Edinburgh, Scotland

Jesus Chris (without the T), you have been home for over a month and still haven’t finished the fricking blog?

Ok, fair criticism.

From Loch Lomond, we drove to Edinburgh, Scotland. On the way, we stopped outside the town of Stirling to visit a distillery that William had booked.  Imagine our surprise, when we found out they just bottled the stuff there….it was not the tasting facility.  Doh!  At least all the workers on lunch break got a good laugh at the “stupid Americans.”

We decided to drive into downtown Stirling, and at least walk around town.  This little city has a ton of history, which I’ve learned since we were there!  Do your research Chris!  Next time we will visit the Castle, which is supposed to be excellent!  Below is the Stirling Baptist Church.

The tower in the distance is the National Wallace Monument, a landmark that stands above the fields where William Wallace led his troops to victory at the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

Stirling definitely deserves a full day, instead of the half hour we gave it.  Fortunately, we will be back this July, as part of another trip.

On our first day in Edinburgh, we visited the most popular site, Edinburgh Castle.

Even though we were here during their low season, the castle was quite crowded.

The views over Edinburgh from the top of the castle are excellent!

The below is the Mons Meg siege gun, weighing 6 tons.  Gifted to King James II in 1457, it can fire a 150kg cannonball up to 2 miles.

The One O’clock Gun is fired every day….curiously at one o’clock.  The tradition dates back to 1861, when it was first used to assist ships in harbor with timekeeping, a critical part of maritime navigation.  Line up early if you want to see it, as every spot with a view is jam-packed with people.

The castle has a prison, which held pirates and prisoners of war in the 1700s and 1800s.

The earliest inmates were in 1720, when 21 members of Black Bart’s crew were captured off the west coast of Scotland.  They had supposedly come here to retire, but most of them were hanged, which I guess is its own version of retirement.

Prisoners came from France, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, and America…truly a fully accepting prison!  Some of the former prison doors are on display, showing off graffiti that was carved into them by the prisoners.

The below door has an early depiction of the “Stars and Stripes” flag on the stern of a ship scratched into it.

If you click on the above photo and zoom into it, you can see the flag in the upper left area.  The below diagram identifies the location.

The area below is the Esplanade in front of the castle, looking towards the Royal Mile.  They should call it the Aran Sweater Mile, as these stores are more common than Starbucks in Seattle!

Not far from Edinburgh Castle is a statue of Greyfriars Bobby, a popular tourist attraction.  This dog became a legend in the 19th century, after guarding his dead owner’s grave every day for 14 years.  Now that’s dedication!

Directly behind the above building is Greyfriars Kirkyard, where his owner was buried.  Upon his death, Bobby was buried not too far from his owner.

It’s traditional for people to leave sticks on the grave for Bobby.

There are several graves here that supposedly hold names used by J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series, so you will see a lot of people searching for those headstones.  Within the graveyard is part of the Flodden Wall, which I found to be more interesting.

The Flodden Wall was completed in 1560 to protect the city against a potential English invasion.  It is named after the Battle of Flodden, 50 miles southeast of here, which the Scots lost to the English in 1513.  Few parts of the wall still exist, and this portion is the most intact of what’s left.

We were in Edinburgh for Halloween, and hit a bar just to take in the scene.  The DJ was playing 80’s Music Bingo, and I was surprised with how readily everybody got into it!  Fortunately we weren’t drinking as heavily as the youths who had PITCHERS of cocktails on their tables!

We visited the National Gallery of Scotland, as they had an Impressionism exhibition, an art style which we admire.   The most interesting painting was this Van Gogh work, titled Head of a Peasant Woman, painted in 1885.   Just this past July, when the National Gallery received the painting for the exhibition, they were inspecting it and found the back had layers of glue and cardboard.  They had the painting x-rayed, and discovered a self-portrait had been painted on the back.  The back-lit x-ray image is displayed next to the painting.  Very cool that they discovered this right before our visit!

There are other examples of Van Gogh self-portraits hidden on the backside or under other paintings, as the artist was known to reuse canvasses to save money.

On our last day, it was raining quite heavily, so we found something to do indoors.  We opted for a tour of The South Bridge Vaults.

Completed in 1788, the South Bridge spanned a chasm just over 1000 feet long.  Underneath the bridge were vaults that were built for taverns, cobblers, and storage space for businesses.  Unfortunately, the bridge was poorly made, and not waterproofed, so these vaults began leaking quite badly.  They also had no ventilation, light or heat, so they were all abandoned within 30 years.

For a period of time after the businesses left, the homeless moved in, and the vaults became a hotbed for criminal activity.  It’s believed that even they moved out by 1860, and the vaults were forgotten about.

The vaults were rediscovered in 1985 when a wall in an apartment was taken down to investigate a noise on the other side.  The vaults had been filled with rubble to keep people out.  They have now been excavated and serve as a tourist attraction.  There are numerous reports that the vaults are the most haunted place in Edinburgh.  There is even a genuine witchcraft temple in one of the vaults on the tour.

There is a vault previously used by the coven, which they claimed was so haunted they didn’t feel safe inside.  In this room is a stone circle.  We were told that a child, who died in a small passage beneath the vault, haunts the inside of the stone circle.

If you step inside the stone circle, there is a chance the child’s ghost will interact with you, with some claiming to be cursed with bad luck or even getting a series of three scratches from the ghost.  Do you dare step inside??

I can safely call bullshit on this, as I haven’t had any recent bad luck, and Kim couldn’t find a scratch anywhere on my body.  I’m just shocked William wasn’t willing to step in there with me!

One final shot of Edinburgh Castle at night:

Happy Holidays, everybody!  Our next trip is in March, when we head to The Netherlands…unless that ghost has a delayed reaction of some type.  Until then, thanks for reading!