Hurricanes in St. Andrews

Hello everyone! Today was an interesting day.  Lauren, Grace, Katelin and I got up this morning and got a bus to St. Andrews.  At this point, the rain wasn't too bad...well, more of that to come.  The bus ride was really nice.  I personally had a nice nap until we got to St. Andrews.  That's when the fun began.

Within 5 minutes of stepping of the bus, we were soaked.  It was really rainy and really windy.  So, it came at us from all angles.  At this point our trip looked pretty dismal.  We some how ended up at the castle.

Here's the castle.  I couldn't really get a good picture because the wind kept moving my hand.

Then, we began our journey down to the golf course.  The rain was still pretty bad at this point and the wind kept getting worse and worse.  It was especially bad down by the water.  

Here's the golf course.

And the ocean.

At this point we headed for the warmth and dryness of the Links Club House (which wasn't very exciting). But, when we came back outside the rain had stopped.  Oh Scotland weather.

And a picture to illustrate how bad the wind was (the rain was bad enough today that I broke out my rain boots).

Then, we headed into some of the shops by the Old Course.  By the time we came out of those, it looked like...

this.  I really don't get how it can go from torrential down pours to blue skies.  It probably had something to do with the wind.

Once the weather got a little bit nicer, we looked around the golf course area for a little while.  I was happy to get some blue sky pictures.

Here's the hotel (which has really nice bathrooms incase you were wondering) with the bridge.

Here's the bridge with the Royal and Ancient.

After this, we walked around St. Andrews for a while and got some lunch.  The wind was still pretty bad even though the rain cleared up.  Once we finished lunch, we headed to the Abbey.

Here's part of the Abbey.

The ocean looked really pretty once the rain cleared away.

Unfortunately, this was the end of our blue sky.  It started to cloud over again around this time.

We also found a pastry and I got a caramel shortcake. 

Once we finished eating our baked goods, we headed back to the bus station because the sky looked like it was about to release Hell on us again...we were right.  About the time we were 100 yards away from the train station it began to rain really hard again.  So, we spent the rest of our time in the bus station waiting for the bus.

The ride back was pretty interesting evidently (I say evidently because I slept through most of it). But from what I heard and saw later on, there was lots of damage. (Like trees down everywhere.)  Our bus accidently hit a tree (with it's mirror, so it wasn't a big deal) because of how bad some of roads were.  (Here's an article that Lauren found about what all was going on http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2011/05/23/summer-what-summer-scotland-battered-by-100mph-winds-86908-23150119/.  Just as a reference, Fife is where St. Andrews is and Perthshire is close to Stirling).  But we made it back alive.  Tomorrow, Lauren and I are headed to Inverness where we're going to take a boat tour of Loch Ness and visit Urquhart Castle!