St. Andrews and the sniffles

All my essays are done (for now). I'm almost caught up on schoolwork (Well, as caught up as I'm ever going to get), but all those nights of no-where-near-enough-sleep has caught up with me. Sniffles galore.

On Saturday I took a break from the last of my essays to take a train with Frieburg up around the Firth of Forth to spend the day in St. Andrews. It wasn't a long trip, but we spent much of it getting ready to grab our stuff and leap off the train--there are electronic signs near the doors that say, "Next stop is _____," but not how long it will be until we reach the stop. The first stop, Haymarket, came up in fewer than ten minutes, but the second--our stop--took us about an hour to reach.

So when we got there, we ran to catch a bus and missed it, only to find out they came every four or five minutes. I told Frieburg that if we had to run to catch anything again, I was going first or she would end up with enough flat tires to lose a shoe; she could just shout which way to go at me from behind.

St. Andrews is pretty tiny. It was beautiful to spend the day there, but I'm glad I decided not to go to school there. It seems more like a nice weekend retreat than anything else. The main street seemed so odd, because it had every shop that Edinburgh's main shopping street has--H&M, Starbucks, Accessorize, etc.--except that they were teeny-tiny. Ground floor and nothing else, and quite small on that one floor, too.

Below is a picture of the cathedral ruins. I'm still so impressed at both this thing's age and the fact that it was built at all, even if it took several generations.

And then...

AND THEN THE SUN CAME OUT.

It was fantastic, but we were hungry. (Neither of us are big on breakfast, I suspect.) So we went to Starbucks (my request, because I have a gift card, courtesy of the marvelous EAP) and then Greggs to re-fueled a bit. Then we went off in search of the beach.

I'd kind of forgotten how nice it is to be at the seaside. It was still cold enough that I wished I'd brought gloves and maybe a hat, too, but there isn't too much that can beat the smell of salt and seaweed.