Riding and Blogging

I'm currently riding a bus from St Andrews to Edinburgh.  For some odd reason I'm getting free wireless on the bus.  So I decided to write a post just on the ride.  I also made a little day by day "diary" last night at the pub waiting for the Masters to come on.  You can read it here.  Golf was great, I got on right away in the morning (7:30) and played with 3 Finnish guys.  They were nice but not necessarily good golfers.  I think they had the same problem that I have, that we haven't played golf in 6 months.  Despite not getting any warm up or a single practice put, I managed to massage one down the middle, knock it on the green, and two put for an opening hole par.  I played fine on the front, carding one birdie and 5 bogeys.  The wind was with us the whole way on the front, which made the holes play much shorter.  After rounding the turn the wind was now in our faces the whole way back, making 380 yard par 4's not reachable in two.  My short game struggled with the rental clubs but I scraped in a 44 on the back nine.  I didn't think that 84 was too bad, although I could have scored much better.  I certainly have the itch to golf now because all I wanted to do after playing was to play again.  Today I'm going to check out the Rosslyn Chapel from Dan Brown's novel, The DaVinci Code.  Then tomorrow I'm going to take a 2 day highlands bus tour.  It turns out it is a similar price to take a bus tour with many stops than it is for me to travel up there by myself with no tour guide or the ability to take stops.

The Pilgrimage...

Well my conference is over and I left Edinburgh this morning on a bus.  Just as muslims go on a pilgrimage to Mecca, golfers must go to St Andrews.  Thus I arrived in St Andrews this morning and am staying at the only hostel in town.  When I got here I asked how many people were in the town and he started to laugh and then said about 20.  I think he meant 20,000.  Below are a few pictures from my journey through St Andrews today, the ruins are from St Andrews Cathedral that was quite impressive, albeit many rocks and gravestones.  I also walked around and found my way to the St Andrews golf courses.  In total, they have 5 courses but are most renowned for a course named simply, "The Old Course".  The British Open is played at St Andrews every 5 years and it is the home of golf.  This course has been around for more than 600 years.  

I am planning on playing tomorrow morning.  Hopefully it will warm up and I'll get some sun.  I haven't decided yet if I'm going to take a caddie but either way it won't be a cheap round of golf, however, when in St Andrews, you must play golf.

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Tight Pants and Tighter Pockets

Seriously, what size are this guys pants?  They must have been all out of his usual size, XS.  So he had to opt for the somewhat more snug and never going to have children size XXS.  Great sneakers too.  He must have met up with Bill and Ted and they gave him some Bogus shoes from the 80's.

I've also seen quite a few questionable haircuts, however I have been unsuccessful in capturing the moment on film and ridiculing them on the internet.  This guy was not so lucky.

Things are quite expensive here.  I seem to be spending a little bit more money than I thought I was going to, but the real fun will be tomorrow!

Update: The Land of Opposite

Well it's becoming more obvious that things in the UK are certainly different than the states.  An obvious difference is that people drive on the other side of the road.  While this may not seem very important for somebody who isn't actually driving a car while in the UK, i.e. me, it is actually quite important.  Think about when you cross the street.  Generally you are suppose to look both ways, except that in the USA you always look to the left first because that is where the traffic is coming from.  Well I haven't been hit by a car or bus yet, it actually feels strange crossing the street because traffic is in the other direction.  A similar problem is taking the bus.  When you want to travel a certain direction, e.g. east, over here you have to wait for the bus on the opposite side of the street.  Seems relatively simple, however, there is just something about it that feels awkward.

Another interesting observation.  Last night I got some take out chinese (actually take out is called "take away" here).  I know that sometimes in the states you can't always understand what the chinese guy is saying at the A1 China Buffett/Delivery.  But picture the difficulty of understanding a Chinese guy who's broken english is actually broken accent laden Scottish-English.  I felt like it was an entirely different language.

Anyway, here are some picture from two days ago and my hike up to the top of Arthur's Seat.

Greetings from the Land of Scots

Tourism has been going alright. Yesterday I went to the Edinburgh Castle, sort of an expensive 'tourist' activity, 11 pounds ($22 dollars). This is wear the Scottish Crown Jewels are kept (sort of underwhelming and I couldn't take pictures). This is also where something that is apparently important to the Scottish people, it is called the Stone of Scone. It's actually just a rock that somehow is symbolic of the Scots ability to rule themselves. However, England stole the rock around 1300 and it took them about 700 years to finally give it back. This stone is also the coronation stone for the English. Whenever there is a new king/queen, the stone would travel down to London and then back to the castle.  I found somebody at the hostel to go with me so it was pretty fun.

Today I went on a free walking tour (about 3 hours) and it was nice.  Albeit sort of strange, but my tour guide was from Australia and he did a fine job nonetheless.  After the walking tour I hiked up Arthur's Seat.  Essentially a very big hill that overlooks the city.  The view was nice and the weather was great today.  I'll put some pictures on a little bit later.