Edinburgh Castle and city tour (day 8)

Today we were taken on a tour of the city and then up to the Castle.  On our way to the Castle we stopped at a little cemetery were our guide told us a story about two Irish men who started stealing freshly dead bodies and selling them to medical schools for 10 lbs each.  Back in the day medical research could only be done on dead prisioners and no one else.  These two men started raiding cemeteries for bodies.  Afterwards watchtowers were put in one particular cemetery to stop them.  They started going after people and getting them drunk until they would pass out, then put a pillow over their heads to smother them.  Come morning they were dead and they would take them off to the school and get their 10 lbs each.  Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the book The Body Snatcher based on these two men.

After our guide got us up to the castle and showed us around we were on our own.  There are only two building in the entire castle area that you can not take pictures.  One is the building the crown jewels are in and the other is the building where they have the books listing all the Scots soldiers that have died in battle.  They have books with records dating back to 1914 to current.  You can look through the books and see the names, what battalion they were in and when they died and how they died.  The crown jewels were quite impressive as well.  We toured the dungeons, as well as the chapel on the grounds.  The chapel is the oldest building in Edinburgh.  I think the chapel was build in 1091 and was left standing when Robert the Bruce tore the castle down.  He got the castle back from the English but only after quite a few soldiers wee murdered to get it.  He refused to stay in the castle after that and tore it down brick by brick but left the chapel standing.

We were there when they shot the one o’clock gun was shot off.  I got a movie but will post that to our photo website later.  We haven’t pulled the castle pictures off our camera’s yet.

After we left the castle we walked down part of the Royal mile.  I would hate to see this place come July and August.  It was like walking down the sidewalks in Las Vegas.  The people were everywhere.  The Royal mile is the old town and there are a lot of very neat old buildings.  We took some pictures of the Closes as we went past.  This is there version of an alley.  Think Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter movies.  The lamps no longer have colored glass in them but colored plastic.  Still makes for very good photos though.

Then we wandered back down the hill to the newer part of town and back towards our hotel.  We met a couple of other women on the tour with us and we all went out to a pub for dinner.  And yes, we got a traditional little hole in the wall pub.

This concludes the Scotland portion of our tour.  Tomorrow we are on our way to Ireland to start that part of our tour.  Once we get to Dublin tomorrow we are on our own until the following day when that portion of our tour starts.  Not sure yet what we will do but I’ll keep you posted.  =)

I’ll post more pictures as we get them all straightened out.