St. Andrews

My plan while my cousin was here was to see as much of Scotland as we could, focusing on things I hadn't yet done. One of the easy day trips I planned was St. Andrews!

The adorable streets in St. Andrews

Our first stop was the house, where my grandparents used to live 60 years ago. My grandfather spent a year, I think, studying in St. Andrews, and my grandmother came along, because they had just gotten married. They used to live on the top floor of the building in the picture below.

Next, we headed to the Cathedral.

The size of the Cathedral really surprised me. You can kind of tell from the picture above that it was MASSIVE. Unfortunately, there's not much left, but it's still neat to walk around.

Kind of on the same piece of land are the remnants of another church. I think the tower below was built in the 700s, which is crazy! Also, by this time, we were getting really hungry, but it was raining. There wasn't anywhere dry for us to eat the lunches we packed. So, on the way down from the tower we stopped and ate our lunch in the stairwell of a 1300-year-old tower. We were desperate. Don't worry though, we didn't leave one crumb behind!

The view from the top of the tower

Next, we went to the pier.

My grandparents told me that when they lived here, on Sundays after church,, everyone would walk down this pier in their gowns and it was apparently quite scenic. I don't know if people still do this, so maybe I'll go back up there on a Sunday to find out.

From the pier, we walked to the Castle.

As you can see, the Castle is built right on the cliffs on the edge of the sea. Pretty risky, but it means there are some pretty great views!

At one point in the Castle's history, some people were trying to attack it, and there is a tunnel underneath the Castle still there from a failed attack plan. It's pretty tight in there, but still cool!

By this point, we felt like we owned the place :)

Also, as part of our shenanigans (I'm mainly blaming Paulina for initiating this) was trying to figure out where the toilets used to be. Paulina's quote from this one is "There's no way that's not a toilet!"

From there, we walked over to West Sands Beach. It was quite scenic, even though it was kind of overcast.

One of the main reasons we went here was because this is where they filmed the opening scene for Chariots of Fire, which Paulina loves. She even recreated the scene a bit!

After walking on the beach for over an hour and having seen everything we planned on seeing, we headed back to the bus station and returned to Edinburgh. It was a really nice trip, and we both decided we could have stayed there for a lot longer. I will definitely be returning!