Easter Weekend

This story starts in our flat (in more ways than one) because before we lived here, James had a roommate named Luke. Luke's family owns and lives in a castle. It's technically called Carriden House, but it looks like a castle, is giant like a castle, and has its own watchtower, graveyard, and church ruins. It's a castle. Over Easter break (the last two weeks, which has been an extended spring break for St Andrews), Luke invited a few of us down for a weekend to keep him company while his parents were away.


We drove down (in a car! exciting!) with some friends on Friday afternoon, and arrived just in time to hit the grocery store and get the lay of the land, inside and out. We took a "quick" tour of the castle, which is half bed and breakfast (where the decoration reminded me of something out of Pride and Prejuidice) and half a family residence. Anchored by two spiral staircases, it was an insane labyrinth, and I got lost almost every time I tried to leave the group (at least on the first day). This is our room, which we claimed based on the fact that it was the first familiar room we found when we tried to go to bed. It was also one of the warmest places in the whole castle! Do you see the turret in the picture above? That was one of the closets in our room.


Then, we went outside to check out the view, and of course, the graveyard! The first Carriden church ruins are in there too, but there isn't much left at this point. This is my favorite gravestone, although not the only one featuring a skull and crossbones.


We surmised that a bunch of pirates must be buried here, since the castle itself overlooks the Firth of Forth.


After a surprise party for Andie's birthday on Friday night, we started our Easter celebrations on Saturday (since some of our party had to leave that day). First, I went out and hid tons of chocolate eggs all over the front yard and graveyard. Matt went up to our room and took pictures of me, like a creeper, so we were both "out" of the hunt. Of course, I did a little too well in my hiding, so we ended up helping everyone else look after a while.




Matt took a ton of gorgeous hidden egg pictures, but my favorite is this one. Yes, that's a real bird's nest we found!


Then, we decorated eggs for "rolling." Apparently, this is a tradition in a lot of places (including America) but I'd never heard of it before. These are our eggs: the rhizome Christmas egg (aka what happens when we try to decorate an egg together) and Mr. Mustachio.


There was a pretty big cliff behind the castle for rolling, but we eventually resorted to violent throwing, because our eggs weren't breaking. Matt looks sad at the destruction of the rhizome egg, but it was really fun to throw eggs around.


Before we left on Sunday, we climbed up to the watchtower. Way, way up. I won't post the awesome picture where Matt looks nauseous from the heights, but there were clammy hands and butterflies, even for those of us who aren't really afraid of heights!


Anyway, it was a really fun weekend (thanks, Luke!) and we took the train into Edinburgh on Sunday as we made our way back to St Andrews. We are completely in love with that city, and not just because Matt gets to go to McDonald's and eat British beef Big Macs every time we're there. We finished up "break" with a fairly productive week of writing and working, and now we're gearing up for (fingers crossed) a trip to London at the end of this month.