Day 20: Edinburgh

Not to interesting day... very fun night!

I woke up today and worked for the first half of the day on thesis. Around 1:30, I headed out to get lunch with my family and then go shopping with my mom for the rest of the day. Around 3:30, we stopped somewhere to get scones and tea...however, I am not a big tea drinker...so I got a latte instead.

Scotland’s weather is crazy. It is always cold and wet. Even when the sun comes out, it only stays for about 10 minutes. Today before I left, I looked out the window to check the weather and s

aw it was sunny, so I just threw my rain jacket in my purse to be safe since it rains probably every 20 minutes. However, when I stepped out the door 1 minute later, it was raining and cold.

At night, about 15 of us went on a haunted tour of Edinburgh’s underground. It started at 11 that night, and the first part consisted of walking a bit around Edinburgh, close to the Royal Mile, and getting a little bit of history about the city. The way they used to live was very gross. A few facts we learned were…

1. People would literally just through their waste out onto the street.

2. They were big into torturing people. We got to see, read and learn about all the different torturing methods (not my favorite part).

3. Edinburgh is where they had the most witch trials, and the most people died from being accused of being a witch here. If you were accused a witch, there was no way out… you were going to die. One of the witch trials consisted of first nailing the accused woman to a chair and then dunking her head first in the bay (Which was so filled with waste that a person could walk across). If she floated, then it must have been the devil holding her up… so they burned her (and her family) at the stake. If she sank and drowned, she was innocent. But now also dead….

We then went into the underground into old storage vaults that are supposed to be haunted. I thought it was really cool to see, and it really wasn’t that scary until the last vault when they turned all the lights out. Someone ended up popping out of the dark…we hadn’t been scared yet, so we weren’t expecting it. They had separated the guys and girls to different parts of the room, and I think when he popped out I almost knocked Mallory down trying to cling onto her.

At the end, we came out into the most haunted pub in Edinburgh (Because it was built into some of the vaults).