We are in Edinburgh, the wonderful capital of Scotland. We got in yesterday afternoon and were lucky enough to find a hotel in the city center that is just right for our needs. There�s only one problem. Our room is on the top floor, which means we have to climb 3 very tall flights of stairs to reach it. In this old Georgian building, each floor looks about 15-20 feet high. Colleen hopes this will strengthen our legs a bit.
After getting settled, we made our way to the sights and ran directly into a large monument to Walter Scott. It is the largest monument in the world to an author, and the climb to the top involves 287 steps. It was a great way to see the layout of the city, so I climbed to top, where I got some magnificent pictures.
As we continued walking through the city, we saw an advertisement for a walking tour highlighting the haunted parts of Edinburgh. OK, so this has to be one of the most touristy things to do, but we both thought it sounded kind of fun, and we gladly joined a group. The tour started out by leading us around a small part of the Royal Mile and telling us stories of old Scotland. But then we entered the (reportedly) haunted vaults. The vaults are a series of corridors and rooms initially built through the city to serve as storage areas for the merchants that owned shops above on the street. However, the rock was never sealed, and lots of water made its way into the vaults after a good rain. Not good for storing things you want to sell.
So the merchants cleared the area out, and people moved in. The city was amazingly overcrowded, leaving little or no space to live, so the poorest of the poor decided to live in the dank, dark, unventilated vaults. Well, this continued until the fire of 1826 (I think I have the year right), when the city burned for three full days. People thought the stone vaults would be a perfect place to hide and survive � stone doesn�t burn � but neglected to realize that the vaults would act like an oven. Thousands were literally cooked to death. The vaults were subsequently closed, sealed up, and forgotten about until the 1970s, when legend has it that a student living in an apartment adjacent to one of the vaults knocked through a wall and found what had been lost.
Now parts of the vaults are open to tours. We walked through while our guide treated us to stories of sightings and strange happenings she and other guides have witnessed. Now, I don�t believe in ghosts, but being in the dark crypt and hearing all those strange stories was pretty scary. Of course, needing to give us a good scare, the company arranged for someone to jump out of the shadows at a particularly tense moment and yell at the top of his lungs. Not nice.
So that�s what happened yesterday. Today we are heading out to see the castle and the Royal Mile. I�m sure I�ll have lots to write about tonight.
Until next time.
Paul and Colleen
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