Scotland Part 1 Edinburgh

Hello, I have been pretty lazy for a while but I have a lot of posts coming up from my travels starting with a 3 part post of my trip to Scotland. So climb aboard and lets get going.

So I arrived in Edinburgh and had very little idea about things such as where I should go, where I was sleeping and you know the little things. I found a cheap Hostel not to far away from the air bus line (on Haymarket)  which was pretty fancy (key cards ooh la la). But I still had a far bit of night left so I ventured onto Couchsurfing.org and saw if there was anything happening in Town, and ther just so happened that there was. I went out to a bar and met quite a few people from town (even a few Canadians showed up!). All in all a fairly interesting night, beer and music and good times all around. 

So the  next day I woke up early because I wanted to go out and see as much of the city as possible as well as photo up a storm. 

Just a cool building near my Hostel 

I decided to walk up by Edinburgh Castle and down the Royal lane. I really have to say that in my opinion Edinburgh is a beautiful city. A lot of the old architecture is still around and it has that quaint feel to it while still being a big city. I mean look at this Kirk (what Scots call Churches. Fun fact: it is actually closer to the German word for church Kirche. Wasn't that fun? No, oh ok I'll carry on and promise that I only have one more fun fact involving religious nomenclature).

Sweet Kirk

Continuing on down the Royal Lane we get into more touristy areas and subsequently buskers. Like this guy below.

Pretty sweet eh? I had a short conversation with this guy before I realized that he was trying to carry on with his shtick. His shtick was composed primarily of looking hardcore and waiting for people to pass by before yelling really loud to scare the pants off of them. It was fun to watch for a bit but eventually i had to move on. 

So I went further down and found a New Europe tour group. These tours are in a lot of places across Europe and I did one in Berlin that was really good. They do free tours where you only pay gratuities to the guide, as well as other tours depending on the city. Berlin has a sweet alternative tour that takes you around and you learn about the art seen and alternative culture in Berlin and how it is changing. Enough plugging something that I have no real connection to. 

So our first stop is at the High Kirk of Edinburgh (St. Giles) , and you might think "Chris, That looks more like a Cathedral" and you would be completely wrong, I'll give you a second to shake off the shame. Also be warned that my second fact about religious nomenclature is coming up... wait for it. So a cathedral is actually by definition any Church that has its' own Bishop, aaand there are no Bishops in Scotland (and the Scottish Church has never in history appointed a Bishop, I'll leave it to you to figure out why).  So there all that is out of the way now.

Now the High Kirk is right by the delightful Scottish Parliament. and a former graveyard is now a Parking lot. All the bodies were moved save one. 

John Knox was a Priest in the Scotish Church in the 1600's. He was extremely conservative and wanted to make the rest of Scotland the same. For a long time he was very well respected in the Church but eventually fell to the way side. One of his final requests was to never be more then 50 yards from St. Giles after his death. So when moving all of the bodies they left John there and put a delightful yellow square in parking space 23 to mark the grave. 

"Morning John"

I just enjoy the face my tour guide is making in this picture and felt the need to share it.

As we continue on we are shown one of the earliest "Sky Scrapers". Its' the one in the middle. Not to impressive today but when originally built it was 13 stories high (walk up) and for the 17th century that was crazy. The top 9 floors were made of wood and burned down so we are left with this. At  the now top of the building you will see a fleur de lys and a thistle, Why? The Scots like to mock the English whenever they can and they had a long standing alliance with the French (they didn't like each other all that much, just really hated the English). So this two symbols are just there to show there defiance of the English.

The building must be pretty warm, it's surrounded by Cashmere

So below is Edinburgh Castle, originally made of wood, but back then it had a nasty habit of continuously burning down. Eventually the Scots made it stone.

So I didn't realized until I was walking around but apparently my first full day in Scotland was on March 17th (AKA St. Patrick's Day). So I took some pictures of people enjoying the festivities, but I felt really creepy about it so I tried to do it on the sly... that made it feel creepier. This was around the time we got to Grassmarket. Now this place is full of bars and restaurants. Back in the day it was filled with some livestock and a whole lot of prostitutes. 

Grassmarket is also the site of my first deep fried Haggis. Now you make thing that regular Haggis is a bit greasy and you would be right, now deep fry it and consider the possibilities (mostly just cardiac arrest). The take out place I bought it from did not stop the deep-frying at Haggis, but the went on to deep fry: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and Mars bars. I did not venture the Mars bar. 

Time for another story. So Grassmarket not only had livestock and prostitutes, but also was the site of public hangings (WOOOO). Big events for the towns folk. As a result many of the bars in this area have names lent from various jokes and stories around the hangings. One place is "the Last Drop" which is where the convicted would go right before the hanging (to get their last drop before they have the last drop, real side splitters). One really interesting story is that of Maggie Dickson (it starts out sad  but the end is nice). So Maggie was in a bad marriage, and one day her Husband just up and left her. This made her a social pariah, constant mockery and shunning. So she decided to flee Edinburgh and go to the country side. Here she lived and worked in a small in and started having an affair with the in keepers son (double shame, she's still married, even though her husband doesn't want her). So it isn't too long and she   catches a touch of the pregnant. She can't let anyone know though so she just pretends she's getting fat and wears big cloths (think like when Julia Lewis-Dryfus was pregnant and still one Seinfeld). So because she can't get a mid-wife or anyone to help with the birth the baby dies shortly there after. Not wanting anyone to know she decides to hide the infant. Unfortunately she is caught in the process and sentenced to death by hanging. Now it's time to guess what she was charged with: Having an affair? No. Trying to get hide a dead body? Silly of course not. It was for concealing her pregnancy obviously. 

Maggie is brought to Grassmarket and was given her Last Drop. The executioner (as always) gave a tug on the hanging body to make sure she was done and then she was confirmed dead, tossed into a casket and the undertaker took her away in a a carriage. End of story? No way. 

While riding away the undertaker hears a light knocking sound. Now if you're carrying around a bunch of dead bodies you try to ignore those types of things, but it continued and became louder, and louder. So finally he decided that he would take a look. When he opened Maggies casket she was alive and well, umm sort of, she was just hanged and pronounced dead, but she was much better then the alternative. 

The undertaker turned around and headed back to Grassmarket, got the executioner and they set up for a second go at Maggie. The people were pretty psyched "Two hangings for the price of one". But while setting Maggie up for her second  Last drop, a young lawyer spoke up.  He said that she was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead and she had already don so so it would be illegal to hang her again. After a couple minutes the crowd was on Maggies side. Now I haven't been in the position, but I would not imagine you would want to make a large group of Scots really mad, so the executioner sent a runner to a Judge, who agreed with the Lawyers reasoning and stated that Maggie could go free. Hooray! Happy ending, but it gets better. Her marriage vows were until "death do us part" and she was dead so technically no longer married and could be with the Inn keepers son. 

Don't you love a feel good ending. After that Maggie was known to taunt people going to their hangings "Hey, I don't worry, it's not so bad".  Anyway, now there is a bar named after Maggie, THE END.

So onwards to Greyfriars Kirk/ Graveyard. This place was actually really pleasant, despite the fact that every inch of ground was covering one or more bodies. They have a pretty positive attitude about graveyards in Edinburgh. The Green space in the city is used for things like picnics. It is also the Second most common place in Edinburgh for people to have public sex. Woot.

So this Place is pretty old right. How old? They have special markings on many of the graves like seen below to indicate that the deceased carried the plague and body snatchers should beware. So yeah old.

Speaking of body snatchers. The metal cage below was not created due to a fear of rising zombies, but rather to keep living people from getting at the dead.  Back in the day Body Snatching was a pretty lucrative business, as long as you weren't caught. Med schools needed fresh cadavers to stay competitive and would pay a pretty penny to get them.  If you had enough money before you died you could pay to be placed in one of these cages for a couple weeks after death until your body was no longer good for schools.

Two such body snatchers were Burke and Hare. A couple of low life drunks that stumbled upon a dead body and decided to cash in on it. They likes the money so much they decided to speed things along and instead of waiting for dead bodies they started to make their own. These two were fairly notorious for a while until finally caught at which point they both outed the other as the mastermind of the whole thing. Below we see the ally they spent most of their time. 

Back to Grey Friar. One thing I found really interesting here was that in the middle of the graveyard there was a small herb and vegetable garden. Really? well I guess no sense in wasting space.

Going through the middle of the graveyard is the Flodden wall. Built around 3 sides of Edinburgh (I'll late talk about why it was only 3) the wall was created to keep out the English. A job at which it was no always successful. 

Time for another sad but nice story (aren't you glad). So below we see two gravestones. Both reference Greyfriars Bobby. Now was that some kind of policeman at the Kirk? No.  John Gray was once the caretaker of Greyfriars Kirkyard but he was starting to get old and it was getting hard to scare away grave robbers and body snatchers. So it was suggested he get a guard dog. Not a bad idea, so he went out and got the most vicious Skye Terrier that he could find. The dog was named bobby and for the next few years John and Bobby were the best of friends. John unfortunately fell ill and died and many people came to the funeral, including Bobby. When it ended and everyone was leaving they noticed that Bobby was still sitting next to the grave. A bit odd sure, but nothing to worry about, just saying goodbye to his master. Then a few days past and people started to  notice that Bobby still hadn't moved. This was getting a bit weird. Bobby stayed by his masters side for 7 years. During this time he became a local hero and received the key to the city. This meant that it was every citizens duty to make sure that Bobby had food and water. After his death the Church had specially un-consecrate part of the Kirkyard so that Bobby could be buried near  his master. This was done because Bobby had not been baptized and thus could not be buried in consecrated ground.

King of Soul and a Friend of Bobby, That must feel good.

And like every other story in Edinburgh, Bobby has his own bar.

And Statue

And because I know plenty of people read them, here are some Harry Potter references for you. 

I am feeling to lazy to explain them all but if you are a fan you should get it.

So finally we come to the 4th side of the Flodden wall and why it is not there. Below you see a nice fountain and little view of Edinburgh Castle. But this was not always the case for this area. So indoor plumbing wasn't always a thing and in those days people had chamber pots that needed to be emptied. Where? why into the streets of course. But the tall buildings seen earlier made the timing of walking down the road and not being covered by poop a little difficult. So a law was made that people would empty their chamber pots twice a day 10 am and 10pm. Good idea right. Well kind of, but it did mean that twice daily there was a river of crap in the streets, but people dealt with it. All this would flow Downhill and pool together in the area seen below creating a giant poop lake. Thus it was not necessary to wall up the area because no one was going to try to pass through it.

Another fun fact about the chamber pot laws was the unfortunate timing of the night time emptying. 10pm was also the time when all of the pubs would close. So you would have droves of drunks going through the streets while people were flinging all manners of things out the window. and the only warning you would receive would be the faint yell of "Garde leau" (bastardized french) before you got smacked in the face. I have nothing to confirm this, but I was told that this is where the term "shit-faced" comes from. and I have to say it makes sense (at least more sense then any other explanation I have heard).

And now for another story about how unhygienic Edinburgh is. Below you see the dirtiest place in Edinburgh (it's the Heart).  Upon passing this spot most locals will follow the tradition of spiting on it, or at the very least walking around it so as not to walk through a big pile of spit. The reason being is that this on this spot there was once a small building with two very unpopular purposes. The first is that it was where you were held prior to being taken to your execution. The second was it was where you went to pay taxes. So the people of Edinburgh would show their distaste for these things by spiting on the building when passing by. The heart was the symbol on the door for some reason, so when the building was taken down the government made this pattern in the sidewalk so people could still show how much they hate taxes and executions. 

A fun game here is spot the tourist. If they walk through then tourist, if they make an effort to go around then they are a local. I was told a story about a guy coming here to propose and not knowing about the background, he knelt in the heart. All those around were disgusted. I mean really proposing on vacation? 

At last a place to buy my Curios

So being that it was St. Patrick's day I thought it appropriate to go out to some bars. I met up with some people I had met the night before and we started out at Drop-Kick Murphy's a very Irish pub that was packed like no ones business. I did meet a nice Swiss couple there though. They were speaking german which at first I could follow, but then they got into the Swiss dialect and I was lost completely. They were cool though.

Next we went to a neat place called Banshees. It touted itself as the most haunted bar in Edinburgh. and did all it could to live up to it. It was built partially in an old prison and has a lot of small creepy rooms. It also has a small cinema that is constantly showing ghost movies (when I was there they had Ghostbusters 2 on).

That was about it for Edinburgh. The next day I grabbed a bus and headed to Glasgow. I'll have Glasgow stuff up soon. I promise that it will be shorter then Edinburgh.., I hope.

I leave you with some pictures of Edinburgh Castle.