Edinburgh

Today we didn’t get up to very much. We had a very late start and didn’t get out of bed till about 1pm. By the time we got organised we didn’t leave the hostel till about 2pm. We first tried to go to the castle but the que for the castle was about 2 hours long so we decided to go back to the hostel and buy tickets to the castle for the next day. Next we went for lunch. We just had a pub meal in one of the pubs in the mile.

After lunch we had a potter round St. Giles. It is an amazing church / cathedral inside and out, very gothic and medieval. On our way out we found a lady that was promotion tours of the underground vaults under the south bridge. They sounded interesting so we decided to join a tour. The tour didn’t start for another 45min so we decided to do an extended lap of the mile and Edinburgh to kill some time.

The tour was very interesting and showed off parts of Edinburgh we would have not seen otherwise. The tour guide was quite enthusiastic and lively thru whole tour. We started off going down some the alley ways with the tour guide describing what the conditions would have been like if you lived in Edinburgh a few hundred years ago. They would have been cramped, smelly, and foul. People just thru their waste out the window from several stories up down onto the street. If you happened to be walking by when someone was throwing things out the window you were most likely going to be covered in whatever they were throwing out. Next he took us down under the south bridge and described what happened down there from the time it was build till now. The bridge was built in (I think) in the 1700 or 1800 to help the city expand and let the population have some more space. They built the bridge so the space under it could be divided up and rented out. This was because the authorities wanted to make the bridge profitable and help pay it off. The spaces were rented out till damp got the better of everyone and they left. When they built the bridge they forgot to damp proof the vaults. Once everyone had left the vaults stayed empty for a while till the gangs and criminals moved in. the criminals stayed for about 20 odd years then the authorities moved them out and filled in the vaults so no one could come back. The vaults were excavated in the 1990’s and have been a tour sight but tour companies ever since. The vaults themselves were interesting to look at. They still had the damp problem so occasionally you would be dripped on. The tour company do ghost tours down there which would be very creepy and it would be an experience.

After the tour we headed back to the hostel to warm up and decide what we were going to do about dinner. Once we warmed up and watched a bit of TV we headed out for dinner. We found an interesting Mexican place round the corner. It wasn’t great not like Taco Bill’s at home. After dinner we headed back to the hostel to watch some QI on the computer and sleep.