The Edinburgh Experience: A day away exploring, a day at home exploring and a day at the zoo

Last weekend a friend and I took a day trip to St Andrews.

We started by touring around the remnants of St Andrews Cathedral.

From the cathedral we walked down the break wall for the harbour and along the East Sands

Looking toward St Andrews castle from the break wall

Heron in the harbour

A very tame seagull posing for me

East Sands

From the East Sands we headed to the castle. St Andrews castle had a rough history having to be rebuilt several times throughout its tenure. But my favourite historic event from the castle was when enemies tried to tunnel their way into the castle through solid rock. The castle residents could hear their enemies digging. So they started digging randomly inside the castle to try and meet up with the tunnel of their enemies. It took three tunnel attempts but they finally found their enemies tunnel.

After that we headed into the town for lunch and walked around the shops.

We then headed towards the Old Course and the West Sands. The Old Course is holding the British Open this year in the summer and the preparations were well under way.

The world famous Swilcan Bridge

There is a footpath/road that crosses the 1st and 18th fairways which you are allowed to walk across. I find it so foreign to be able to walk across a golf course while people are playing (but also pretty cool)

The first and 18th fairways

Looking back toward the Royal and Ancient Golf Club

West Sands

This past Wednesday, the entire second year and GEP classes went to the zoo. We had to prepare a 5-10 minute talk on mammalian adaptation of one animal. I had to prepare a talk on Meerkats. Cool Meerkat fact: They are immune to many venoms. This allows them to be able to eat scorpions (once they remove the stinger!). Other than our talks we had the day to tour the zoo.

Tapir

Zebra

Meerkat posing during my talk

Penguin Parade!
(They open the Penguin enclosure and whatever penguins want to come
out for a walk, they take on a little parade around the zoo)

Lastly, yesterday I finally climbed Arthur's Seat. Strategically I didn't pick the best day because when I got to the top, people were sort of crawling around any time they got near an edge for fear of being blown off. I have never experienced a wind like that!