St Andrews. Scotland

St Andrews, Scotland, is a town on the east coast of Fife in Scotland, 10 miles (16 kilometers) southeast of Dundee and 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of Edinburgh.  When our tour bus approached St Andrews it began to rain, as you can see by my photos through the raindrop-splattered tour bus window.

St Andrews is famous as the birthplace of golf and now also the college town where Prince William met and wooed the future Princess Kate! Our bus drove by the coffee shop where they often had their dates, but it was on the opposite side of my window, so I could not snap a photo.

This was our first view of the famous St Andrews "Old Course" golf course

St Andrews is known widely as the "home of golf." According to the earliest surviving document from 1552, the "playing at golf" on the links adjacent to the "water of Eden" was granted permission by Archbishop Hamilton. The most famous golf course in the town is the public Old Course, purchased by the town council in 1894. The course which dates back to medieval times, is an Open Championship course – which was first staged in 1873. 

The golf course is situated next to the North Sea and our Scottish-born tour guide told us that he never saw the sea as turbulent as it was that day!

We were mesmerized by the sea water churning and spraying, and amazed to see someone was parasailing in the water!

 

This short video, that I filmed, shows the parasailor battling the storm at St Andrews

Sadly, the Old Course at St Andrews, is at major risk of falling into the sea due to coastal erosion over the next 20 years, according to a report on BBC/

Because it was raining hard we decided to pop into the gift shop for a while.

...where we could see a nice panorama of the golf course from its windows.

When the rain stopped my husband and I and my sister-in-law and brother-in-law walked out to the gold course--what a thrill to see it up close!

In the distance, we could see the famous Swilcan Bridge. The Swilcan Bridge is a small stone bridge in St Andrews Links golf course, Scotland. The bridge spans the Swilcan Burn between the first and eighteenth fairways on the Old Course and has become an important image in the sport of golf.

Across from the golf course was a park overlooking the sea.

We had a bit of time before we had to re-board our tour bus, so we walked down to the main street...

...where we window-shopped.

One interesting shop, once owned by a famous Scottish golfer, hand makes custom-made golf clubs.

Upon re-boarding our tour bus, we arrived in Edinburgh in the early evening. After checking into our hotel, we attended an optional dinner show called "The Spirit of Scotland," consisting of traditional Scottish food, music, and dance.

It was exciting to meet Pipe Major Andrew Coulter!

Our appetizer was the traditional Scottish Haggis.

It was surprisingly good!

The rest of our meal was also delicious!

We enjoyed the show very much! John Morgan played superb accordion, Clark Stewart sang old Scottish ballads, and Andrew Coulter played the bagpipes.

A short video that I filmed at the show of traditional Scottish dancing and bagpipe music.

We spent the final two days of our tour in Edinburgh!

 More details to come in my next blog post.

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