Saturday in St. Andrews

On Saturday, I took a train to St. Andrews with my friend Tom. The ride was about an hour and the weather changed constantly throughout the journey-- bright sun, then pouring rain, then dark, then sunny again-- so we weren't quite sure what to expect when we finally reached our destination. But we enjoyed a mostly-sunny afternoon.
The photo above is of the St. Andrews cathedral ruins, which is right on the coastline.

Remaining structure of the cathedral

Coffins!


Really old graveyard near the cathedral ruins


Walking around St. Andrews, I really appreciated the crunchy autumn leaves on the ground and the smaller-town feel. There aren't really any trees within the city of Edinburgh, so the autumn smells are different from what I'm used to. Instead of the scents of burning leaves and apple cider, I smell sea air and car exhaust. Autumn in western New York is clearly the best!

Above, you can see the ruins of St. Andrews castle. We were able to walk near it, but it cost 8 pounds to go in and walk around (which is about $15) so, after deciding we'd rather spend the money on food and transportation, we opted to just take photos from the outside. But it was a breathtaking view, nonetheless.

We walked out on this pier-- it was low tide. (And really windy!)


The shore just below St. Andrews Castle

Tom's collection of seaglass

St. Andrews is "the home of golf," so there were several very posh hotels and clubs where people come from all over the world to play on the town's renowned golf courses. Palm trees in Scotland are always startling to me.

We walked around the St. Andrews University campus, which is another school I applied to. The campus is absolutely gorgeous; it's made up of stately, stone buildings, rolling green fields, and vast views of the ocean. It was strange, though-- we didn't see any students at all, anywhere. And on top of that, all of their grassy fields had signs like this one posted. Aren't green fields FOR ball games?

This is the stretch of coastline where that one scene from "Chariots of Fire" was filmed!

The sign in the window says, "Free Whisky with every haircut."

We were lucky to have such good weather for most of the day. Since that afternoon, there's been nothing but pouring rain in Edinburgh, and the 10-day forecast tells us not to expect anything different.

We headed home around dinnertime after a full day of walking around ancient ruins, eating local food, visiting tiny shops, and shaking the sand out of our shoes.