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Published: January 26th 2010
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This weekend I went to St. Andrews with the International Students Center. St. Andrews is about 1 1/2 hours away from Edinburgh but the drive through the countryside was so pretty. The grass was so green in some places it was almost neon. St. Andrews is right on the North Sea on the East Coast in the kingdom of Fife. It had a lot of really nice beaches, one in particular is famous for being used in Chariots of Fire for a scene. Unfortunately while we were there it rained all day and was really cold. I walked around with a girl who lived in my dorm and two other girls that we met. We did walk around on the beach but not for too long because it was so windy and cold. Next to West Sands beach is the golf course that is well known for being the birthplace of golf and where the Open Tournament has been played multiple times and I think it is going to be played there this summer. Apparently it's a really posh, expensive course that is almost impossible to get tickets to play on. We walked on the golf course a little bit. There
were people playing there even though it was rainy and cold.
One of the first things we saw in St. Andrews was the ruins of the Cathedral and the castle. There's not much left of the cathedral because the stones were stolen and used to build parts of the city. Mostly it was just a few walls and parts of a tower. It was really kind of creepy and skeletal looking, especially since it borders a really large graveyard. Both the castle and the cathedral are right on the coast so they overlook the sea.
We also walked around the University for a while. The University of St. Andrew's is known for being the oldest university in Scotland, founded in 1413. More recently, Prince William studied there. It's a pretty small school, and actually the town itself was not very big. I expected it to be more of a city like Edinburgh but it was pretty small and quiet. The university has a lot of really old traditions, though, which I think is really cool. At the museum, it says one of the traditions is for all of the students to run into the North Sea at sunrise
on May Day. There was some kind of reasoning behind it but I don't remember what it was, but I thought that was a funny tradition. The campus itself is really historic and a lot of the buildings are very medieval looking.
After seeing all that, we walked around for a while trying to find a boarding school that one of the girls wanted to see because she had read a book that was based off of it. We weren't really sure where it was though so we ended up walking past it without realizing because it was surrounded by high walls. We found the front of the school though and walked through it. It was really old and pretty, I don't even want to know how much people pay to have their kids go there though. I'm sure it's something absurd.
After finding St. Leonard's, we decided to just sit in a coffee shop and wait for the buses since we were so wet and cold. On the way back though, we saw a fish and chips shop and decided to see if they had deep-fried Mars bars, a Scottish invention. It turned out that they had
not only fried Mars bars but fried Snickers also so we decided to try both. They actually were pretty good, although I don't think there's any way I could eat a whole one, splitting it between the four of us was plenty for me. They're fried in the batter that they use to fry the fish and then the chocolate is all melted so it is really gooey and rich. We were all excited to say we had tried it at a true fish and chips shop though, it's definitely a must-do if you're in Scotland. I have yet to have fish and chips though, that's next on my list. I had a lot of fun visiting St. Andrews and I can see how it's probably one of the prettiest places in Scotland when it's nice and sunny, being right on the sea and al.
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