Day #3 Day Trip to St. Andrews!

We started the day early and headed for St. Andrews at 8:30 this morning. We stopped to view these bridges over the Firth of Forth-- three beautiful bridges built in 3 different centuries! The red one is for trains only, the middle one for cars and has a pedestrian and bike lane, and the last one if the most modern but is only for cars. We headed for St. Andrews after this stop with lots of good information from our guide Jonathan. (The same one we've had on previous tours.) St. Andrews is known for education, religion and GOLF! It is where golf was invented, basically! (Pictured below is the 18th hole of the famed course.) We started with a walking tour-- and it was SO COLD with the wind and then it started to rain-- and visited St. Andrews University-- the St. Salvator Tower and courtyard. This is the oldest educational establishment in Scotland. We passed by the coffee shop where Kate and "Wills" met (for coffee)-- which is what the sign says in the window. (They met while attending St. Andrews.) We saw lots of other interesting things in the town's main 3 streets-- North, Market and South. We then walked the ruins of the St. Andrews Cathedral which is the largest religious building ever constructed in Scotland. The buildings here are all so old! After the official part of the tour they gave us several hours to enjoy the town on our own. We went to Tail End Fish and Chips for lunch and it was pretty good! We found a bookstore where I purchased a Scottish cookbook for McKenzie-- one of the things she asked for when we left. We browsed around the shops for quite a while and then decided we needed to go see the golf course before our time ran out. Bill wanted to get a picture at the famed Swilcan bridge on the course. Well he ended up getting a lot more than that! Due to all the rain, he ended up slipping as he hurried to get to the bridge before another group teed off and fell straight onto his bottom! I had turned away and as I turned around saw him falling. For a few seconds I wondered if he was ok, but then when he got up, I couldn't stop laughing! His whole behind was drenched and muddy! I just was completely engulfed in laughter and another guy, in his cute Scottish accent was walking by and had seen it too and was cracking jokes and laughing! Bill got the caddy to take some pretty good shots (the wetness and mud didn't show in these shots). But I got one of his backside and was still laughing so hard! I asked him if it was worth the shot, and he said, "Oh yeah!" It would not have been worth it for me and I'm glad I didn't go out there with him-- he tried to get me to go out there with him, and I probably would've slipped and fallen too and that would NOT have been fun! Bill had a wet drive all the way back to our hotel-- about 2 hours! He definitely left his mark on that course! After Bill got cleaned up we walked up to St. Giles Cathedral on the Royal Mile to look at its stained glass windows. It had closed and it was getting dark, but we slipped in because they were letting people in for a concert and were talking to other people as we walked in. We quickly realized we needed tickets and turned back around, but I got a shot of one of the windows quickly before we left. I'm glad we at least got to get a quick look after all that walking up there! We went to our dinner at Wildfire restaurant in New Town. It was really good food-- a steak place but I got the Sea Brean (kind of like Sea Bass) and Bill got the ribeye which was cooked perfectly! The food was really good! We walked back to our hotel in the chilly weather. The sun came out briefly this afternoon in both St. Andrews and back in Edinburgh, so it was nice to see the sky!! I'm just glad it wasn't raining! Tonight we have to pack for our transfer to the Scottish Highland and Inverness tomorrow. Another adventure awaits!!