It's a Saturday morning here...bright and sunny and cold. Yesterday, it actually snowed! It didn't stick around in St. Andrews, but all day on the radio the BBC was discussing how some areas around Braemar and Spittal of Glenshee (yes, that's actually the name of an actual place in Scotland...) were going to see about 6 inches of snow, and the snow gates on the A93 were closed for some of the day.
Here's a photo I saw on the local news website of some sheep trudging through appreciable snow in Aberdeenshire.
David had to drive to Edinburgh at 5:00 am and said it was like driving to an early morning hockey tournament in Upstate New York! He was returning friends of ours to the Edinburgh airport for an early morning flight to London, after they have been visiting us this past week. They arrived last weekend, and since they have been to St. Andrews before as leaders of this study group, they know the town well and had a list of things they wanted to be sure to see. We all spent Saturday afternoon strolling through the streets, and Emma and her friend broke away from us to do their own shopping for a good bit of the afternoon. When the shops closed, we made our way to the Tesco to pick out some dinner...and we all agreed that their prepared Indian food is pretty much equally as good as what one can get in an Indian restaurant in our hometown. I'm not sure if that's more of a comment on the Tesco or the local Indian restaurant, but it's a fact.
We did take our friends to the Steak Barn in town, which is new since they have last been here. It's actually not a barn at all, but a huge stack of potato crates that have been fastened together into a surprisingly large building, with a kitchen at the back and huge communal tables sitting on a floor of dusty gravel. It's open only in the "spring" and "summer" here (though I'm not sure why, especially on a day like today!) and there are some small heaters and open fire pits inside. Still, it's definitely a place you want to visit with a warm coat!
The menu is a bit limited, and most of the folks inside are eating aged steaks on wooden platters with a mound of chips alongside. The girls struggled a bit to find something that wasn't meat-based to order, and in the end Emma asked the waitress if they could create something for her since she didn't like anything on the menu. They returned with a huge "burger" that had a thick slice of tomato in place of a burger. Aside from having some difficulty in figuring out how to eat it, she said it wasn't bad.
Since Emma and John had school this week, we weren't able to get too far from home with our visitors. They did meet Emma and her friends from school in town one day for lunch, and visited some of the cafes and parks on their own. When Emma and John came home from school on Monday, I took all the kids to the leisure center in Dundee for an hour in the pools and on the waterslides. We also had fish and chips for dinner one night (a must-do when visiting the UK...). On Wednesday, Emma and David went with them to Edinburgh on the train for some shopping and museum visits...and more cafes. I think David said he had had five cups of coffee by the time they left on the evening train to come home!
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