Wardlaw Museum, St. Andrews Aquarium, and More

Still in St. Andrews, Scotland, this afternoon I visited the Wardlaw Museum and the St. Andrews Aquarium and did some more wandering around. This was a side trip from my base in Dundee and today is my last day in Dundee, so I’ll provide a synopsis of that city at the end of this post.

Wardlaw Museum

Wardlaw Museum is a part of St. Andrews University, a more than 600-year-old institution, founded in 1413. Wardlaw Museum is fairly small, with exhibits on just one floor. The first room contains information about the university’s history, pomp, and culture. Artifacts in this room include, among other things, academic gowns, a banner with the university’s coat of arms, and maces of the universities colleges, because what’s a college without a mace?

The rest of the permanent exhibits include models and equipment, along with brief text panels, associated with some of the university’s research, primarily old research.

Another small room in the Wardlaw Museum contained a temporary exhibit called “Alien Worlds” when I was there. The exhibit provided general information about exoplanets—how scientists detect them and learn information about them, how far away the closest ones are, how long it would take to get there travelling at the fastest manned space flight humans have so far achieved, and so on. The exhibit also referenced the relationship between science fiction and science in that regard.

Despite there being no exhibits on the second floor (the first floor here because they use the European standard of the ground floor being zero), visitors can go up there. That provides access to a small observation terrace with a lovely view of the sea.

The Wardlaw Museum is small but interesting. And because it’s free, it’s easy to get more than your money’s worth there.

Not the Preservation Trust Museum and Garden

After I left the Wardlaw Museum, I walked to another St. Andrews attraction recommended by one of my guidebooks, the Preservation Trust Museum and Garden.

I arrived there to find the door shut and a sign out front saying it was closed for refurbishment. Because, of course it was.

St. Andrews Aquarium

Foiled, I then walked across town to the St. Andrew’s Aquarium. I arrived there and found that it too was … open!

See what I did there? You probably thought I was going to say closed. But the “too” in “it too” referred to the Wardlaw Museum, not the Heritage Trust Museum and Garden. You people can be sooooo gullible sometimes.

St. Andrews probably doesn’t have enough people to run around to all of its attractions to warn them to close because I’m coming. Otherwise, the aquarium would have been closed too.

The St. Andrews Aquarium is small but enjoyable. When I arrived and asked for an adult ticket, the ticket seller quickly asked me if I knew they had a concession price (for people over 65). “No, thank you so much for noticing that,” I said with a bit of a sneer in my voice. I combined it with a bit of a giggle to let him know that I wasn’t truly upset about him immediately seeing that I am ancient.

He responded, also with a giggle in his voice, that he tried to be diplomatic.

He also told me that there would be a shark feeding soon, shortly followed by a meerkat feeding. So I should head there first and double back to see what I missed. I did that.

The sharks didn’t look like the fierce water creatures that I pictured when I heard the word shark. They were small, docile, local varieties without dorsal fins. There were rays and other fish in the same tank.

The feeding didn’t happen. A staff member came by and gave a talk about the sharks and other creatures they have in that tank. Possibly he didn’t do the feeding because there were no newborn baby humans in attendance. The sharks were far too small to eat any larger humans, not even toddlers, and they probably would have struggled to consume even newborn humans.

Please don’t ask me why an aquarium has meerkats, but this one does. Not that I’m complaining. Meerkats are among the cutest animals around. The St. Andrews Aquarium has two pens holding them.

The meerkat feeding did happen. As soon as the attendant got close to the door into one of the pens, a bunch of the meerkats in it started scratching feverishly at the door. But when the attendant opened the door none of them tried to escape. They were more interested in food than freedom.

The meerkats’ food consists of cut celery and live crickets. Well, I don’t imagine the crickets continued to be alive long after being eaten, but you know what I mean. The attendant threw the food around the pen so the meerkats would have to hunt for the food as they would in the wild.

In addition to feeding the meerkats, the attendant gave a little talk. She explained that the reason they have two pens is that meerkats form groups referred to as mobs or gangs, usually based on family groupings. The meerkats in each pen are in a different mob. The second pen contains a mother and her children. According to the attendant, meerkats can be quite vicious when another meerkat enters their mob’s territory.

The two pens are side by side, with a wall between them that’s less than ceiling-high. The attendant had to go through a door between the two pens to get to the second pen. She only did so when the mob in the first pen were busy eating. She then threw some food over the wall, I guess to get the meerkats in that pen away from the door. She then went through the door and fed the other mob properly. It was all quite cute and fun.

The aquarium also has at least a couple of penguins in an outdoor enclosure. There may be more penguins. I saw only two, but there was a rock (possibly a fake rock) at the back with a couple of holes in it. I imagine there are caves through those holes where penguins can hide to frustrate visitors looking for them.

There are also several other tanks containing a variety of fish, along with an iguana or two, some turtles and a tortoise, and probably some other creatures I forgot about.

I think that in pretty well every entry I’ve posted in this journal about aquariums I’ve mentioned that their jellyfish collection is the primary determinant in my assessment of the aquarium. I love looking at jellyfish.

The St. Andrews aquarium has just one small, circular tank of moon jellyfish. Coloured lighting in the tank makes the jellyfish look even more spectacular than they usually do. I would have liked to have seen more varieties of jellyfish, but I’ll take what I can get.

The aquarium may indeed have more jellyfish sometimes. There is a tank of an identical size and shape on the other side of the jellyfish sign from the full tank. I’m guessing that had at one time or will have in the future more jellyfish. But that’s only a guess.

All-in-all, it’s a fine aquarium for its size.

Wandering Around St. Andrews

Walking from the Wardlaw Museum to the closed Preservation Trust Museum and Garden, from there to the aquarium, and from there to the bus station involved a lot of wandering around town. And I did some random strolling in addition to that. St. Andrews is a very charming town.

There are a couple of pleasant shopping and restaurant streets with buildings constructed primarily of stone. The residential streets are all low-rise and again constructed mostly of stone.

St. Andrews University occupies a fair chunk of the town. Its buildings are generally stately and/or grand. All of the ones I saw have an oldish appearance. I suspect that when they build a new one they make it look oldish. And again most, or maybe all, of them are constructed of stone.

It is an adorable town and well worth a visit.

Dundee Summary

I spent three nights in Dundee, which translates into two full days, and a half day on the day I arrived. That was more than enough for me here. By far, the best part of my visit to Dundee was leaving it to take a day trip to St. Andrews.

I don’t think you’ll hate Dundee if you come here. It is in no way an awful town. The Firth of Tay is quite scenic. And there are a few other interesting things to do and see here. But I don’t think you’ll love it either. It’s kind of just there. Not terrific, but not terrible either. Somewhere in between. Just sort of okay, which I suppose may make it a pleasant place to live, but it’s not exactly a tourist Mecca.

But, if the most convenient way for you to see St. Andrew is to take a day trip there from Dundee, then Dundee is worth it just for that.