthshire, where we focused our tour:

Loch Tay:

The highlands were really beautiful and wild. It's no surprise it's the setting and subject of many 18th century romantic Scottish (and even English) literature. And of course, single malt Scotch cannot be beat. Fun whiskey fact: it's actually clear. The wood barrells whiskey sits in for usually 10-20 years is what gives it its amber color, the color of the wood soaking into the liquid.

A few days after my highland tour, my friend Destiny, who is studying in Germany, arrived for a visit, so I was able to take some pictures of things I see every day.

St Andrews Castle, right across the street from my hall, and something I can see from my window:



St Salvators Chapel, right next door:




Destiny and I also checked out the St Andrews Botanical Gardens, which were beautiful, despite it still being winter (though there are flowers blooming already here, in February, green grass, and warmer temperatures).




Scotland is tropical, didn't you know?

OK, well, maybe not tropical, per se, but for the past - get this - 3 days in a row, it's been bright and sunny. All. day. long. This is incredible. Destiny is sick of hearing me blather on about how beautiful the weather is. I told her it's fake Scottish weather, and that she should move here permanently so we can have sunshine all the time. It was especially nice to have sunshine on our beach adventure.

Pictured above is Castle Sands, from which you can see St Andrews Castle, pictured below.


Of course I've taken Destiny to several of my favorite pubs and fish and chip shops close by. Of course we had haggis, as well, fried with chips, and this time I got documentation:

Then, of course, I did something every little, cliché girl dreams of: I saw a prince. Prince William, to be exact, who studied here at the University of St Andrews (geography, as I understand it) and was back with his fiancée Kate Middleton, who also went here, to open the celebrations for the University's 600th anniversary. I was incredibly lucky, and managed to snag a ticket to the speech. However, all guests had to be on their toes. No one could mess up. I don't think I've ever been to an event with a specified dress code before this but luckily the dress code was only "lounge suit or day dress" (I looked this up online and it's a little less formal than semi-formal, and a little more formal than smart-casual.) Very few things were allowed in the quad, where the Prince delivered his speech. No hats. No bags or handbags. No photography. No mobile phones. Stay in the yard and be in before dark. Cops were swarming around the town, particularly the quad and my hall, next door to the quad. There were sniffer dogs, bomb detectors, guards, snipers, barricades, and squealing girls, women, and probably men. We waited outside in our dresses and little shoes for 3 hours. The Prince walked in. We stood up. He made a speech. He made a couple of jokes. I was in the third row, in the centre, so I had a great view. He pulled a chord and the 600th anniversary plaque was unvieled. Everyone clapped. He walked out and shook some people's hands along the way. He then walked down one of the streets in town and shook hands with the public, including me. It was all very exciting. He was polite, of course, and nice, from what I could tell. He asked me how I was doing. Fantastic, of course. I was meeting a prince.

We ended the day with some fried haggis and chips and a pub crawl with lots of dark, bitter, heavy Scottish beers, some foosball, and a football match on TV.

This morning Destiny and I slept in after our pub crawl, grabbed some breakfast at a local bakery I've been wanting to try out, and set out on what ended up being a day-long walk: almost 13 kilometers or about 8 miles. We took the Fife Coastal Path, wet, muddy, often rocky terrain hugging the Scottish coast. Much of it looked like this:

and this:


but a lot of it also looked like this, the spot where we had lunch:

and we could see the town for part of the trek.

It was another beautiful, sunny day, and we saw the sun set orange over the rocks.

One of the many highlights of our adventure was a ruined harbour.


Though we got started a little late, it was worth the walk and our sore, muddy feet. The Scottish countryside is breathtaking.

The sunset is beautiful in Scotland, as well, but rare. Mostly the grey sky just gets darker. Today, though, there was an actual sun to set.


Destiny and I appreciated the invention of the wheel on our bus ride back into town. What had taken us 5 or 6 hours to walk (including, of course, getting lost a couple of embarrasing times at the beginning of the trip, taking a long lunch of bread, cheese, apples and Irish cider, stopping often to take pictures, and having to brush ourselves off after taking a spill in the mud - my demise, of course) took our bus an easy 20 minutes to clear.

Upon our return home we did exciting things like laundry, cleaning the mud off our shoes, and hitting the sack early.