Edinburgh, Scotland (Day 2)

 Today being Sunday means caviar with breakfast again.  Today Nino, who as Restaurant Manager makes sure everything gets done, served me a double portion.  He's the best.  And Regent thinks so too since he's getting a promotion to Food and Beverage Manager in a few days.

Today we did the St. Andrews Golf Tour.  St. Andrews is about 60 miles away and is home to St. Andrews University as well as the famous Golf Club.  The University is where Prince William met Kate Middleton, and in case you didn't know that, a cafe where they supposedly had their first coffee together has it painted on the window.  The weather was wonderful, warm, and sunny albeit a bit windy.  

The drive there was quite nice.  The rolling countryside reminded me a lot of California.

Our first stop was a brief one at the former St. Andrews Cathedral.  Like so many we've seen, this was a Catholic Cathedral that was destroyed during the Reformation by the Protestants.  There's not much left, but it obviously was once a beautiful church.

Carl was on this tour also, so we hung out together and helped him on his mission to find a few things for friends.  We found a couple of them and then took a lunch break and had very good fish and chips at a local pub.  We wandered a bit more and found the other things he was looking for.  Then we spent a bit of time near the Old Course.  There are seven courses as part of the club, the most famous being the Old Course, the New Course, and the Jubilee Course.  Last month was the 150th Anniversary of the Club so there was a big celebration.  They are still taking down the special stands that were put up on the course.  Being Sunday, no one was playing on the course so the public is free to walk around on it.  We didn't feel the need to do that, so we just looked around near the clubhouse and I took a few pictures.

The Members Clubhouse

The 18th Hole

Was this built like this and why?

On our way back we passed over the River Forth.  This is the locale of the Firth of Forth.  A firth is an estuary.  I always heard of the Firth of Forth, but now I know what it is.  This is a railroad bridge completed in 1897 that still handles over 30 trains a day.  There are now two auto bridges in the same area completed in the 1960s and in 2018.  So there are bridges from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries right here together.

The Royal Yacht Britannia is permanently docked right near us.  It's now a museum and I had wanted to go, but we ran out of time today, which was a disappointment.  However, when we returned to the ship we learned that due to high winds, we won't be able to get out of the narrow lock tonight as scheduled so we will be staying one more day.  That means I'll get to go tomorrow, which I'm very happy about.

We got a point for 3rd place today in Trivia with only 8/15, but we'll take it.  Glad I insisted that Gerald Ford was the President who once was a "fashion model" while attending law school at Yale.  We all had dinner at Prime 7 and had lots of laughs, as usual.  Then we went to the comedy show of Kevin Devane who was just so-so.  Don't think we'll go to his next show.

This is a nice picture of us at the Edinburgh Castle yesterday that Carl took.