St Andrews

I finally went up to St. Andrews and met with my potential doctorate advisor. It is a small town, only a few streets, but it is right on the water and in the summer is a huge tourist attraction. The town has nice shopping areas, an old cathedral, a castle, and of course golfing. The schools marine center is right on the water; the student offices have this view of the beach.

I was very impressed with the professor and his students, the program is exactly where I would like to be. Unfortunately it is still a waiting game; the grant for the research expenses will not be awarded until July and Dr. Janik does not want to admit me until he knows I won't have a shoestring budget to do research with. So continue waiting, fingers crossed that school will still work out. So far the grant seems to be progressing well and it looks hopeful, but we will see.

Meadows Festival and Scot Whiskey Experience

Marcs cousin David is in town, and the three of us enjoyed a lovely Sunday out. We visiting the Meadows festival full of sales and carnival rides, visited the national history museum, walked the royal mile, saw street performers, and indulged in the Scottish Whisky Experience. There were four whiskies from the largest production areas, and I was surprised to find I liked the smokey flavor the best.

Marc and the cats

I just really liked these shots of marc and the cats ^_^ Pachelbel is very good about making sure Marc does his homework.

Playing around

Though Marc is still limited by his school schedule, we are making the most of our time over the pond by taking nice day trips around the area. We went to the surgeons museum one day (Edinburgh is one of the major roots of medicine, the war exhibits from WWI and WWII were especially haunting). And recently we have found a BBC resource that provides audiotours of towns around scotland. We went to Dunfermline yesterday, which has an old and new abbey. Notably, Robert the Bruce rests underneath the alter in the new church, and St. Margaret is buried there. Macbeth's killer also took residence in the area, and had a large lookout tower which is now reduced to rubble. Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon was born in Dunfermline, and as a child he loved to look into gardens that were reserved for the wealthy. He later came back and bought the gardens, creating a massive public park for everyone to enjoy. And we ended the trip with a potent cider at the creepy wee pub, which is a fun little hole in the wall.

Return to Edinburgh

To end our wonderful two week trip, we have returned to Scotland and are enjoying exploring the city. We went to the writers museum, featuring Scottish authors Robert Louis Stevenson, Hume, and Sir Walter Scott, a optical illusion museum (complete with camera obscura and a mirror maze, way cool!), and a tour of Mary Kings close, the street that was covered over to build the royal mile. A great way to end a fabulous trip.

Dublin Part 2

We returned to Dublin before heading back to Scotland to tour the Guiness factory. While I have yet to find a beer that would be enjoyable to drink, it was a nice tour and my friends enjoyed drinking my share of free beer. I did like the Guiness chocolate though :)

Belfast

Northern Ireland is beautiful, and Belfast is a nice city and was fun to wander around. They have nice things like a free history museum and botanical gardens, sites to visit where the Titanic was constructed, and if I were to go back I would want to go on their black taxi tour focused on the graffiti propaganda during the troubles between the late 1960′s and 1998, divided the nation, mainly between Nationalist Catholics and Unionist Protestants. But our main reason for being in Belfast was to jump up to the Giants Causeway. Similar to Fingals cave, it is hexagon basalt columns formed by volcanic cooling. Legend says there were two giants; the scottish and irish giant. They were big boys who liked to argue, and one day the Irish giant decided to build a causeway to go over and beat up the Scottish giant. He did, egging on the Scottish giant the whole way and when he made his way over to Scotland, he realized that the Scottish giant was way bigger than he was and he was guarenteed to lose the fight. But by this point, the Scottish giant was angry and wanted to kill the Irish giant. The Irish giant ran home to his wife, scared of what would happen. His wife told him not to worry, and dressed him up as an infant, putting him into a cribe and telling him to be quiet. Shortly after, the Scottish giant came pounding on the door. He demanded to know where the Irish giant was. The wife politely said her husband was out hunting, would he like some tea while waiting for him to come back? The scottish giant sits down, then notices the baby in the corner. He is stunned; if the giants child is that large, then how large must the father be? There would be no way the Scottish giant could defeat such a large man. So the Scottish giant runs home, tearing up the causeway behind him so that the Irish giant could not follow him.