The Land of Haggis

After being in bustling London for a few nights, Scotland offered a much more relaxed pace. From the moment I first laid eyes on the rolling mountains and the expansive fields, I knew that Scotland is a place to get away from it all. The air was cleaner and the wind was wild. I like to think that the Scottish wind got the London smokiness out of my clothes.

The word that Lauren and I kept using to describe Scotland was "quaint". We had decided rather early on that London is "fab" and Scotland is "quaint." That's a description that I still stick to whenever someone asks me what I thought about those two countries.

St. Andrews 

The first major stop on my Scotland trip was St. Andrews where my friend from home is also studying abroad. One of my favourite vacation spots in Canada has to be St Andrews, New Brunswick so it was really nice to visit it's namesake and see all the similarities. The sea, the small-town feel, and the cute independently-owned restaurants and cafes are what reminded me of the Canadian St. Andrews.

{downtown St. Andrews}

{One of the gates to the University of St. Andrews campus}

{The University of St. Andrew - where Will and Kate met!}

{wild water}

{shoreline}

{Scottish thistle}

{Scottish thistle}

Haggis and other Scottish food 

Since I was in the Land of Haggis, I had to give the traditional Scottish dish a try. For those of you who don't know, haggis is a sheep's heart, liver, and lungs minced with onion, stock, and spices and is encased in the sheep's stomach. Very economical if you ask me! At home I would definitely stay away from things like haggis but I thought that I'd be adventurous when in Scotland. And I found that I actually didn't mind the taste! As long as I didn't dwell on what I was eating it was pretty good.

However, I wasn't brave enough to try blood pudding which is a type of sausage made by cooking blood  with meat, fat, and bread. But I did try an empire cookie which was extremely tasty! An empire biscuit is a traditional Scottish cookie which has a layer of jam in between two cookies. The top of the empire biscuit is covered with white icing and topped off with a maraschino cherry.

{Empire biscuit, so delicious!}