A Weee Dram : Last day

How is it already our last day? The time has flown but when I look back at what we've done I'm overwhelmed a little. We've done a lot. And yet it doesn't feel like it. I guess that's a sign of a good trip, when you don't feel exhausted at the end and are itching to get home. It helps that Nicole is at school and Dom has popped in to take care of the cats with Lia's help. As usual, we are already thinking about work and what is going to happen when we get home. I try to stop myself and be here, in the last moments but, it's hard.

Today we drove into St. Andrew's town from our hotel, about 10 minutes away. We missed breakfast so were on the hunt, again, for sausage and/or bacon rolls. We were looking for these in Edinburgh too and were skunked. Alas, skunked again. We walked and walked and googled and looked at menus to finally find a place with takeaway that said "sausage roll". Score!! When Walt orders she says, anything on it? and we say, nope, thinking what would you put on it? Well turns out quite a bit. Maybe some cheese or tomato or...anything really considering what we got was a roll with two sausages on it. Heated. That's it. Walt was so pissed and hangry by this point. I was laughing because it's the first time we have had to deal with food like that. I told him, don't be mad, these will be the best damn sausage rolls you've ever had. He wasn't buying it. But guess what? They weren't bad. They weren't great, but not bad either. Parking. Parking is an issue in St. Andrews. You have to pay to park and it's 1.20 to park for an hour and 2.40 for two hours. But they only accept cash in the form of coins and don't give change. We went back to the parking meter 4 separate times today. So annoying and one of the things that had Walt on edge today. The other? I made him walk away from golf on, none other than, THE OLD COURSE! THE BIRTHPLACE OF GOLF! THE GOLFERS MECCA!! just so that we could go visit St. Andrew's Castle and then St. Andrew's Cathedral with a stop off at St. Andrew's University and Chapel. He hated me. At one point during the audio tour at the castle listening to someone pretend to be an archbishop from the 1300s reenact his time at the castle, I thought he was going to lose it. His face was pinched, his posture was taut, and he was trying to be so patient wandering around the ruins. God bless this man. I suggested we ditch and he couldn't get out of there fast enough. We really tried to picture this town minus all the buildings with only the castle and the cathedral for hundreds of miles. In our mind's eye it was impressive. You can actually picture it while standing on the cliffs between the two massive structures. The cathedral is impressive, even though it is ruins. I bet it was knee buckling awesome back in its time to the average pilgrim. I found the graveyard interesting, Walt found it creepy as anything.

"Isn't this so cool? Look at all these gravestones. Some of them are so old. I wonder which one is the oldest? Look this one is from 1812."
"Who cares? This is weird. People are buried here. This is creepy."
"I know, but they're really old and so weathered. Super cool. Let's just look."
"Not cool Sash, just creepy. Can we go? Why are we walking around here? We are walking on people's graves."
Fine, but I want to climb the tower with sweeping views of the ocean and St. Andrew's town.
"Babe, should we do it?"
Walt...stares off at the ocean ignoring me
"Babe? It looks cool right? We should do it. I bet the views are amazing."
Walt, staring at nothing....ignores me
"So that's a no? You're not into it?"
"No Sash, I mean we can if you really want to. I guess we can walk all the way over to the museum to get our token then walk all the way back. If you really want to."
The museum was seriously like 25 yards away. *roll eyes*
So we did it! We climbed all 137 steps straight up, huffing and puffing. When we got to the top I was amazed. Oh my gosh, the ocean, the town, the views!!
30 seconds later Walt goes, "you ready to head down?" NO!
I look and look, take pics, snap the kids, Walt..."so you ready to head down?'
I convince him to take a selfie with me, we read the diagram, I take a few more pics, 2 minutes in, "you ready to head down?" I'm pretty sure we spent all of 5 minutes up there. Maybe 7. But it was amazing and cool to see all of it in front of our eyes, again imaging the place 100s of years ago. Mind boggling.
After this, after he learned about "historical shit" once again, I promised him we'd head back to the Link's Club House and we would just hang and watch golf. So that's what we did. It was actually fun because I love watching golf and all the people playing about as well as I do. Walt and I realized that you don't need an amazing handicap to play here. I don't know why I thought you did. Watching people tee off at hole one was hilarious. All these guys with their impressive clubs and outfits, walking up, flexing, doing the routine before teeing off then....shank. Right into the ditch, or only going 20 yards to the right. It was embarrassing for them. And encouraging for me! So maybe next time. As I type Walt is researching how to secure a tee time at the old course. As of today though, I can't imagine playing here. Not for the difficulty, but for the weather. When I said yesterday was cold, I was unaware. TODAY, today was cold. Today was like New York City in February with a down, ankle length coat, kind of cold. Only add wind and subtract the jacket. Freezing. I honestly can't imagine living here year round. Walt just kept tripping out on all the girls in skirts or the guys wearing shorts. We were like, what's wrong with you? You're not tough!! No one is tougher than the wind and the cold, idiots. Anyway, we could have headed back to the hotel for an hour before our 6:15 dinner reso at Forgan's but that seemed silly so we squeeked in early, ate too much as usual and headed back to pack. Oh and we used the mussel method of that old dude from the other night. Did I mention that? I don't think so so here's how it went. I was facing this table with an older couple. He ordered the mussels. We've noticed they don't provide mussel forks, you know the little ones? This bugged Walt so I was watching this guy to see how he fared. I'll tell you, he blew my mind. Now maybe this is a well known thing but not to me. He chose one mussel from the batch and this was his "utensil" for the rest. He used it in a pinching method to not only pick a mussel up from the bowl but to reach in and grab the meat. Then he would just barely dip it into some kind of mustard sauce they provided and eat it. Then he would take his bread, dip a wee corner of it into the broth and eat it. Repeat. Grab, pull, dip, eat, dip, eat...again. I watched him for 15 or so minutes just repeat this routine. He was methodical in his approach to eating mussels so I tried it tonight. It was actually perfect and even Walt thought so. So there you go, tip for the day. Tomorrow we have an hour or so drive to Edinburgh airport, quick flight to London, then off to San Diego. Dom is picking us up and I can't wait to squeeze him AND the cats. Thanks for joining us on our Scottish journey. Slàinte mhath! *Raise glasses and cheers*

Room view this am

The Strands, basically the cliff street along the ocean

Old course and the Old Course Hotel in the distance

Hole one tee

Bunch of dorks looking good teeing off but sucking

Little bit cold

18the hole. Know why there are 18 holes on a course? Because that's how many would fit here on the old course and every other course was patterned after this one.

So I'm basically telling him that he never listens to anything I say. I told him this was the famous course, the one where the open is played every 5 years and he won't believe me. He thinks it's not fancy enough or good enough. He asks the starter in the building behind us and guess what? OF COURSE IT IS!!! I do research. Sheeeeiiiiittt