Old friends, new places.

A long time ago, my sunday school teacher paired me up to be pen pals with the daughter of her pen pal in Birmingham, England. I'm not exactly sure of the sequence of events anymore, but when I was in 4th grade, I met my pen pal when she came to Arizona for the first time (I can't remember if we were pen pals before meeting or only after). Since then, we saw each other 2 other times (once in high school, and again during college), all being on my home continent. This past weekend, I finally had the privilege of finally seeing her on this side of the Atlantic. Chantal, not in Birmingham anymore, lives in St. Andrews, Scotland after graduating from the University (a university older than when Columbus rediscovered America - still can't really wrap my head around that). So I had the excellent opportunity of actually having a (legit) reason to go to Scotland, a place forever on my bucket list.

Extremely optimistic after my first failed attempt at getting to Scotland (thanks to Eyjafjallajokull), my second attempt was nearly derailed as well thanks to strikes in France that made flying through their airspace minimal. Many flights were cancelled. Fortunately, mine was only delayed 4 hours.

After a bumpy beginning, the rest of the trip couldn't have been more perfect. Seeing Chantal was lovely, and she was the perfect host. The first day when Chantal was at work, I did exploring on my own of St. Andrews and found some peace among the wind in the beautiful botanical gardens.

The next day, we took the train into Edinburgh (and hour from St. Andrews). Edinburgh could be considered the birthplace of Harry Potter (we even ate lunch at the cafe where they claim Rowling wrote on her first napkins), and I could definitely see why:

Edinburgh is, in every single way, enchanting. We visited the castle, pieced at delicious fudge, walked down Royal Mile, drank bowls of hot chocolate, shopped on Princes street, visited the cathedral, and listened to bag pipers in between everything. That night, after returning to St. Andrews, we finished it all off with greasy fish and chips. Perfect.

Sunday, we roamed St. Andrews a bit more. We dawned the red University robes to get into the Castle ruins for free, and thought we would do the traditional pier walk while we had them on (although, we then took them off because we didn't want them, or us, to fly away in the sea breeze). As the weather was really nice, we took a long stroll from the East Sands to the West Sands and then made our way through the Old Course (apparently well known through the golfing world), and before calling it a day, we had to get ice cream at world famous (in St. Andrews) Jannette's. The final send off that night was a homemade roast dinner with a pie and custard that was freshly baked and less than 2 pounds (I couldn't NOT get it!).

Chantal left for work and I left for Edinburgh the next morning, with a hope that the next 8 months wont pass before we get to see each other again (although, 8 months is nothing compared to the years that have passed before!). I ate again at the Harry Potter cafe (it's not actually called that, but in my head that's what it is) and wandered around a bit more before having to sit for the rest of the day. Finally, the trip would not have been complete without a trip on top of the double-decker bus (even if it was the bus to the airport).

I'm already fantasizing about a possible trip back to Scotland, and I hope that she'll be able to make her way down to Malaga too before the year is finished.

Moral of the story: Pen pals rock.

Chantal and I at the Castle overlooking Edinburgh