St. Andrews Visit

We just got back from our day trip to St. Andrews. I'm at the library here (just around the corner from our hotel) along with several other Choraliers :-). We left the hotel at 10 for the 1.5 hour trip to St. Andrews.

Our first stop was the (remains of) the castle. It was pretty impressive. During a great siege in the 1500s the attackers starting digging a tunnel (a "mine") to try to undermine the gatehouse; the defenders dug a countermine to intercept the mine and were successful. Tourists are allowed to go into the countermine and follow it to the mine. Amazing! But very claustrophobic -- the countermine is very cramped and narrow, you have to crouch the whole way. In America they'd never let you go in such a thing.

After the castle visit we had about 2 hours to walk around, so I was very ambitious and got myself a bit lost :-) but found my way back (I had to retrace my steps). All I had was a tourist-y map and I walked right off it!

Then we had our Cathedral visit. The St. Andrews Cathedral was absolute HUGE. Really. Enormous. Unfortunately due to the ravages of the Reformation and subsequent use of the cathedral as a convenient source of building materials, all that remains is one of the front tower, part of one wall and the very back wall, plus a number of footings for columns etc. It made me very sad that a holy place was desecrated so badly -- but it's the story all over Scotland :-(.

This week is apparently graduation week at the University of St. Andrews, and there were graduates and happy (and relieved) parents walking around, the graduates in their academic garb. It was fascinating.

On a personal note, I have the world's smallest hotel room. It's a good thing I'm not sharing it with David at this point because it's 8.5 ft by 9.5 ft (seriously!). It's definitely cosy -- but it's clean, and the bathroom looks pretty refurbed and nice so I'm not actually complaining.