As the Trade Group, the LLDD-Hyphen-L and myself went on a day-trip around Edinburgh's environs on a supersunny Saturday, I couldn't help but recall one of my overused jokes from when I was in law school and the schoolyear was about to end:
Me to classmates: Tara, bakasyon tayo this summer sa bahay namin sa Baguio!Classmates to me: Talaga, may vacation house kayo sa Baguio?
Me to classmates: Oo, sa may malapit sa beach!
No doubt Braveheart would have taken an axe to my head for reliving such corniness, but what else could I do? Old Mel had us believe Scotland was nothing but highlands and hardy weather, yet all we saw on our day-trip were blue skies and bright beaches.
Not that anyone was complaining.
(Well, except maybe my classmates. To this day. Understandably.)
Weekend at Berwick's
(Tenuous pun-segue from Mel Gibson's '90s Best Picture to Andrew McCarthy's '80s comedy classic. I've outdone myself.)
Our first stop was a lovely coastal resort town called North Berwick. It was a short yet very pleasant drive from Edinburgh, and from the shore you could see land clusters off the beach that looked very much like our Hundred Islands. (or, as they would call it here after local conversion, 37.5 islands)
Speaking of Andrew...
Our second stop was a quaint and quiet university town named after the saint (not the 80s actor, alas). It was smaller than Oxford and with much less people, but it had it's own charms, such as a picturesque countryside . . .
. . . an old world town center. . .
. . .a gorgeous beach. . .
. . . and I heard, some decent golfing.
(the gears in your head are spinning)
(Scotland?)
(historic beachside town?)
(golf?)
(Andrew McCarthy namesake?)
(yes, folks...)
It was that St. Andrew's!!!!!
Well text me nightly and call me Tiger! Chalk this one up to "Places I Always Heard Of But Never in a Million Years Thought I'd Ever Go To." Let me just say, television doesn't do the place justice at all - it is far, far more beautiful in person! Imagine what I would have felt if I actually knew how to play golf!
Despite being on the sport's most hallowed ground, the few golfers I saw there played liked - how shall we say this - crap. I saw topped shots that scooted just 10 feet; I saw hooked drives that veered violently off course; and I saw evidence (above) of at least one parked car's smashed windshield. So, yes, it felt good to be at St. Andrew's.
To be fair to the golfers, the crosswalk of the famed 18th hole surprisingly remained open for tourists to constantly traverse, even when players were ready to tee off. If there were people crossing in the middle, the golfers would yell "Fore" a few times - and then proceed to grip it and rip it anyway. Not a few people (and a certain lawyer/diplomat) had some pretty close calls of balls whizzing by their heads.
But the 18th at St. Andrew's is not about the crosswalk, of course. It's about the revered 700-year old Swilcan bridge. It looks small and unassuming at first, but it has a subsequent mesmerizing effect that constantly draws you back to it (like being told not to think about John Daly in swimwear, so of course you can't think of anything but John Daly in swimwear).
My mission became clear: I must get on that bridge. And picture-picture.
When I saw a gap between flights, I casually walked towards the bridge - only to be stymied at the last moment by some American tourists who had the same photo-op idea. So close. By the time they finished, the next group of golfers had arrived at the tee-box and were ready to tee-off. My day-trip companions had also begun to load onto the van for the ride back to Edinburgh. My window of opportunity was rapidly closing.
In times of desperation like these, when failure is not an option, there's really only one thing I can do: ask the LLDD-Hyphen-L for help. So we stormed the bridge together.
The result: one heck of a Facebook profile pic.
Eat your hearts out, golfer classmates! Who says you shouldn't play golf with your wife? Scotland, you've been awesome!
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