Tentsmuir

A few miles outside of St. Andrews is the Tentsmuir forest.  It is a large natural park with lots of hiking trials, and goes right along the beach.  It is also a great place to see seals hauled out from a distance (however you need a good pair of bins!)  When we went it was really windy, and the sand moved out in front of us like a fog.  Beautiful!

Introducing Laurel and Togo

I have been lucky enough to begin work with the St. Andrews aquarium, with four harbor seals to play with.  At the moment Laurel, a 24 year old female, and Togo, a 2 year old male, are residing at the aquarium.  However later in September two new arrivals will be coming in from a facility shutting down in Denmark.  And most exciting is that it is a mother and her 4 week old pup!  She is also Togo's mother, so it will be a family reunion.

St Andrews Botanical Gardens

I finally got around to visiting the botanical gardens in St Andrews.  It is massive, lots of hiking trials, very lovely.  And the sun does come out occasionally in Scotland!

Fringe shows

Marc and I are enjoying the fringe this year.  Marc has enjoyed the festival the past few years, but I have not been in Edinburgh during August yet to enjoy it.  City centre is absolutely insane; trying to walk down the royal mile is impossible there are just to many people.

Our first show was a gift from a man marc met on the train.  When Marc had travelled down to Cornwall for his school project with the seal sanctuary, he met the coordinator for a fringe show.   He brought the most talented art students (junior high to high school age) from Shanghai here to put on a show.   I was blown away by how much they did; before the show the students made arts and crafts (such as painting fans, making cards) and gave them away to the audience.  They provided food and drink.  During the show they did everything; lots of traditional dancing, song, played their own instruments, and even had visual arts of painting and cutting figures out of paper on stage.  And at the end of the night they gave away all their props (like Chinese knots) as it was a one night show.

They were very talented, and gave so much for the audience in the show.  Fantastic :)

We have also been hopping around all the 'free' (meaning donation based) comedy shows.  Really funny stuff.  And tons of it.  You can spend all day and night just going show to show.  There are hundreds of veneus, don't know how they find all these show spaces just for August.  They have been in cool places though; there were a few held in some of the vaults under the city.  

The paid shows are also nice.  Tickets are not to pricey, and at least they are not quite so crowded.  We went and saw the show 'bookworm' which was about the ultimate book club put together by the actress who played lavender brown on harry potter.  She is just as energetic in her show as she was in the movie.

The book festival starts next week, and there will be fringe shows all of august so we will be busy this month ^_^

Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo

My (early) birthday present from Marc was to go and see the Royal Military Tattoo.  We had unbelievable seats...facing the castle, with disability seating below us so there was a completely unobscured view.  It was jammed packed even though it was a preview night, and the media were invited.  They were running around on the floor trying to get shots of the performers throughout, and almost got run over by the pipers a few times when they didn't move fast enough!

The United States was well represented by the Navy's group, they are very talented musicians.  However I wasn't as thrilled with the theme...superhereos.  The played the theme music for popeye, dennis the menace (a superhero?), batman, and spiderman.  Throughout the castle was used as a screen to display images of the heroes....for batman they turned the castle into gotham.  It seemed tacky, but the crowd loved it.

Cornish Seal Sanctuary

Another post from Marc:

I spent last week in Helston in Cornwall, the Southwest of England for my Student Selected Component research project.   I actually stayed in a backpackers hostel, which was a converted farm in the middle of no where.  I had to walk 15 minutes to catch a bus, which took an hour to arrive at Gweek, where the seal centre I was doing my work at is located.  I wanted to share some pictures with you.

This is the view from my walk on the country road to the bus stop.

This is the main street in Helston.  The have a little stream that runs down both sides of the street.

Here is where I did my research.

This is the public viewing window into one of the hospital pools.

This is the Grey Seal permanent residents enclosure.   I like how much of a natural feel it has to it.

Highland wildlife park

Marc and I had a lovely weekend vacation up north in the highlands.  We stayed in a little town called Kingussie, which is near several natural areas.  We hiked trials roamed by Scottish wildcats (though didn't see any natives), and hung out in some hides bird watching on the Marsh.  But a highlight of the trip was the Highland wildlife park.  It is a zoo set up like a safari.  The animals are in massive enclosures, part of which you drive through, others you walk through.  The snow monkeys and scottish wildcats were a highlight: both had amazing exhibits, large groups, and were really comfortable hanging out around the visitors.  The Scottish cats had these walkways that went above the visitor pathways, and they would follow us around.  One of them was very vocal, you can hear him/her in the video below. 

 

We also had time to explore the Folk museum, which was a like the cow towns they still have stateside, as well as to catch a travelling concert by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.  Amazing musicians, and it was a treat to see them play in such a humble venue (the local gymnasium on fold out chairs).