Second Day in Scotland

      I woke up early in the morning partly because I was really excited to start the day and the other part was due to the almost 7 foot Irish guy sleeping beneath my bunk who pooped up with his head easily clearing my bunk saying "Top of da Mornin' Ta Ya". I immediately started giggling and said "good morning". I went to the bathroom and changed out of my pajamas and into my cold weather wear.
      The view from my hostel window.

     I left the hostel and made my way to "The Elephant House" where JK Rowling wrote one of the Harry Potter books. Along the way there was the famous Greyfriars Bobby statue. The little skye terrier spent 14 years of his life sitting on his owner's grave until he also passed. There was an Italian couple trying to take a picture with that statue. I offered to take a picture of them with the statue and they were really excited. I did not plan on having a picture taken myself but they kindly offered to return the favor.

   
      The coffee shop was just a couple of blocks away. I ordered a cafe latte and sat at one of the tables it looked like there was a picture of JK Rowling sitting at. There were not a lot of tables at the coffee shop and I was lucky there were not a lot of people. Later on in the day I'd pass the shop and there was a line out the door.

JK Rowling probably sat at each of these spaces.

My lovely cup of coffee.

     After finishing my coffee I decided to do more exploring of the city and castle. I also booked a two tours. The Mary King's Close tour and the spooky night tour that took you underground to the catacombs, abandoned section of a prison, and finished in the graveyard. Sadly, you were not suppose to take pictures during the tour and they kept the groups small to help monitor rouge picture takers.

     I had late lunch/early dinner at Wildfire which was probably one of the best meals of my trip.

      I did not know that for most restaurants you need to make a reservation even for lunch. There was one hostess that was also the waitress and taking Christmas reservations. I did the fixed priced menu which I selected the mussels, then filet and fries. It was all delicious and I made sure to thank the two cooks that had prepared the meal. I was then ready for my last tour.

     The weather was perfect for the full day I was there. The Scots are excellent story tellers and I enjoyed the tours immensely. I learned about one lady who wanted to secure her daughter a wealthy husband so she claimed to have a very high dowry to attract a man with money. One man took the bait and married her daughter. He would bring up the dowry and the conversation would always change with a promise of later. His wife became pregnant and he was set on getting the dowry and aggressively pursed it when his mother-in-law was visiting.He promptly was killed him with a poker from the fireplace. The mother and daughter were sentenced to death but you were not allowed to kill a pregnant woman. The daughter escaped death by having her daughter early and escaping to London. Where she married another wealthy man. She had to leave her daughter in Scotland but when she died most of her wealth went to her daughter.

     Edinburgh also suffered two plagues. The living conditions were quite terrible in consideration of how most people live today. There were about 10-12 people in a family during that time and their home was a 10 by 8 foot room. You did everything in this room. This was a perfect situation to spread disease. During the bubonic plague many residents were bricked up with the infected and other family members. If you were infected you were forbidden to leave your home. There was treatment in the form of draining the buboes and then searing the wound closed with a hot iron. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience and you had a 40% chance of surviving the procedure versus the 100% chance of certain death if you did nothing. These were just a few of the stories you learned on the tours. After the tour was the pub crawl.