Well, it has been an interesting week indeed. Pépé arrived on Wednesday morning, and immediately we picked up a rental car to drive to St. Andrews. At first, Dad tried to get in on the wrong side of the car, and I had to remind him that everything is backwards in Britain. He also had lots of problems trying to navigate the roundabouts at first, but he finally got used to it by the time we reached St. Andrews. The Brits may have crazy driving laws, but we still love them for their tea.
St. Andrews is a gorgeous little Scottish town on the shores of the North Sea with buildings that remind me of Edinburgh, but on a much smaller scale. At one end of town, you can explore gorgeous ruins of an abbey that was built in the 12th century. We walked through where the abbey used to be (you can still see the bases of the walls), and we went through the cemetery. Most of the tombstones we found were from the 1800s, but you could find the occasional headstone from the 1700s. Dad also found one where Mr. Jon Jamieson was buried with his wife Mrs. Jane Jamieson, née Johnston. He took a picture because he thought that was cool.
Next, we went to the little castle right on the beach. This castle isn’t nearly as impressive as the towering protector in Edinburgh: the St. Andrews castle is dilapidated and tiny, but its ruins still have a transfixing beauty that kept us occupied for a good hour or two. Mom was surprised that there were still wildflowers growing in the grass, because they have mostly gone at home.
The St. Andrews university is the oldest university in Scotland, and therefore one of the oldest universities in the world. Probably because of this, there is an old tradition that students still follow today: they wear red flannel robes to denote their status as students, and the robes are worn differently for each year of school. First years must wear them up over their shoulders, second years wear them off the shoulder, third years wear them off one shoulder (but which shoulder depends on what they are studying), and fourth years wear them down near the middle of their backs. It’s pretty cool to see them walking around like this, but I think I’d get tired of wearing red all the time.
Our final trip in St. Andrews was to the famed golf course, the Links at St. Andrews, where golf has many of its roots. Pépé and Dad were really excited when we found out we could walk on the paths that snake through the separate courses. They both had “EEE!” moments, and you could see them both taking tons of pictures. I found a golf ball in the middle of some deep grass for Pépé, and we both hope that nobody went looking for it a few minutes later. We tried to go have some afternoon tea at the old golf course club house, but to our dismay it was for members only, and we had left the newer club house behind in favour of the history. Instead of walking back, we ended up in a hotel restaurant and had tea and scones to restore ourselves after the 2-hour walk.
After our tea, we climbed back in the car to drive up to Pitlochery, up through the mountain roads of the highlands. We didn’t get a real taste of the highlands, though: we were hardly in the mountains at all. We saw lots of sheep, but to Dad’s disappointment, none of the shaggy, horned “heilan’ coo” that he would raise were he to live in the highlands. He told me that he’d rather raise cows than sheep because he knows more about cows.
We tried to stop at a beautiful bed and breakfast that looked like a castle (and probably was), but it wanted ₤70 per person for the night. As soon as we heard that, we got back in the car and drove further into town. We stopped to have tea at a restaurant called Victoria’s, behind which Mom made a wonderful discovery. The Scottish Tourism Board had given the B&B behind the restaurant three stars, so we immediately went in to see how much it cost. At a more reasonable ₤27 per person, we were very excited to take them up on the offer. Afterwards, we went to a different restaurant, where I had duck for the first time, Pépé had venison, Dad had salmon, and Mom had the somewhat less traditionally Scottish chicken shish kebab.
The next morning, we piled once more in the car (Dad elated that he remembered to drive on the left side of the road) and went to Edradour, the smallest whiskey distillery in Scotland (and therefore the smallest Scotch Whiskey distillery in the world). We started off with a quick taste of whiskey each – at 9:40 in the morning, no less; a proper Scottish breakfast. Our tour lasted only an hour, so small is the distillery, but the entire way it smelled sugary sweet and probably made us all slightly drunk on just the fumes. At the end, we tasted some more whiskeys and went to the shop to buy a few bottles. I got a cream liqueur. On the tour, we were told how this liqueur is made, but we had to promise we’d never tell anyone the secret. Let me tell you, though, if I could get cows drunk every night and drink their milk the next morning, I’d have some of the best milk those cows could offer.
On our way out of town, we stopped at a stereotypically Scottish pub, and had stereotypically Scottish meals. Pépé tried haggis in a somewhat altered form, wrapped in a steak. Dad had a meat and veggie pie, I had a steak and ale pie, and Mom had fish and chips (finally going Scottish on us). It was a good meal in a nice atmosphere, but it was so cliché compared to a lot of the other places that I have been so far. We got back in time for Mom, Dad, and Pépé to catch their plane to Paris, and for me to go take an Italian test. I had a glass of my drunken cow milk after dinner, and went to sleep around 10 – 5 hours before I normally do when there are people making noise on the street.
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