Edinburgh and St. Andrews

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Judd and I took a horrible night bus to Edinburgh at 11 pm Tuesday night, and got into Edinburgh around 7 or 8 am. It was rough. We took the shuttle to our hostel (15 minutes away, on the coast), where we couldn't check in yet, so we dropped off our stuff and headed back to the city. We walked along the Royal Mile up to Edinburgh Castle and walked around the castle for a while. Then we walked around the city a bunch, climbing up a rather large hill (Calton Hill) with an astronomy observatory and some other building on the top, and then climbed up the crags to Arthur's Seat in Holyrood Park that formed from the volcano Edinburgh is built upon. After that we called it a day and headed back to the hostel to clean up and see what everyone else at the hostel was up to, like our temporary roommates, who we found out are from Poland, so it was really interesting to talk to them. They were two brothers, one of which had worked at that hostel we were at during a previous summer to help work with his English speaking skills since he was studying English at a university in Poland. The next day Judd and I got up early to catch a train to a train station where we got a police excorted bus to St. Andrews to watch the Open. As soon as we walked onto the course, we watched Tiger Woods hit a shot, and then we crossed the fairway. As we were walking across, Tiger popped out of a player's only portapotty in the middle of the course and he walked right behind us. It was amazing for something that random happen so suddenly as we stepped almost immediately onto the course. From then on, it was incredibly awesome to be there watching all the golf pros. You name a popular golf player, and I probably saw him there, including the Golden Bear himself. We followed Jack Nicklaus for a few holes until he finished out the 18th, and then waited for Tiger again. Everywhere Jack went, everyone gave him a huge round of applause (you could tell where we was from where we waited for him by hearing the huge roar of cheers from the various grandstands), since this was the course he dominated in his British Open wins here and he was retiring from playing a major tournement ever again after finishing up the Open. The Royal Bank of Scotland even printed his image on 5 pound Scottish notes, a right they normally reserve for royalty. Thats how popular he is here. We bought some souvenirs and headed back to get some sleep before the 9 hour bus ride the next day, which, once again, really sucked and never seemed to end.

When we finally did make it to London, we headed over to a Waterstone's to get in the 5 block long queue for the release of the new Harry Potter book. It was supposedly the largest release party in the world, with characters dressed like those in the movies that walked through the line to entertain them. It was a great time, even though most of the people I was with were not that excited for it. We took a night bus home, packed our stuff for a few hours, got very little sleep and woke up early to catch our flight home from Heathrow.

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