Welcome to St Andrews (no period, apostrophe, nor apparent reasoning)

Chkchkchkchkchk...

'Dun dun dun 'dun duuunn duuunn.  Dun dun dun dun dunnn.  Dun dun dun dun duuunn duuunn.  Dun dun dun duunn duunn.

In case you didn't recognise that (why wouldn't you?) that was the Chariots of Fire theme.  And yes, that beach above is where the iconic scene was filmed.  

I had my first day in St Andrews yesterday for some pre-sessional welcome events.  We took the bus from Dundee in the morning and arrived in St. Andrews.  A quick walk takes us right from the bus station to the lovely little building in the picture. ——>

That's the mediaeval history building where I'll probably be spending a lot of my time.  And it's conveniently located across the street from the mediaeval library.

A few of the mediaevalists decided to meet outside this building before going to one of the welcome events and going for coffee afterwards.  

In a building attached to the one with the mediaeval library (no picture) is where a short taught postgraduate welcome event was held.  It was a mix of orientation and icebreakers.  They pretty much just told us a lot of the services the university offers if you're struggling, and reminded us that we'll all be struggling together.  Not the most reassuring speech.

During lunch we talked a bit about the cool things to see in St. Andrews—which sparked our spontaneous journey to the beach (one of three in St Andrews)—and what we had left to do to fully matriculate.  There was a general library tour at 2:00 (which we didn't end up going to yesterday, but there's another today) and we decided to walk around the town before then.  The streets were quite crowded with people still moving in, and on our walk I managed to snap a few pictures  through the throngs of people.

 The part of the town where we'll actually be studying is quite small: it's made up of the east/west-running North Street, Market Street, and South Street.  This makes it quite a feat to get lost.  But there are a lot of buildings in unpredictable layouts and some streets that you think will connect the main streets end abruptly between them.  So although we never got lost, we did have to backtrack a few times to get around buildings.

 Before the library tour, we decided that the few of us without our matric cards (student I.D.) should get theirs, so we made our way a few minutes from the general library to the Gateway building where we were run through a gauntlet of queues to perform visa/passport checks, matriculation, final identification checks, etc.  It took way longer than expected but everyone who was there is now officially matriculated.  Afterwards, we decided to leave the library tour for today and head to a cafe instead.  The cafe in question is quite famous, as Will and Kate met there...
for tea...
once...
and maybe not even then.
It might seem like a bit of a tourist trap, but they actually have really nice coffee/tea/hot chocolate drinks all for the flat rate of £1.50 which is pretty cheap for St Andrews.

We then did a bit of a walkabout between the Student Union building and a couple pubs while we killed the time until 8:00 when there was a postgrad social.  We got there a little after 8:00 to join a giant crowd waiting outside the packed venue.  We then followed said crowd as we were redirected back to the Student Union building where they would offer free wine in recompense for lack of foresight in the number of attendees.  At this point we were a bit queued out and there was a hiking society meeting in a few minutes, so we just went to that instead.  A full 12 hours after we got to campus, we got on the bus to head home to Dundee.

Accompanying placard to the memorial above.

Today my flatmates and I are sleeping in a bit, and going to head down to the Uni for the noon o'clock library tour.  The mediaeval history students have a meeting today (the mediaeval studies meeting is Wednesday) and there's an introductory/information session for those interested in taking Old English this afternoon as well (for both groups).

There are club/society intro sessions all week, as well as nightly bonfires on the beach, so we'll likely head to a few of those as well.

Below are some random pictures from our walk:

Fancy hotel right along one of the smaller golf courses.  This is the side that faces the beach.

Same hotel and a bit of the links (I don't know if this is the real first golf course, but they call it the Old Course, so it might be.  It also looks incredibly plane (if you'll pardon the pun).

This is on the beach (West Sands) looking back towards the town at a nice building.

More buildings and the Old Course from the beach.

Thanks for reading!