St. Andrews: The Actual Place

I joined the international student society when I first arrived at Glasgow Uni, and every weekend it seems they have a trip planned to some place in Scotland. I finally decided to go on one of the day trips to St. Andrews. I went with my friend Josephine from the MPH programme. We were both very disappointed with the castle, or lack thereof. Among many of the activities we were promised on the trip, the castle was one of them. Little did we know they were referring to rubble. O well, at least it was a beautiful sunny day and we got some good pics.

St. Andrews itself is a quaint little place. The University is where Prince William met Kate and there’s even a little café that proudly proclaims on the window ‘'the café where Wills met Kate for coffee.’’ It’s a well-respected university, the 3rd oldest in the English speaking world (behind Oxford and Cambridge and Glasgow being the 4th). It was quiet too; for a University town I was expecting to see more people about on a beautifully sunny day.

St. Andrews is also known for its golf course. It’s supposed to be one of the oldest in the world and is known as ‘’the home of golf.’’ I spent half the day looking for this golf course which was odd because this town was tiny! I didn’t realise that the tiny patch of green that I had passed up in the beginning was it! I was expecting a grand course with rolling hills and steep cliffs overlooking the ocean. Perhaps I just saw a tiny bit of it and the rest was closed off to the public or something, I’m not really sure. There was a nice gift shop/museum with a statue of Arnold Palmer and replicas of famous golfer’s grips. I didn’t go in the museum; perhaps if I did I would have understood the layout of the golf course better.

It was a nice day trip. I had a horrible bought of car-sickness (bus-sickness?) though. It was intolerable! For some reason I can’t deal with the narrow and windy roads of Scotland. It’s weird though, I took 24 hour buses throughout South America and every time you went over a mountain you had to wind your way up and down it, and I never got sick there… I’ll need to find some car-sickness wristbands for the next time.