Travel With Me // An Afternoon in St. Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland

I first heard about St. Andrews when researching study abroad options when I was a student at Baylor. The pictures in the study abroad advertisement were a dream. They showed romantic coastlines, enchanting castles, mysterious skies, and a beautiful university campus. I knew I’d be paying this place a visit one day. So, for the second day trip from our home base of Dundee (see our first day trip here), we took the bus out to St. Andrews and spent the afternoon in this lovely town full of history, golf, and scholarship.

In our usual fashion, we spent the first hour walking around and getting a feel for the area as we hunted down our next meal. We found a great casual burger place (which I talk about below), and then we slowly made our way to our first attraction of the day, St. Andrews Castle. The ruins that remain at the castle site have been there since around the year 1200, and it has a stunning location right by the sea.

Well, apparently we shouldn’t have walked so slowly to the castle. We knew places in Europe closed early during the winter due to the off-season, but we didn’t realize that meant a 4pm closing time in St. Andrews. Of course, this was also one of the few places I didn’t research much ahead of time. We arrived at the ticket office around 3:15, just fifteen minutes before last entry was allowed. We still had forty-five minutes to look at the castle, so we bought a ticket and dove right into the introductory exhibit. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).