Student Bloggers

For those of you that have never played the wonderful game of sardines, I highly recommend that you add it to your bucket list. The simplest way to describe this game is kinda like reverse hide-and-seek. Instead of one person looking for others that have hidden, one person hides and everyone else has to find that person. However, if you find the person hiding then you have to hide with them. The game ends when there is only one person left not hiding.

As you can imagine, this game is really fun and even more fun when in a giant castle with multiple buildings and levels. However, it is not fun when it is unplanned and accidental. Basically, when you lose a person in a castle with no way to communicate and no idea where you are, it can sometimes be an adrenaline rush. Looking back on this moment, it fills me with laughter and memories.

We decided to finally visit the castle on a Sunday and before leaving we mapped out were to go and directions to make certain of our destination. Unfortunately, we messed up and got off out the wrong bus stop and ended up walking for over half an hour. The distance was not bad but, the hill and weather was against us.

The snow came down hard but we were already determined to go to our destination. Once we arrived at the castle, everything was going fine. We were walking around, taking pictures and being typical tourists. It wasn’t till about halfway through the castle that I turned around to realize that there was only two of us when three of us came.

By this point the snow was coming down hard and places were shutting down. We retraced our steps thinking our friend was behind us but, could not find her anywhere. Unfortunately, we had no way to contact her because, there is no wifi in the castle and she forgot her Scotland phone back at the flat. This is where our trip to the castle turned into a game of sardines.

It wasn’t till about a half an hour later that we found her. Apparently she asked a worker there if she had seen us and the worker remembered us due to my “giant” camera. My camera is smaller than the iPhone X first off but, somehow it made a lasting impression on this worker.

In celebration of finding the “sardine” we went to the Unicorn Cafe and had some hot mac-n-cheese because, we were hungry and cold. As we left the castle and started to waddle down the hill, trying our best not to fall, we agreed to come back to Stirling Castle and next time purposefully play a game of sardines.