A Saturday in Scotland is...

Saturday was, finally, a bit more successful for us, and even a bit of fun. We planned to begin the day by taking John to rugby practice, but I couldn’t get on email to check the location of the park, so we skipped it. (Also, it was pouring rain, but I know better than to use inclement weather as an excuse to beg off of a kid’s sports practice!) Instead, we headed into town. Emma has signed up for a children’s theater program at the Byre Theatre in St. Andrews, so I took her there at noon. David and John waited outside (Emma had pronounced the act of being accompanied into the theatre by a mother, father AND little brother as “mortifying”) and I took her in, acting as if it was completely normal to drop off a child with complete strangers in a foreign country and hoping that no one would try to engage me in conversation. The theatre was quite nice, though, so I left her there under the guardianship of a pixie-ish theatre director and a bunch of little girls, all of whom seemed to be named “Lotta.” I met the boys back on the street, and we took the next ninety minutes to explore the town.

St. Andrews is a ridiculously gorgeous town, picture-perfect in its medieval-ish-ness. It’s made up of three streets: North Street, Market Street (cobblestoned, of course), and South Street. All three are lined with achingly-charming cafes, restaurants and pubs. There are a few smaller streets that run perpendicular to these, all of which are called “closes” or “wynds”…in keeping with the Scottish tradition of substituting one word for a completely dissimilar one that means something entirely different. Both ends of the town are marked with a medieval arch, called ports, which were built in the 16^th century. (This is especially impressive to me, since I’m from the Midwest, where most ROCKS aren’t that old…) The University doesn’t really have a campus, so academic buildings are interspersed around the town, between the stunning Holy Trinity Church and Blackfriars Chapel. There are plenty of gift shops (many that sell all kinds of golf paraphernalia, of course!), clothing stores and bakeries as well, and (since it’s a college town, after all) lots of places for “take-away.” After walking a bit, the three of us stopped into a “chippy” shop (chippy shop means fish and chips, where “chips” means French fries…not potato chips…which are “crisps”…) for lunch, but the woman behind the counter made some guttural noises and pointed to her empty display cases, which we took as a signal that either her electricity was out or that the North Sea was now out of fish. So, we moved across the street to a kebab place. David and I shared one gargantuan doner kebab (assuming “doner” is lamb, but if it isn’t, please don’t correct me…in the land of haggis and blood pudding, it’s best to assume that all meat is “lamb.”) and John tucked into yet another cheese pizza. After lunch, we stopped into a bakery and shared one of their famous fudge donuts. The boys loved it, but I thought it was only OK, since I had assumed that fudge meant chocolate. It doesn’t.

After collecting Emma from the theatre, we went back to the car, and headed towards Dundee to shop for school uniforms. Along the way, Emma told us that the theatre was fine, but that the day’s assignment had been to come up with a creative way to greet each other, aside from the customarily-Scottish “hiya.” The director had suggested to Emma that she greet her peers the way all Americans greet each other: with a tip of the hat and a “howdy pardner.” Emma was nonplussed. (“First of all, I’m not Western,” she said, “and I definitely don’t wear hats!”) After twenty minutes, we crossed the bridge over the Firth of Tay and arrived in Dundee. We must have taken the wrong exit off a roundabout as we came into town, because we spent the next half-hour getting more and more lost. Since it was Saturday—and raining—it seemed as if every other resident of the “Kingdom of Fife” chose to go shopping as well, so the streets were packed with cars. We finally found our way (after driving right through a packed pedestrian-only road…with me cowering behind the map!), managed to SQUEEZE through an incredibly narrow parking garage, and park the car. By that time, David and I were both sweating profusely, John was asleep in the back, and Emma was still talking about the theatre program (“I told her all Americans greet each other by saying, “s’up?”).

It turns out that a Scottish mall is pretty much the same as an American one…mostly cell phone stores and coffee shops that are furnished to look like an urban sidewalk café. We initiated ourselves by going to a Primark, which is supposed to be the “British Target.” They didn’t sell school uniforms, however—the boys department was instead filled with button-downs with leather skinny-ties sewn into the necks! –so a saleswoman pointed us toward Debenham’s (“British Macy’s”). There, we found a uniform department, where one can buy grey trousers and white collared blouses in a two-pack for 6 pounds. The kids tried them on, and I must say that the uniforms do make them look quite professional—though extremely flammable as well. We then went in search of a “gym kit” (navy shorts and white tshirt) and a desperately-needed GPS unit, found both, and left the mall. With the GPS, we made it home in no time, without getting lost, and made dinner—another cheese pizza for the kids (despite my fear that one of them may come down with scurvy) and big glasses of wine for us!