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| A map of the city in St. Andrew's |
It’s now officially been a bit more
than two weeks I've lived in Edinburgh. Besides matters of settling, I've
started classes, began to plan trips throughout Europe, and gotten a better
sense of the area. My classes are much larger than classes back at Maryville,
averaging about 10-90 students per class, and these huge classes (comparatively)
revealed to me how incredibly diverse this area is. I talk to the same amount
of foreigners as I do natives. Last weekend my roommates and I visited a
popular pub, the Three Sisters, in hopes of meeting a few locals. Ironically,
by the end of the night we had danced with people from Nigeria, Amsterdam, and
Italy but had totally failed our original plan. While I’m sure we will
eventually befriend a Scot, meeting all these other foreigners has only built my
excitement for travel. As such, I've already booked board and travel to Dublin,
Ireland for St. Patty’s day weekend and a ticket to
Belgium for spring break in April where my roomies and I will be taking a train
to Amsterdam for a few days. Right now, the four of us are budgeting for trips
to London, Paris, Isle of Sky, and a yet-to-be-determined-city in Germany. And because I was completely amazed by the cheap price of travel upon arriving here, I will be taking total advantage of it.
Moreover, whether its buses, trains, or planes, as advanced as we
think we are, America is sadly lacking in public transportation. Without
this readily available, affordable transportation my roommates and I wouldn't
have been able to take our latest day trip to St. Andrews. Our trip was about 1
½ hours each way and cost us only 10 pounds.
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| The beautiful coast in St. Andrews |
I'm not much of a tourist spot traveler, so my favorite place in St. Andrew's was most definitely the sea shore, and we made it up just in time to catch the last little bit of sunlight for the day.
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| The city's done a great job of marking historical sites with explanatory plaques |
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| This is the castle at which the very first gathering of openly protestants congregated. |