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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

St. Andrews, Scotland/Road Trip

On Tuesday morning, our road trip began and what was awaiting us couldn't have been better. We picked up the rental car near the edge of the city around 11 a.m. As no one else in the group wanted to drive on the left hand side of the road while driving on what is normally the passenger side of the car, the duty of driving was graciously handed to me. The task isn't all too challenging but keeping yourself in a concentrated zone is necessary because as we all learned a couple of days later, slipping back into right side of the road driving is quite easy and since everyone in the car is from a country where we drive on the right side of the road, no one even picked up on my mistake. We pulled out of Edinburgh and made our way towards St. Andrews, a small town northeast of Edinburgh and home to the birthplace of the modern game of golf. They also have an impressive array of old buildings and castles. We winded our way through small towns to St. Andrews. The weather there seemed like a hurricane about to make landfall back home. The town and golf course run right to the edge of the coast and we even had waves crashing so hard that ocean water was filling the parking lot where we parked the car. We wandered through the streets of the town being blown side to side and found a beautiful abbey and graveyard in the middle of the town. Around the corner, we found the castle but it was to open April 1st(2 days later) so we had to snap some photos from the road and walk on. Our desire to stay longer waned as the wind and rain became unbearable at times. We visited the famous golf course and club house and headed out of town towards Perth. Around Perth, we found two nice castles that also open to the public on April 1st. After our quick lunch, we headed on north towards Inverness. After a short time of driving, we started to see snow, which we thought was cool but then it turned into a nightmare. The driving became quite treacherous at times and a journey of two hours turned into four hours and in some places, the only time we saw the road was after the truck in front of us cleared some snow off with his tire tracks. Throughout the country, a few trucks jackknifed and a school trip bus crashed twelve minutes after leaving the school. We arrived in Inverness and settled into our hotel for the night, trying to keep warm from the bitter cold. Enjoy the photos.

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