St Andrews Part 4: Golf!!

So, what would be a blog about St. Andrews that didn't incorporate golf in some way? Not much of a blog I imagine. So here is our shout out to the place that invented golf.

It took about 2 minutes of walking down the street to notice something spectacular. You might think it is this picture of "Carphone Warehouse," wondering why in the world anyone would still be calling cell phones, or "mobiles" as we say on this side of the pond, car phones. That would be a good guess but a wrong one. What we noticed was how golf had helped shape mens clothing (and no, that is surprisingly not JP Moreland).


After walking around town trying to avoid the temptation of buying a yellow pair of knickers, we managed to make our way to The Old Course. Here is a pic of us looking down the 1st and 18th fairways.


Here is a road that happens to cross right in the middle of these fairways.



Here is the place where the guys sit around and make rules like how much play you can have off of a titanium face before it is illegal and how bright your knickers can be before it is too awesome. I was surprisingly not let in.

This is a place Kelli and I ate our birthday meals, and decided to go all out and get these absurdly large deserts.


And this wraps up our trip to St. Andrews. It was a great day. Stay tuned for our London and Paris blogs. If we took 300 pictures in one day in St. Andrews (and by we I mean kelli), think what we (she) can do in London and Paris?! It is scary to even think of it.

St. Andrews Part 3: The University

Hello all, I know I know, I have slacked in my St. Andrews marathon blog. But now I will take you on a brief tour of St. Andrews University.

As you should know, I study at Aberdeen, one of the ancient universities in Scotland. St. Andrews on the other hand is the ancient school of Scotland. It is the first university in this great country, being third oldest in the UK (after Oxford and Cambridge).

Sadly, I have little clue as to what these pictures are actually of, other than buildings of St. Andrews. So here you go:






I do know that this is their chapel, which actually has a very similar design as the one at Aberdeen. I tried to sneak in but the door was locked :(




This was the rather large locked door to the chapel.


And this was officially random.


Who knew that Benjamin Franklin had an honorary doctorate from St. Andrews? The question now is, why don't they give me one? The world is so full of mystery.

St. Andrews Part 2: coffee!!

To continue with Kyle's saga of St. Andrews, I thought I'd share about the coffee shops we visited...because what else would I talk about? :)

Our first coffee shop we stumbled across was one we had hoped to find. Within the shop--connected to an Episcopal church-- is a little book store. Coffee and books, two of our favorite things in one place! Kyle of course wanted a vanilla latte, so I asked the lady behind the counter "Do have vanilla syrup?" She kind of laughed and politely said, "No, but people keep asking me that. I should probably get some. " I told her not to bother...I thought the shop was perfect! So, as I sat down at a table with two filter coffees, Kyle chatted with the book guy...and slowly people kept coming into the small shop. You could tell these people started their days by coming to this place...they had their regular seats, and were welcomed as the entered the door with a "Hello Bob"--or whatever their names were. It made me wish I lived in that town, so I could come have coffee with them every morning. Starting the day at that coffee shop was the perfect way to start our adventure in St. Andrews.



After running around the castle and cathedral ruins...we were of course ready for another coffee. Our next stop was much more modern, but still a perfect addition to the day...except for the fact that Kyle wasn't too impressed with the latte, but my mocha was fantastic! This coffee joint has live music frequently, so I'm hoping to head back to hear some local tunes.



The third coffee shop we encountered was...surprise, surprise...a Starbucks. We actually were not looking for coffee but were searching for a place to hide from one of the random 10 minute rain falls. Upon finding shelter, we ran into some friends from church--also here from America to study.

Oh the heights and Depths: St. Andrews Part 1

Ok, welcome to the marathon blog. No, not the blog about Kelli's marathon, but a blog that is so long it is virtually a marathon. This is part 1 of our several part series on blogging through our trip to St. Andrews.

First, let me just say that we had a blast in St. Andrews. What a great city. It made me think I should have applied here for my Ph.D! Anyway, Kelli and I got up early and took the 7:55 train to St. Andrews, which got us in around 9:30. From there, we walked around the city a bit, and found ourselves at St. Andrews castle.

Here are some pics of the castle.






As you can see, the castle is in ruins, the majority of it destroyed long ago, and it sits right on the coast. Among the many interesting aspects of the castle is that it has a bottle dungeon, which we didn't post pictures of, which looks like a well in a tiny little dungeon that goes down about 10 yards before it opens up into a cave. Evidently they would lower religious prisoners (heretics) down into the cave until they lost their minds. Nice. Word on the streets is that there is only two of these in all of Europe, but you'll never guess where the other one is.

Anyway, the Reformer John Knox was actually taken captive from here at one point, which is interesting if you are into that sort of thing.

But what was the most interesting part of this castle was a system of caverns that exist beneath it. At one point in its history, they discovered that an army was trying to burrow underneath the castle walls to attack them. So they started digging their own caverns trying to intercept them, which they did - but only after two "dead end" tunnels. Evidently they were navigating by the sound of digging, which couldn't have been easy. So Kelli and I went down there.




So the mines were a couple of feet tall, getting more and more narrow as you go down.




And then suddenly there is just a small hole in the ground with a ladder that you have to climb down.






And then at the end, you find yourself somewhere under the street looking up through a small manhole cover.

Kind of crazy.


After we went to the castle, we walked down the coast a little ways to the cathedral. The cathedral is now in ruins, which is tragic, since it must have been magnificent. The ruins and the graveyard were pretty awesome in and of themselves, but it would have been incredible to see it when it was whole. Here are some pictures of the ruins.




Amongst the ruins, there was this big tower. As the story was told to us, this tower was built on next to the cathedral so that someone could watch out for Vikings. The cathedral was founded 1160, at the end of the time when the Vikings were conquering everything, and so it was a necessary element to any town, particularly on the coast like St. Andrews.



The tower (pictured above) is called St. Rule's Tower, and if you climb to the top (where you can see basically everything), you walk up 168 steps - which we did.






From the top of the tower you can see all of St. Andrews. Here we are looking down at the cathedral.


Looking over the graveyard.


Down the beach.



Over to the castle (middle of pictures) and over to the Old Course (top of the picture) - the worlds first golf course.




There will be much more to come soon. We did take 300 pictures! Look out for Part 2!