Day #19 – St. Andrews

Shhh

This morning it was the American’s turn to cook a “proper breakfast.”  We took over the kitchen and made bacon (we found some that was more American style than English style), and French toast.  Unfortunately, you just can’t get maple syrup over here.  The syrup we had was just made from sugar, but it was okay.  Our friends weren’t quite sure about having something so sweet for breakfast, but they were nice enough to choke it down.

St. Andrews Golf Course!

After breakfast we were on our way to St. Andrews.  It was a Sunday morning, so the town was a bit slower than usual.  As we entered the town, a C.L.A.N. meeting was just ending, which was something related to a gathering of various religious churches.  It would have been fine except that we had to get past all the people heading to their cars!

We made it to the car park, and were on our way.  Our first stop was the beach.  Well, Steve and Chris headed over to the St. Andrews golf course so that Steve could at least see where golf all started.  He did stop into the pro shop, but he said everything was priced ridiculously high.  I told him I thought it was nice that he is visiting all the great golf courses of the world, taking photos and moving on (last year was Pebble Beach.)  The poor guy.  Perhaps some day he’ll get back to playing golf.

On the beach

Anyway, the rest of us headed over to the beach for some fun.  We hadn’t brought our suits, so Pete just stripped down to his undies and went in.  The other two got in as far as their knees, but couldn’t go any farther (it was quite cruel, actually.)  The time on the beach was beautiful and fun (except for a spell of fear looking for Anya who had disappeared.)

Soon we were done and heading into the main part of the city.  We passed a park where a brass band was giving a concert.  A lady told us they were some of the best teenaged brass players in Scotland.  We had some ice cream and enjoyed a bit of the concert.

Medieval Feast!

We then headed into the city center to do a bit of looking around.   We were looking for a grocery and a butcher so that we could get what we needed for our evening medieval feast.  We found a butcher, but it was closed,  so we headed over to the local Tesco.  After another whirlwind shopping trip, we were headed back to the castle.  We also had a Tesco order being delivered to the castle between 6 and 8 (stuff that Nicola and I had ordered back on Isle of Man so that we’d have the basics on the first day), so we wanted to be here by the time it was delivered.

The boys got started on the meal and the ladies sat outside enjoying the sun.  It was quite a pleasant way to spend an evening.  Once the meal was done, we all sat down to our feast!  It was all finger food, as it was a medieval feast, and very very good!  There was roast chicken, venison and even some haggis!! After stuffing our faces and laughing a lot, we cleared the table and sat around the fire visiting.  It was a very successful day.

Silly cooks!