Welcome back! Sorry for the delay but I was exhausted posting last night and decided to take a break before I posted some more. DON'T FORGET there is a post from last night so please scroll down and read that one first :)
Saturday - Edinburgh Free Walking Tour
We woke up refreshed on Saturday morning and made our way back up the streets of Edinburgh in time for our free tour. In many European cities, they offer Sandman's Free Tours and they are fantastic! And free! So we jumped at the chance to take one of these tours. Our tour guide was Steve and he was hilarious and knowledgeable. He's the ginger guy with the red shirt in my photos. The highlight photos are here and the majority will be on my Facebook page
The former location of the tax collection building in Edinburgh. Many people still voice their disgust for the tax man by expectorating on the brick heart in the middle of the sidewalk. If you look closely at the circle inside the heart, that's not drops of rain, it's actual lugies hocked by the taxed and disgruntled of Edinburgh!
As we left the area, our tour guide wound up and spit a monster right into the center of the heart. Carly and I were horrified...but not nearly as horrified as the mother with her baby in a baby carriage that had stopped not 1 foot in front of Steve (the tour guide) as he was spitting. The little girl started giggling like crazy and the mother said "In front of my child, really?" Clearly she was angry so we made a quick exit to the next important site.
As we left the area, our tour guide wound up and spit a monster right into the center of the heart. Carly and I were horrified...but not nearly as horrified as the mother with her baby in a baby carriage that had stopped not 1 foot in front of Steve (the tour guide) as he was spitting. The little girl started giggling like crazy and the mother said "In front of my child, really?" Clearly she was angry so we made a quick exit to the next important site.
This monument is where the important news of the kingdom is still read by a town crier according to tradition. I also captured the sunlight in an awesome way.
The tallest steeple in Scotland.
Side view of Edinburgh Castle
Where the gallows of Edinburgh used to stand
Maggie Dickinson's Pub. Maggie Dickinson was a woman who was sentenced to hang for concealing her pregnancy (a capital crime in the 1800's). She was hanged and placed in her coffin and taken to the cemetery. On the way, the driver heard knocking coming from the back of his carriage. Eventually the knocking became too loud to ignore so he searched his cargo and found Maggie Dickinson STILL ALIVE! He brought her back to the gallows because he was unsure of what to do with her. A lawyer in the audience argued in favor of Maggie, saying that since she was already hanged until dead, she could not be hanged again for the same crime. A judge also agreed with the lawyer and Maggie was set free. An added bonus was that since she was dead, her marriage vows were now null and void (til death do us part, get it?) so she was able to leave her deserter husband. Maggie is said to have come back to the area around the gallows whenever there were executions to comfort the condemned. She would tell them, "It's not so bad really. I've done it before and I feel fine!"
This grave is the most famous in Edinburgh. The man, John Gray, was a night watchman in Edinburgh. He decided he needed a watch dog to help him so the town leaders got some money together and bought him a ferocious, dangerous, intimidating...Skye Terrier.
This is a Skye Terrier. Scary right?
Anyway this terrier, named Bobby, and John would patrol the streets every night until John died in 1858. Bobby came to the funeral and after his master was buried, he sat on his grave as if to keep John company. The friar at the graveyard shooed Bobby away for the night and Bobby waited at the gate until the next morning. When the friar unlocked the gate the next morning, Bobby went rushing back to his master's grave. Bobby did this day in and day out for 14 years until Bobby also died at age 16.
The church where Bobby was buried unconsecrated a special area of land for him to be buried near his master. Since Bobby wasn't a baptized Christian, he couldn't be buried hear his master in any other way. A statue was built to commemorate Bobby and it sits in front of the cemetery.
Bobby's monument.
After our tour we went exploring around Edinburgh...AND FOUND A FINNEGANS!!!
Probably the best discovery the entire trip..
JUST LIKE HOME!!!
Harry Potter Stuff
Since JK Rowling wrote a significant portion of the Harry Potter novels in Edinburgh, many important things were pointed out to us on the tour.
In the same cemetary as Bobby and John Gray, JK Rowling took the names of 3 of the deceased and turned them into HP characters. Can you guess who the characters are?
(Mad Eye Moody)
(Tom Riddle)
(Professor McGonagall)
When JK moved to Edinburgh, she was very poor and didn't have enough money to heat her house. She knew the owners of The Elephant House and they would let her sit in the cafe all day while her children were in school to stay warm. To pass the time, she wrote the first 2 HP books here in the 1990's.
An artist's rendition of what JK might have looked like while writing her books.
One of the buildings in Edinburgh on which JK based her description of Hogwarts.
She also finished the last HP book in Edinburgh but I can't find my picture of the Balmoral Hotel lol.
Weird Food
So Carly and I decided to try as many strange/local foods as we could while we're travelling. In Peru we tried alpaca and guniea pig. This is what we tried in Scotland:
Deep Fried Mars Bar. Think a Snickers (minus peanuts) with the nougat of a Milky Way and that's a Mars Bar. It was probably the best thing I've had deep fried.
Haggis! Okay I got afraid to try true haggis so I got the Highlander Chicken, which is a chicken breast stuffed with the inside of haggis (I forwent the sheep's stomach). And it was surprisingly delicious! It tasted like chicken prepared in a thick mushroom sauce. I would try it again I liked it so much!
Ghost Tour
We went on a Ghost Tour with Steve as our tour guide again later that night. I didn't take many pictures because my camera (aka my Droid) doesn't have adequate flash. But I did manage to get a picture of one funny building.
Bill Gates wanted to build his Edinburgh office on the site of a 200 year old building in the late 1990's. The city council wouldn't let Gates tear down the old building to create a new one. So with his middle finger metaphorically in the air, Gates tore out the inside structure of the building and build his building INSIDE of the existing building, complete with windows and everything. If you look in the windows of the outside of the building, you can see the windows of the interior building. I'm sure there's an Inception movie joke involved here somehow.
Until next time!
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