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Published: December 15th 2005
Greetings from St. Andrews (pop: 12,000… half of which are students)! This town is one of the more beautiful I have ever seen. I have included an inordinate amount of photos for this reason. Latest leg started by me missing my flight from London to Glasgow (cost for stupidity: ₤165). RyanAir did change the departure gate 3 times mind you in a 1 hour period before the flight… still not my brightest moment. Anyhow, I then got into a Mercedes A150 (the cars they have here are great… so much more variety than in N. America and diesel diesel diesel galore!) and jetted up to St. Andrews. I did drive along the right hand side of the road for a while, but the oncoming traffic with horns blaring and lights flashing helped ‘guide’ me to the correct side… only did that once! I have been staying with Judit who is a friend I met 2 summers ago whilst traveling through Budapest. We’ve kept in touch and she’s in her 3rd year Psych at St. Andrews University. Thursday evening, we went to her friend’s place for dinner. Amongst the 8 of us, there were 10 languages spoken and 8 countries represented. The
St. Andrews/Jason
Me going for a jog; typical 'house'!university, needless to say attracts a very international student body.
The next night saw us traveling down to Edinburgh to visit my old school friend Duncan who is studying at Edinburgh University. The city is also very nice (pop: 500,000). We went out (it was a Friday night after all) to experience the local night life. Quite the spectacle as we wound up in a club that occupies an old church. 3 different rooms each with their own DJ and music genre.
The next morning, our car had been ‘moved’ (NOT towed!) which was kind of the city. Apparently there was a farmers market where we had parked. Had we been towed, it would have been another ₤215 to add to my unnecessary expenditures… but they took pity on me (or realized that I had actually paid to park there and didn’t notice the itsy bitsy sign telling me not to park there) and simply put my car on another street with a kind ‘warning’ pinned to the dash.
Saturday was tame as I walked around St. Andrews (took some great pics) and visited the British Golf Museum. Scotland (and to a lesser extent Holland) are credited with ‘inventing’ golf
More St. Andrews
Can you imagine the bocce potential?! and the British Open has been held on the ‘Old Course’ some 27 times since it was first held in 1860. They have been playing golf in St. Andrews since the early 1500s!!! Sunday night saw Judit and I along with 200 other students attend the Scandinavian ball. It was obviously a black tie event and I obviously did not have a tux packed in my bag so I decided to rent a kilt. I have to say that they are quite comfortable and no, I did not go commando! Given that I am flying to Stockholm Monday evening, it was rather fortuitous that I should attend a Scandinavian ball as I now have people to visit in Stockholm and Helsinki. I am also now well versed in Swedish songs and snaps (disgusting shots that they down by the half dozen!).
I’ll end this by thanking all of the kind people in St. Andrews who made me feel welcome and showed me a great time. I hope everyone has a great week back home. Arash, the pound is trading at $2.03 and I would expect we’ll see it dip below $2.00 in the next few months. It is great that
St. Andrews cont...
for all you dog lovers... the Canadian dollar is so strong but things are still ridiculously expensive over here… and I haven’t even paid for a night’s stay anywhere yet! Cheers, Jason.
PS... latest Google Earth Map... will try to be better at updating this:
LATEST MAP
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Vanessa Turenne
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I am SO IMPRESSED that you actually rented a car AND DROVE on the opposite side (mostly). You are really going for the full experience. Good on you!!! (-: Vanessa