British Golf Open, St Andrews

The British Open

Saturday

We had been toying with the idea of going to the British Golf Open for the last couple of years. It just so happened that this year's Open (the 139th British Golf Open) was held at the “home of golf”, St Andrews, so it would have been rude not to! We were lucky enough to secure tickets for the third round on Saturday.

We flew to Edinburgh on Friday night and checked in to Pollock Halls, one of Edinburgh University’s halls of residence, which is now partly used as guest lodgings. Staying in a university hostel felt like travelling back in time (with our little single beds), although with a bit more luxury (such as an en suite) this time around. We were very happy to find such reasonable accommodation in central Edinburgh, given the golf was on, and even more delighted with the fantastic free breakfast on Saturday morning! Every kind of option for cooked and continental breakfast was dished up in the residents’ canteen, including traditional Scottish fare (one poor tourist asked the chef what "that black thing" was, and when he replied "black pudding", she tentatively put one on her plate. We felt a bit bad for not telling her that she was about to eat a giant scab). We filled ourselves up with bacon, eggs, sausages, hash browns, baked beans, toast, orange juice, and probably a few other things we have forgotten to mention and then we rolled down to the train station to begin what turned out to be a very civilized, well run journey to the home of golf.

We spent the one hour train journey from Edinburgh to a town called Leuchars talking to a Detroit native who was commencing a golf holiday with some buddies. Tim performed his usual magic of bonding with someone in seconds over shared sporting knowledge (in this case golf and baseball), and we met with great approval after informing our new friend that not only had we been to a baseball game but it was Yankees v Red Sox at Yankee Stadium and yes, we had had a hot dog, and yes, we had had a beer and yes, we had even had Cracker Jacks! We think this means we’re now US citizens. Score!

On arrival in Leuchars, we all boarded double-decker buses and drove a further 5-10 minutes to the hallowed turf of St Andrews. We excitedly jumped off the bus and joined the queue to enter, only to hear that no cameras were allowed on the course. Disaster! So, good blog readers and sports fans, sadly we have no photos to share with you of our Open adventure, other than a rather unexciting one of Tim at the ticket gates. Sigh. However, we have pinched a few off the old interweb, so use your imagination and pretend those were our photos! Slightly depressed, we left our camera behind and entered “tent village” – the epicentre of food, merchandise and general merriment at the Open. We immediately perked up! After acquiring some souvenirs, and seeing Nick Faldo signing autographs (want a photo with him? Oh no wait, you can’t), we finally stepped out on the course.

The British Open is held on one of nine links golf courses spread around England and Scotland on a rotating basis each year. Some courses are used more often than others. St Andrews, for example, hosts the Open every five years, while other courses may only host the event once every 10-12 years. Much like scoring a century at Lord's, winning the Open at St Andrews is the pinnacle of any golf player's career. Tiger Woods won the previous two Opens at St Andrews in 2000 and 2005. No player had ever won three Opens at St Andrews. So Tiger had the opportunity of making more history!

St Andrews is the oldest and most famous golf course in the world. We don't know for sure when golf was first played on the site of St Andrews. The earliest written evidence suggests golf was played there in 1552, however it may have been much earlier than that. The golf course is built right in the town of St Andrews, so one end of the course has beautiful old stone buildings running along the edge of the fairway, providing a lot of character. Then the course runs along a long, narrow stretch of land away from the town towards St Andrews Bay. Being a links course, there are no trees. Many of the fairways are wide and open, meaning that the difficulty element of playing the course comes from the weather. There is a famous old stone bridge in the middle of the 18th fairway that is older even than the course itself! The Swilcan Bridge is only about 10 metres long and spans the Swilcan Creek that runs through the middle of the 1st and 18th fairways. It is at least 700 years old and has become a cultural icon in the sport of golf.

Initially we made our way to the first green/second tee and watched the pairs come through (10 minutes apart). From our spot we could see the players' second shots from mid-way down the first fairway on to the first green and then their subsequent putts. Then we got a very close look at them teeing off on the second hole. We saw about 8-9 pairs come through, including some high profile players like Phil Mickelson, Ian Poulter (who was dressed in a lovely lemon jersey and matching shoes) and Stewart Cink (who won the 2009 British Open). While we watched play from the fine grandstand by the second tee, a very brief but heavy shower passed over us. In unison, everybody in the stand put up umbrellas and waited cheerfully for the rain to cease. Only in Britain! Apart from the odd shower, it was actually surprisingly warm and sunny! We even got some sun/wind burn!!! Insane.

After Phil Mickelson teed off at the second, we left our little grandstand and followed him along the course for the second, third and fourth holes. Our main aim of the day was to see Tiger, so after an hour or so we took ourselves off to get fed and watered so we could be in position before his 3pm tee off. We had delicious fish and chips and a pint of beer for lunch and then positioned ourselves overlooking the third fairway.

Former world number 1, Vijay Singh, was playing just in front of Tiger, so we saw a fair bit of him as well. It was a great moment to see Tiger emerge over a little hill, marching down the fairway, with Kiwi caddy Steve Williams in tow! We spent the rest of the day following Tiger around the course, which got a bit tiresome at times with the large crowds, but on the whole we had a good view most of the time. On a couple of occasions we got extreme close-up views of the man himself, as he marched past us headed for the next tee, etc. Sadly, it was not Tiger’s day, as he struggled to sink his putts and shot +1 for the round. He ended up -3 for the tournament, 13 shots behind winner Louis Oosthuizen.

Back in Edinburgh we headed straight from the train station to a lovely little restaurant on King George IV Bridge, called The Cellar Door. We had a beautiful dinner, including haggis fritters in whisky sauce to share for a starter!!! After a very long day at the golf and, surprisingly, quite a bit of sun and, unsurprisingly, a lot of wind, we were exhausted and we crawled back to the hostel and crashed for the night.

Sunday

Needless to say, we were not so quick out of the blocks on Sunday morning, however we made sure to get to the dining hall before breakfast ended at 10am. We had another fabulous cooked breakfast and then checked out of the hostel. We wandered through Holyrood Park, around the base of the hills with Arthur's Seat at the peak before arriving at Holyrood Palace, at the foot of Edinburgh's famous Royal Mile.

Holyrood Palace is the official Scottish residence of the reigning monarch. There has been an abbey (Holyrood Abbey, wouldn't you know) on the spot since 1128, and the Palace itself has served as the principal residence of the Kings and Queens of Scotland since the 15th century. Queen Elizabeth II spends one week in residence at Holyrood Palace at the beginning of each summer, where she carries out a range of official engagements and ceremonies. She had just left the day before we arrived, which was lucky for us, as Sunday was the first day that the palace was open to the public following her summer visit!

We enjoyed our tour of the palace. The audio guide was very informative and we learned a bit more about the history of monarchs and Scotland, in particular Mary Queen of Scots, who lived in the palace. We also viewed the state rooms, which the Queen entertains guests when in town (quite nice, but slumming it a bit after Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle), the "royal procession" rooms (where plebs back in the day used to pass through before being granted an audience with the King) and the bedchamber, scene of the King's most important political and state meetings. We mulled over the concept of holding business negotiations in our pyjamas, but decided such an environment would make it even more difficult than usual to concentrate...

After a stroll through the ruins of the abbey and a spin through Liz's back yard (perfect BYC material), we were ready for some sustenance. So we trekked up the Royal Mile to an Edinburgh favourite - the Elephant Cafe (where Harry Potter was created as J K Rowling sipped on her coffee). We enjoyed some refreshments while we rested our weary bones and read the paper - perfect Sunday activities. We then wandered down the hill to Grassmarket, one of Edinburgh's pub/bar hot spots, where there was more sitting in the sun and then a quiet, relaxing beverage in the Last Drop pub.

By late afternoon, we got the news that our friends Ju and Case were back in town, so we headed around to their place for a catch up and to meet their 6-month old daughter Izzy - so cute! Then Casey very kindly dropped us off at the airport and we headed south to London town. Awesome weekend - the golf was amazing - a once in a lifetime visit to a golf major tournament; and our relaxing Sunday in Edinburgh was fantastic too.



Swilcan
Bridge; 18th
fairway






Not this year...
Tiger with the
Claret Jug in
2005







Pretty
St Andrews









Tiger teeing
off









Phil
Mickelson














Tiger on the
18th hole











Vijay
Singh













Tim outside
St Andrews






Megs on the
Royal Mile

Pollock
Halls

Edinburgh

Tim and
Arthur's
Seat

Holyrood
Palace

Palace

courtyard

Holyrood
Abbey

ruins

Megs in
Liz's
garden

Adam Smith

statue, Royal
Mile

Royal
Mile







Megs on
the Royal
Mile

Royal
Mile...
again

Greyfriars
Bobby's
Bar

Grass-
market
pubs

Test cricket at Lord's

On Wednesday 14 July, Tim had the day off work and went along to the "Home of Cricket", Lord's, to watch Day 2 of the Test match between Pakistan and Australia. Pakistan are currently banned from playing any cricket in their home country due to security fears, so their "home" matches are being hosted in England and the UAE. This is probably the only time Tim will ever see Pakistan play at home!

After weeks of stunning weather in London town, Day 1 of the Test had been affected by a few random showers here and there and the perennial problem of "bad light" that Lord's suffers from. The forecast for Day 2 was not flash either, with a fine morning predicted to be followed by heavy showers in the afternoon. Thankfully the forecast was wrong and, apart from two or three very minor spots of rain, Tim saw a full day's cricket.

Australia began Day 2 on 229/9. Mr Cricket himself, Mike Hussey, added some vital runs in the morning session, ably assisted by number 11 Doug Bollinger, taking Australia's total up to 253 all out when Bollinger lost his middle stump. Hussey ended up on 56 not out.

Pakistan were good sports and entertained the crowd with some scintillating strokes. Unfortunately for them, they also lost wickets at a steady rate. The highlight (at least from a crowd point of view) was Shahid Afridi's whirlwind knock of 31 from just 15 balls, which included two massive sixes. He only knows one way to play, whether it's a Twenty20 match or a Test in bowler-friendly conditions at Lord's! Salman Butt batted brilliantly for a well deserved 63. Pakistan were bowled out for a disappointing total of 148.

Katich and Watson set about adding to Australia's first innings lead in positive style, before a late flurry of wickets brought Pakistan back into the contest and kept the crowd enthralled. Sadly, one of Tim's Hall of Famers (and the main reason Tim bought his admission ticket), Ricky Ponting, was given out LBW without scoring. Australia ended the day on 100/4, with a lead of 205. In a low-scoring Test, they were firmly in control.

It was a very enjoyable day out. You can't complain with 15 wickets and 272 runs in a day's play! Aside from the cricket, there was plenty of entertainment around the ground, including a brass band playing during the lunch break! The food was solid too - the cheeseburger and chips went down a treat at lunch!

Budva, Montenegro

Wednesday

The plan had been to depart Sarajevo airport at 6.30am and land at Tivat airport, Montenegro at 9.45am after a brief stop at Belgrade. We left Sarajevo at 6.30am as planned, but things fell apart from there. When we arrived in Belgrade, we realised that our connecting flight to Tivat had been cancelled and that we had been put on a 12.40pm flight to Tivat instead. We were not impressed at all, as it meant waiting around the Transit area of Belgrade for about 5 hours!! And if that wasn't bad enough, our 12.40pm flight was then delayed by about almost an hour. Of course there were no apologies for any of this - that's how the good people at JAT Airways roll. So we eventually landed in Tivat at around 2.15pm - not cool. But it got worse. Our large suitcase was missing! We were ushered towards the Lost Property Office, the busiest part of the airport. We gave them all the relevant information and they told us that bags go missing all the time and usually turn up within a day or two. Nice. So now we had a four day beach holiday with basically the clothes we were wearing (which were not beach clothes), no toiletries, no togs or towels, no sunscreen...basically nothing useful for the beach. Thanks JAT.

We caught a taxi to Budva, the lovely little beach town that would be home for the next four days. Budva is about 20km from Tivat. Needless to say, we were extremely annoyed and not in a fine mood to explore the beach town. Nevertheless, we set off for a wander through the town (picking up a few essentials along the way) and then we walked along the beach.

Montenegro is a small country (area of less than 14,000km squared) with a coast on the Adriatic Sea and which borders Croatia to the west, Bosnia & Herzegovina to the north-west, Serbia to the north-east, Kosovo (if recognised as a separate country) to the east and Albania to the south-east. It's capital and largest city is Podgorica. Much of the country is mountainous. A sovereign principality since the Late Middle Ages, Montenegro saw its independence from the Ottoman Empire formally recognised in 1878. From 1918, it was a part of various incarnations of Yugoslavia and then for a short period it fell under the banner of Serbia & Montenegro. On the basis of a referendum held on 21 May 2006, Montenegro declared independence on 3 June of that year. The official language is Montenegrin, although this is a variation of Serbian.

Budva is a coastal town in Montenegro with around 15,000 inhabitants, although this number is massively higher in the summer months, when the town is over-run with thousands of tourists. Budva is 2,500 years old, making it one of the oldest settlements on the Adriatic Coast. It is the centre of Montenegro's tourism, and is well known for its sandy beaches, diverse nightlife, and beautiful examples of Mediterranean architecture.

Our walk took us for a short poke around the walled Old Town and then to a bar wedged in between the Old Town and the marina, packed with beautiful super yachts! The bar, naturally, given its location, was rather swanky and there were a lot of very image-conscious people there. We thought they looked rather ridiculous, wearing high heels, skimpy dresses and make-up at a beach bar. Maybe its a Montenegrin thing, but we saw a lot of girls all dolled up during our stay in Budva, regardless of the time of the day or where they were...yes, even at 10am walking along the beach...ridiculous!

We left the swanky marina bar and and found a far more relaxed bar on the main beach and had a drink there. It had been a very frustrating day and we were pretty tired, so we had an early night and a massive sleep, which made us feel a lot better.

Thursday

On Thursday we had breakfast in our hotel, which was pretty good, and then we went out shopping. We each bought some togs, a towel and a sunhat and we also bought some sunscreen and a tunic for Megs and a T-shirt for Tim. Then we were all set to head down to the beach. It was a stunning day - well in to the 30s and barely a cloud in the sky.

We decided to spend the day on Slovenska Beach, the main beach in Budva. We grabbed some sunloungers and an umbrella right by the water and set in for a lazy day of sunning ourselves. The water (much the same as we had experienced in Croatia, which is further up the same coast from Montenegro) was extremely clean and clear and it was quite warm too. There are dozens and dozens of beach bars spread along the massive beach and the one right behind where we were sold us a half-litre of beer for just €2! Bargain!

In the mid-afternoon, we went for a walk along the beach down to the Old Town for a better look around there. Budva's Old Town is enclosed in a walled fortress and surrounded by sea on most sides. There are a few churches, several restaurants and bars and loads of shops crammed into the beautiful town. We actually nearly got lost in the maze of narrow alleys in there! There is also a huge citadella at the far end of the Old Town. Tim had a little look around inside the citadella, which is now home to a fantastic library. You can climb up onto the fortress walls and get great views down over the Old Town and most of Budva, as well as out to sea and the large island just off the coast of the main beach (see photos below).

One of the tiny squares in the centre of the Old Town is apparently called Poets' Square. It has a little pathway that leads out of the Old Town and on to a small, kind of hidden beach. It was much more peaceful on this beach, so we sat there and had a coke in the shade - we had taken enough sun for one day!

In the evening we had a couple of drinks on the balcony of our hotel room. A few dark clouds rolled in over the mountains and we had a brief thunderstorm, but that had cleared by the time we went out for dinner. We chose a seafood restaurant called "Porto" (Montenegro does amazing seafood). It was on the path that runs along in front of Slovenska Beach, so we had views out to the sea! Unfortunately there is a pond at the front of the restaurant that is home to some fish, a stingray and a giant turtle swimming around in it. This drew constant crowds of people who, it seemed, had never seen a fish before, who gazed in to the pond and took photos and pointed out the turtle to their thick kids who couldn't see it for themselves. They did not seem to think it was rude for this gazing to take place pretty much on top of our table where we were trying to eat dinner!

Anyway, the food was delicious. Our waiter tried to charge us more than double the menu price for our bowl of mussels that we shared for starters. We didn't have a bar of it and put him in his place. On the way back to our hotel after dinner, we walked down the street two back from the main beach, where it seems the "diverse nightlife" is centred. By diverse, they mean about six or eight outdoor nightclubs in a row with very scantily-clad girls swinging around poles. Strangely there was almost nobody actually in the bars, but there were hundreds of people standing in the streets watching the action from a safe distance.

Friday

Friday was another insanely hot day - almost too hot in the afternoon. We mixed it up a little and visited a different beach called Mogren Beach. This is located further around past the Old Town to the right. It involves a short walk along a narrow path with the sea on one side and a cliff-face on the other side. On this short walk, we found Budva's little treasure - every town has one - which is a bronze statue of a ballerina posing on a rock on the edge of the sea. it provided some beautiful photo opportunities with the Old Town in the background.

Mogren Beach was absolutely packed, but we managed to find a couple of free loungers - these were a lot more spendy than the Slovenska Beach ones! Drinks were more expensive too. Those damn Mogren Beach daylight robbers! We were amused by a rather odd couple who had the loungers just in front of ours. The woman made about 30 trips back and forth from the showers at the back of the beach down to her lounger, with a tiny child's beach bucket filled with water. She would tip the contents (maybe a litre, if that) of the bucket into an inflatable dinghy that she had positioned beside her lounger. Each time she made the trip, she trudged along like a robot, with no emotion in her face, which reminded us a little of Chief on the film "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest". After about 45 minutes of this, her husband emerged with a baby, which then sat in the inflatable dinghy partially filled with water, so that it acted as a paddling pool. Not worth the effort.

The water was beautiful and we had a little dip to cool off. We were treated to some more posing Montenegrin girls, who, make-up and all, wandered into the water and then posed Baywatch style for a while before retiring to their loungers. Hilarious.

It was lucky for us that just as we needed to find some shade and grab some late lunch, the Brazil v Holland quarter-final was kicking off. We found a bar back near the main beach that was showing the game and ate some lunch and had a couple of beers while we watched Holland come from a goal down to beat the star-studded Brazilians. The food was great but the service was poor. It seemed that service was usually pretty poor in Montenegro, aside from the odd one or two shining lights, like our hotel staff.

After the football, we returned to our hotel and had drinks on the balcony. There was a fair bit of lightning away in the distance, but no storm in Budva this time. We watched the Ghana v Uruguay quarter-final in our hotel room and we were devastated that the dirty, cheating Uruguayans managed to scam their way into the semi-finals. Poor Ghana! We had takeaways from a little place near our hotel for dinner. We had really yum pizza and crepes. The girl in the store had been studying English and was delighted to practice her English speaking with us. Surprisingly, very few locals speak English in Budva (which is a tourist town after all), whereas almost everyone in Bosnia had great English. Anyway, the pizza girl was very nice and she even gave us each a cigarette lighter as a gift since she liked chatting to us so much! Nice.

Saturday

We returned to Slovenska Beach on Saturday, to almost the same spot as we had been in on Thursday. It was even hotter than the previous two days. We wrote some postcards, read, listened to some tunes and had a couple of dips in the water. All very lazy and chilled out.

In the afternoon we repeated the quarter-final football viewing / getting some shade to avoid burning to a crisp. We found a nice bar to watch Germany pull out a blinder to thrash Argentina 4-0. Very nice. After the game we wandered into the Old Town and had a drink at a little bar called Cafe Grecko. The waiter was an interesting character. he was from Serbia but had been brought in for a four-month stint in Budva - fun!

In the evening we had an amazing dinner at a great restaurant called Konova Stair Grad. It is located in the Old Town, but it backs on to the little secluded beach we had found earlier. So we sat outside and had views of the sea. Tim had sole fillet and fries and Megan had risotto. Aside from seafood, there is an Italian influence in the food in Montenegro. It was a beautiful calm and warm evening and we had a leisurely walk back through town to our hotel, where we realised that we had both got sun burnt that day.

The lost suitcase had still not turned up and three days had passed now. We had phoned the Lost Property Office at Tivat Airport several times to check if it had turned up anywhere, but there was no sign of it and it was obvious that they were not interested in finding it. Still we had managed to get by with the little that we had from our carry-on bags and the small suitcase (mainly Megan's things), and we had really enjoyed our time in Montenegro.

Sunday

On Sunday morning we packed our things (that didn't take long!) and left Budva. At the Tivat airport, we had another go at the Lost Property Office staff, who had still not found our suitcase and had not done anything logical to try to find it. We also had a bitch at the JAT Airways staff, who actually said to us, "we don't care, it's not our problem". Seriously, never EVER fly JAT Airways. Even if you're tripping through the Balkans, choose a different airline. They are rude, incompetent and they have appalling customer service. On top of that, they cancelled a flight and bumped us to a later one without even telling us in advance and every flight we took was delayed. JAT Airways is the worst airline in the world!

There was good news on the suitcase in the end. When we arrived back at Heathrow, Tim chatted to a Lost Luggage representative, just in case they could offer any useful information really. As it turned out, through a complete fluke, he managed to pick a suitcase from his enormous list of "found" suitcases and its description matched that of our missing suitcase. A lovely bright yellow ribbon that Tim had tied to the handle of the suitcase a year or so ago was the clincher! Several phone calls to JAT Airways over the next couple of days eventually resulted in the suitcase making its way back to us in London! It had had its barcode ripped off somehow and was stuck in Belgrade the whole time - go figure.

Country Tally:

Megan 40

Tim 37

Bear 37

Megs in
Poets' Square
Old Town

Slovenska
Beach

View to the
Old Town

Slovenska
Beach

Small
beach
behind
Old Town

Tim in the
Old Town

Old Town
church

View from
fortress
walls

Ditto -
view over
Budva

Megs by
citadella

Budva
Bear

Megs and
ballerina

Mogren
Beach

Mogren
Beach

And again

Pretty
Budva

Megs in the
Old Town

Budva

Megs in the
water

Slovenska
Beach

At Cafe
Grecko