St. Andrews

Tuesday morning, we left Aberdeen (Scotland), heading for Edinburg, but, acting on a request from a friend at home, we took a little detour to St. Andrews.  It's not too far out of the way.  What we didn't realize was that The Open had started that day - - a big, important golf tournament - - so traffic was much heavier than usual.  We are not fans of golf, but St. Andrews is where golf originated, so we had to just suck it up and go with the flow.

St. Andrews is a beautiful little city and we took a lengthy walk around.  First off, we were on assignment to find the house where our friend, Lia London Gubelin, spent part of her childhood, which we found easily.

See us, on the porch?  Hi, Lia!

Add caption

After finding Lia's house, we set off toward the beach.  We quickly discovered that St. Andrews is all about golf!

Soon we came to the grandstands set up at the 18th hole of the golf course.

Funny, what a quiet sport golf is!  I've never seen so many people, so quiet!

Another goal of ours was to find the Royal and Ancient Golf Club and take a picture there for another friend, Gerry Mullett.  Gerry loves golf, and he and Tony have jokingly bantered back and forth about it for years.

The Royal and Ancient Golf Club

So, there you go, Gerry!

By this time, we were right next to West Sands, so we took a little walk there.  Well, some preferred to take a run.  This is the beach where part of "Chariots of Fire" was filmed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7Vu7cqB20

Soon we headed back into the town.  Such a pretty skyline, if it weren't for those big white grandstands! 

We took some different streets and found lots more beautiful buildings and houses.  Really, EVERY house wants its picture taken! 

Had to include this pic of "Ma Bell's" in memory of Tony's former employer.  : )

And so-o-o many beautiful churches!

Then we turned down a little lane and came upon St. Andrews University, where Prince William met Kate, just tucked away within a wall.  Actually, many of the surrounding buildings have been incorporated into the school now.

St. Andrews has its own jewel of a chapel, right there in the quadrangle.

After that, we had just enough time to grab some fish and chips and head back to the car, before saying goodbye to St. Andrews.  This was a little market street where we heard a bagpipe and found that it was being played by a very young boy.  : )