Scotland: Home of Golf and Coldplay, Bagpipe Version

So who knows what I was trying to accomplish with the title of our last post...due to all of our business and packing for Cornwall in the wee hours of the morning, I was doing some catch-up blogging a little too late for my brain to function properly. My apologies for the cryptic title.

Anywho, we just wanted to fill you all in on our most recent weekend trip, which we spent in Edinburgh and St. Andrews, Scotland! We were both very excited to make it over to Scotland, and we definitely weren't disappointed! As soon as I (Ashlyn) was done with class on Thursday, we got our bags, took the tube to Kings Cross, and caught a train to Edinburgh, which is about 4 hours from London. When we arrived, we met our host for the weekend, Fenella. She is a friend of the Whitehead family, who are close friends with Sarah's family, for those of you who don't know. Fenella and her husband, Mark, live in Edinburgh, and very graciously shared their awesome flat with us for the weekend! It was a lot of fun getting to know Edinburgh through the eyes of locals, and to be able to stay in a more permanent residence as opposed to a hotel! Fenella made us a traditional sausage and mash dinner, which was great, and then took us on a little walking tour of the city. Edinburgh is a really neat place...it's mostly Georgian architecture, with some modern buildings mixed in. And even though it is a pretty thriving place, it doesn't feel incredibly "urban." There are lots of parks and some awesome crags on the outskirts of town, which I'll tell you more about in a minute.

On Friday morning we woke up and spent the day exploring more of Edinburgh. We went to the castle, which overlooks the entire city on a giant hill. It's such a beautiful place and you really feel the history and legend while you're there. It was a little difficult getting into all the specific stories, not being very familiar with Scottish history, but the castle definitely seemed like a significant part of the city. We got to see the Scottish royal jewels and other cool artifacts and such, as well as some amazing views!






After leaving the castle we walked back down into the city to look for a place to eat lunch. We didn't have to go far, because we knew exactly where we were headed...The Elephant House, which is THE place where J.K. Rowling wrote a large portion of the early Harry Potter books!! As nerdy as it may sound, it really was cool to visit this place and to imagine J.K. Rowling writing what to her was just a little children's story, but would later become something that's dominated our entire generation. Potter-mania aside, the restaurant actually is great on its own. It's not an overdone tourist attraction at all, just a cute, homey cafe. I can definitely see why someone would want to spend so much time in there, and it made me wish Tallahassee had more comfortable spots for reading and writing (some of you will think I'm crazy for saying this...however, I'm convinced that Panera and sometimes even Red Eye do not cut it).

After lunch, we finished walking the rest of what is called The Royal Mile. It's basically a stretch running from the Edinburgh Castle to the Holyrood Palace at the edge of the city. When we got to the end we looked around at the Palace and the Parliament buildings, which are all very modern and edgy, totally contrasted to the rest of the city. Fenella had showed us a couple of crags (like smaller mountains) at the end of the Royal Mile where people can hike and walk around, so we decided to go check those out. For some reason, I was overly-enthusiastic about climbing a crag, and so we started up the first path we came to. It ended up being a little more than a leisurely stroll through some Scottish hills...an hour later, we found ourselves climbing a path up to the top of this giant cliff, fighting enormous gusts of wind! It was quite the adventure, but we successfully made it to the top!

When we had made it to the top of the crag, we took a little time to take pictures and just enjoy the AMAZING views! On one side we could see all of Edinburgh and the castle spread out below us. On the other side, we could see mountains, including Arthur's Seat (another crag), and then the ocean, which was so beautiful. I can't even imagine what it must be like to really hike through the Highlands in Northern Scotland, but it's definitely become a number on the bucket list, just from that little experience! The wind continued to pick up, and so we decided we'd better head down before we found ourselves stuck on a cliff in the dark. We hiked all the way back into town, and found a pub near the train station called Haymarket, and stopped for dinner. It was packed, but had some great cheap pub food and T.V.'s showing the British Open, so spent some time there before heading back to the Watsons'. When we got back, Fenella invited us to watch a movie with her from an independent film festival held every year in Edinburgh. It was all in Gaelic, which is the traditional Irish and Scottish language, and has connections to Old English. Luckily, there were also sub-titles. It was a great ending to our full day of seeing Edinburgh.

Friday night we were completely wiped, which was a good thing, because we had a verrry early wake-up call the next morning...we woke up at 5:30 in order to catch our 6:50 train to....ST. ANDREWS!! Sarah and I had tickets to the British Open golf tournament at The Old Course, St. Andrews. For those of you who don't follow golf, this is mecca. One of the most, if not THE most, historical course in the history of golf, and basically sacred ground on the PGA Tour. Needless to say, I was ready to explode by the time we got there. My mother, who is quite possibly one of the biggest golf fans out there, has trained me well =) We met up with our flatmate Ellie and our friend Alex, both of whom were already in Edinburgh with the Sports Management study abroad program. Without giving you an hourly breakdown of our day (which I could do), I'll keep it brief. Delayed rounds from Friday were still finishing up in the morning, so we got some breakfast and went to the store and then hung out by the putting greens to watch players practice before they tee'd off. We followed around my favorite golfer, Stewart Cink, who was playing with Ian Poulter, and then went back to watch Tiger putt. The rest of the day goes pretty much like this: Watched Tiger through the front nine, Ashlyn gets separated from everyone for 2 hours, Ellie, Sarah and Alex walk around and watch other players, Ashlyn miraculously spots the others and chases them down around hole 14, we reunite and sit on 14 and 18 in the grandstands to watch players finish up. Surprisingly no "big names" were really dominating the leaderboard, with the exception of a couple, so we weren't limited to watching any one or two groups. Even though the day was a little uneventful in terms of the players, it was still an incredible experience to be at St. Andrews. This was mine and Sarah's first time at a Major tournament, and it definitely won't be the last! The Open is held at St. Andrews only every 5 years...2015 anyone? :)

At the end of a very long day, we took the train back to Edinburgh and crashed. In the morning we went out to do a little shopping and then went back to thank Fenella and Mark, and head back to London. It was very sad to have such a short time in Scotland, and we both agree that another visit to this country is hopefully in store. Scotland is such an amazing and beautiful country. The people are incredibly nice and so interesting in hearing travelers' stories...so many people encouraged us to spend more time and see the beautiful places in their country. You can definitely tell everyone there is very proud to be Scottish. Hopefully we'll be back sooner than later!

All in all, it was a busy, exciting, tiring, wonderful weekend. We were happy to be back in London and ready to start another week. Here are some pictures from our weekend, and be sure to check back soon for another update on our trip to Cornwall, amongst other things!

All things plaid,

Sarah and Ashlyn