Across the Pond for 50 Days: A Weekend Excursion to British Open and London

So Jeff Webb and I decided to go to the British Open at Saint Andrew’s Golf Course to watch the game on Friday morning/ afternoon. We left once again around 1:30 from Oxford on Thursday afternoon. This time we stayed in a different hostel closer to the Royal Mile and the train station called Budget Backpackers. Although it was a nice, cleaner, and friendlier hostel than the one I had stayed in the weekend before the only rooms that were available were the four people rooms. Jeff and I stayed in one set of bunk beds while another random and 30-year-old couple shared the other. They were nice but it definitely wouldn’t be something I would want to share again.

We woke up at 8:00 the next morning to catch an early up to Saint Andrews. It took about ninety minutes to get to up to the station by the golf course. We then caught this bus called the Golf-link that ran all day between the station and the course. It was great because it only cost four pounds for the round trip and the police stopped all the traffic so our busses could cut through the roads and drop us off at the entrance.

Jeff and I picked up the tickets I had ordered off of ticketmaster.com for twenty-five pounds a piece, which we both agreed was a great price for tickets. Then we headed inside to watch the Championship. Unfortunately they made us check our cameras and our cell phones at the gate so i dont have any pictures from inside the Champions. I was very fortunate to be tagging along with Jeff because through a friend of his fathers he was able to get us into the New Club. This club overlooked the 18^th fairway, and was pretty much one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. Jeff and I hung out in the clubhouse for a couple of hours. We grabbed a sandwich and a St. Andrew’s beer from the bar and sat by the window watching players finish putting on the 17^th, tee off on the 18^th, and putt the ball in on the green all from the window. We were by far the youngest people in the club by a good fifteen years, but it was amazing to sit in and watch the game while it rained outside.

After a few hours we went for a walk around the course periodically stopping to see a group tee off or putt. We then headed back to the first tee to see Tiger Woods tee off before we headed back to Oxford for the day. When we got to the bleachers we were fortunate enough to grab front row center spots and watched a couple groups tee off while we waited. We sat and saw Rory McIlroy tee off after his previous day with a nine-under-par 63, Phil Mickelson end on the 18^th green, and then Tiger Woods tee off. It was amazing to see the crowd build up ten minutes before Tiger’s tee time and then dissipate right after he was done.

Unfortunately we had to pull ourselves away from the game to make it make to the train station so we could get back to Edinburgh. We literally ran to the hostel from the train station to pick up our stuff in order to make it back for our 5:00 train into Oxford. When we got back to the train station, our train was delayed for 30 minutes, then 45, then an hour; finally, they re-routed us onto an already crowed train into London at 6:25. It was a packed set of cars, extremely hot, and they ran out of food because they weren’t expecting so many people. Finally we go into London King Cross Station at twenty past midnight, and missed our original train to Oxford so we had to get on the tube and head over to Paddington. We got on the 12:45 train to Oxford and finally made it back into bed around 2:15 in the morning.

I did a lot of sleeping on Saturday to catch up from getting in so late the night before and a whole week’s worth of waking up early. At around five in the afternoon Jeff and I caught the Oxford Tube into London because one of our mutual friends, Hannah Greene and her family, had invited us to their home for dinner that evening. We had a great time hanging out with them in their beautiful home. We had steak for dinner, something I had been craving since getting over to Europe. Afterwards we met up with Kathryn and Elisabeth at one of the Marriotts in London to spend the night.

Sunday morning I woke up early to go to one of the services at Westminster Abbey. It was so beautiful inside! Unfortunately because there were a few services on Sunday, I did not have a lot of time to explore the church. The fantastic choir sang for the first half of the mass and then they went into the sermon. I met up with Alexis and two of her friends from Huston at the service.

The four of us then took the tube over to Harrods and walked around for a bit before we took a taxi over to Kensington Palace for high tea. The history of high tea comes from Anna the 7^th Duchess of Bedford who would get a sinking feeling in the afternoon. It was popular at that time for people to only have two meals a day: breakfast and diner. Anna had her servants bring her a pot of tea and a light snack in the afternoon to help her get through the day better. She soon invited friends over to drink tea and stroll through the gardens with her. At the Orangery at Kensington Palace we each got the Royal Champagne Tea, served with a pot of tea, finger-sandwiches, orange scone, deserts, and a flute of champagne. It was a lot of fun and a great way to catch up with everyone.

I then departed from the group to meet up with Kathryn and we explored more of London. We walked around the city and headed up towards Tower Bridge, which neither of us had seen yet. As the legend goes, Tower Bridge is sometimes wrongly called London Bridge. In 1968 when Robert McCulloch purchased the London Bridge to use in Arizona he thought he was actually buying the Tower Bridge.