Scotland

After spending the night in the Budapest airport, I was on my way to Scotland to meet up with Janny!

Day 1: Saturday

Janny lives in a small town on the eastern coast of Scotland called St. Andrews. It is home of the third oldest university in the world, having being founded in 1413 (the only two older universities are Oxford and Cambridge). I met Janny at the local bus station around noon, where we headed to her flat about a 5 minute's walk away. I dropped off my bags and we chatted for a bit before heading out for a quick tour of the town.

When I said St. Andrews was a small town, I really did mean small. It consists of three main parallel roads--North Street (near Janny's flat), Market Street, and South Street. It took us all of 30 minutes to walk around the town. Much like the university, the entire town is incredibly old, accented by the stone houses and crumbling castles that inhabit the place. After the quick tour, we headed to a nearby cafe called The Cottage Kitchen, where one of Janny's friends, Muir, worked. We ordered a sausage roll and a coffee, and hung out for a while catching up and reminiscing on old times.

Afterwards we decided to head back to Janny's flat for a nap. Apparently I was much more tired that I expected, and ended up sleeping like a brick for about 4 hours before being woken by Janny for dinner. We had some pasta and sweet potatoes before heading out to meet up with some friends at a bar. We had a few drinks before deciding to head to the student union pub, where we ordered "classic" drinks called a Pablo. Anyways, I probably had one too many, so after stopping by one of the guys, Alex's, flat, Janny and I made our way home at around 4:00am.


Day 2: Sunday

To treat our hangovers the next day, we decided to take it easy. We got some books and the Sunday paper and headed to some benches that overlooked one of the several beaches around St. Andrews. We sat there for a while, reading and chatting before deciding to grab some food at a burger place that Janny used to work at. From there, we headed back to the flat for a quick nap before heading to the movie theatre around the corner to watch Suicide Squad. It was the worst movie I have ever seen. After struggling through the two hour disaster, we went back to the flat to meet up with Karyn, one of Janny's flatmates who had just gotten back from visiting family in a town about an hour away. We sat around for a while talking, and once it got dark we headed to the beach to do some stargazing. While we had missed the peak of the Perseids meteor show the night before, we were still treated to a nice showing that night, and we lay there for a while marveling at the stars before calling it a night around midnight.


Day 3: Monday

While our original plan for the day was to walk part of the Fife Coastal path (a path that makes its way along the coast of the North Sea, which the kingdom of Fife borders), after we missed the bus we instead to spend our day at the beach. We bought a few snacks and drinks at the grocery store, and headed to the beach to settle in a for a few hours. After a while we joined by a girl named Milan, who hung out for a little bit before she had to go to work. While I did stick my toes in the water to say I had, I spent most of the time just laying out in the mild sun (there is a reason Scottish people are so pale). We headed back to the flat around 4:30 when Karyn was getting off of work.

Janny has a job where she spends a few ours each week with a guy named Ryan who has a mental disability, so while she went to go do that I went to the library to connect to the internet and figure out my game plan for the days after I left Scotland. Karyn met me at the library an hour or so later, and from there we went to go meet up with Janny, Ryan, and a few other friends who were hanging out at a restaurant/bar. We played some Uno and hung out for a while before Janny walked Ryan home and Karyn and I headed back to the flat. At around 1:00am Janny insisted that I watch Trainspotting, a movie about heroine addicts which is set in Scotland. After the movie, we called it a night and went to bed.

Day 4: Tuesday

Going back to our original plan, Janny and I hopped on a bus to Crail to walk part of the Fife coastal path. Once in Crail (which is about 20-30 minutes from St. Andrews), we stopped by a cute little museum that Janny suggested before starting our walk. Our plan was to walk the coastal path from Crail to Anstruther, which was around 4 miles away. The coastal path was absolutely beautiful, and we were treated to an amazing view of the ocean, including the Isle of May, a small island about 4 miles off the coast. We took our time walking the path, soaking in the sun and the sights. At one point we found some great rock formations/caves right next to the path and we took a break to climb around on the rocks and explore them a little. From end to end it took us about two hours to get the Anstruther, where we treated ourselves to a delicious fish and chips (AKA a chippy) meal before catching a bus back to St. Andrews at around 4pm.

Our plan for the night was to host a dinner party at the flat. We bought ingredients for fajitas, told a bunch of friends to come around 9, and started prepping for the dinner. At around 8 we were joined by Grace, Janny’s old roommate who is studying abroad in Russia for a year. While Grace lives in Texas, she had come to St. Andrews about a week and a half before she was supposed to go to Russia to get her visa and see some friends before she leaves.

Shortly after grace arrived more friends started showing up and dinner was served. We hung out in the kitchen for a while before heading out back to the shared courtyard that is connected to the flat. We were out there for a few hours before someone from the hotel that is also connected to the courtyard leaned out of their window and shined a flashlight on us. We didn’t really know what signal was being sent, but we found it best to head back inside. We spent the rest of the night just hanging out and chatting. We had a fun conversation about what our Top 5 albums are, which was an incredibly hard list to make. At around 1:00am everyone had headed home (except for Grace who was staying at the flat until she left for Russia) and the four of us called it a night.

Day 5: Wednesday

Janny was scheduled to work all day at the distillery, so Karyn and I had made plans to head to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, a month long arts festival throughout the entire city. Our plan was to meet up with Grace there, who had left early that morning to do some visa stuff. We got to Edinburgh at about 12:30pm after an hour and a half bus ride. Karyn showed me around for a little bit before meeting up with grace a little after 1. From there we roamed around for a while before getting a quick bite to eat. We were planning on going to a comedy show at 6:30, so until then we grabbed some drinks and found a place to sit and chat for a while.

The show was called “Fast Fringe”, where the idea of the show was to get a ton of comics on and off stage quickly. Each comedian would have three minutes for their skit before the next comic would come on. It was a fun show and we got to see around 15 comics in an hour. After the show we met up with Milan and her roommate (who we were going to meet at the show, but they had shown up a bit late), and walked around the city for a little bit. Grace, Karyn, and I wanted to get back to St. Andrews sooner rather than later, so we soon split paths with the others and headed to the bus station. Due to some changing in the bus schedules, we had a bit of a trip getting back, and while we left Edinburgh around 9, we didn’t get to St. Andrews until around midnight. We got back to the flat to find that Janny wasn’t there, so we hung out while we waited for her to get back. When she finally got back about an hour later we stayed up for a little longer to talk, since I would be leaving the next morning.

Day 6: Thursday

I had to wake up bright and early at 8:00am to give myself ample time to pack and print my plane ticket. Janny had generously offered to wake up as well to help me print my ticket, as well as walk me to the bus station afterwards. We got to the station about 20 minutes before the bus arrived, so we were able to have a nice little conversation while we waited. Once the bus arrived, we said our goodbyes and I was off to Glasgow to catch a plane to Amsterdam.


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Since I have been back in the States, a lot of people have asked me what my favorite part of my trip has been. While yes, Tomorrowland and Lowlands were amazing, and cities like Berlin and Budapest were awesome, I’ve told them that my favorite part was Scotland.

Scotland was just such a refreshing change of pace from everywhere else I went. While all the big cities were unique in their own way, they all had very similar atmospheres to them. St. Andrews, on the other hand, was completely different from anywhere else I was. The small town, full of old stone buildings right along the coast of the North Sea was just incredibly beautiful and relaxing. Not to mention that getting to see Janny and being able to get a glimpse of what her life is like across the pond was just a cherry on top.

So Janny, thanks for showing me around for those few days. I can’t wait to see you in the winter, and hopefully one day I’ll come back to St. Andrews and we can do it all again.

Thanks for reading,
Ben