Fresh Air

So we left Beijing to get some fresh air in Scotland. With everyone in China celebrating the entire week "Golden Week" for the National Holiday and Mid-Autumn Moon Festival October 2-6, we took the opportunity to do some college searching with AF in Scotland. We went to Edinburgh and St. Andrews from September 29th to October 5th.

We took what we thought was going to be a KLM flight from Beijing to Amsterdam but was really a China Southern airplane. The flight was around 9 hours in some really uncomfortable seats. We got to Amsterdam and thought we might not have seat on the connecting flight, it all worked out. We stayed at a nice apartment/hotel at the east end of the old city of Edinburgh "Holyrood Aparthotel".

We walked everywhere in the cental part of Edinburgh. It was scenic hilly in the old city area. We visited the University of Edinburgh which was beautiful and large. They had a nice open day program that was modularized and could be customized. It was very informative. It is a very large university with a prestigious English program that Abby is interested in.













We then went to St. Andrews which was a much smaller town (3 main streets) that took no more than 10 minutes to walk from end-to-end. We stayed at a very comfortable inn called Ardgowan Hotel. We visited the St Andrews Cathedral which was really just a shell of the old cathedral from the 1500's.

Here is a good reference site for more information: http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/standrews/cathedral/index.html

While in St. Andrews the Dunhill Links Championship was being played. We stopped by on Thursday for a Pro-Am round but lesser pros were playing on the St. Andrews Old Course. All the big Ryder Cup names were playing at Kingsbarns Golf Course. Often celebrities are at these events although we did not see Michael Douglas, Hugh Grant, Samuel L. Jackson, etc. http://www.alfreddunhilllinks.com/