got there and went on a tour so that we would have an idea of what exactly we were looking at, because honestly my history of Scotland is about as good as my Scottish accent- not very good (although my English accent is pretty spot on "pip pip cheerio!" eh eh?) I was fascinated to learn that the castle had been built and destroyed many times. My favorite story is that when the English were trying to capture Scotland again (after they won freedom from them) the Scottish king, Robert the Bruce, decided to destroy many castles so they would not fall into the hands of the English. The only building Robert the Bruce said not to destroy that was part of this castle was a tiny little church. It is 900 years old and the oldest building on sight. It is said that he ordered it to be saved because it was built in memory of another kings mother. I have decided that I will get married in this little church, after I meet Prince William, or Harry of course. After the castle we toured this underground city. It's called Mary King's Close, which means it was a street called Mary King. Basically a long time ago there was this a town with a few streets where the bubonic and black plague hit really bad. Then in 1920, the city of Edinburgh decided to pretty much put a slab of concrete over most of the town and put a building right on top of it. So today they offer tours where you can see how people used to live and what the houses were like. They also told us a few ghosts stories and said they've had paranormal detectives down ther
e and confirmed that there is in fact paranormal activity. Needless to say my night of sleep was not the best.
The next day we climbed up this volcano called Arthur's Seat. It was a little steep, and by a little I mean pra
ctically vertical. I was stopping every 3 minutes or so to snap a few pictures, but that of course h
ad absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I needed a rest or was out of breath. About three minutes into the hike, a man passes us who is probably in his upper 60s...jogging. Well, okay he's probably really into running or something right? I mean we don't have volcan
os in the middle of Illinois. So we sort of laughed about it. About 7 minutes later, weare half way up, and he is jogging down the volcano. Well, what goes up must come down...and then apparently back up when he passes us a third time. needless to say I felt like a complete failure. When we got to the top, I pretty much died (from the breath taking views of course...) but the hike up was well worth it. It was absolutely the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. The way the volcano was, you walked to the back side of it, and there was a sort of a basin with many paths to choose to walk on. We were initially feeling energetic so we started to climb this one path that had stones that sort of mad a foot path, and was probably the steepest path we could have chosen. Exactly 4 minutes on this path I decide this was a horrible oversight and overestimation on my part. We all look at each other and decide perhaps a path a little flatter would be a better choice. (I'm not even going to pretend I wasn't embarrassed when another man, even OLDER, was about 50 paces behind us when we started on this path and within two minutes he passes us and says "Oh come girls I was expected better from you" he chuckles, I mumble some excuse about never having climbed a volcano before.) Anyways on the flatter path we notice from a distance some old ruins, so we decide to be tourists and check it out. It was this really old (1000 years old) church and only one wall remains of it. It's just so cool to be able to touch something and be around something so old. So needless to say, the volcano was my favorite part of Edinburgh. Let's just hope my thighs and bum will return to their normal non sore state soon!
Cheers!
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