Day 5, Aug 14 (Tuesday)

Planted two letterboxes.  Both in Leith, no point in planting in downtown Edinburgh; way too many bums and street people there.

can you see the letterbox in this picture?

professional cemetery creeper

Walked through the Old Calton Cemetery.  It was disconcerting to see all the litter from homeless living in the graveyards.  So much trash scattered about.  We noticed this is a trend in Edinburgh – there is a lot of litter in this city.  I like to think the homeless would be welcome in my tomb, but they should take their trash with them.  To see that basically nobody cares enough to take care of the parks and cemeteries is a little sickening to us.

Of course we spent a fair amount of time creeping around the cemetery near our hotel.  I (Erik) love the old headstones.  It's interesting how they changed over time.  Unfortunately for this part of Scotland, there is a lot of sandstone.  Easy to carve and work, but not as long lasting as granite.  Here are a few of the more interesting ones.

From the 1700's

Is this intended to keep some out?  Or something in?

This is the oldest stone in the cemetery, from the mid 1600's.  Symbolism was very common at the time.  The skull and cross bones represents our inevitable end.  The hour glass is to remind us that time is running out.  I believe (but am not sure) there is a cross in the hour glass which is there to symbolize salvation.

 

Diane in her natural habitat while letterboxing.

I thought this was a neat thing.

growing right out of the rock. (you get my artistic side)

I had to know what the inside looked like.

So I took this long exposure shot by holding my camera up to the grate above the door.  Other tourists stopped me and asked what it looked like.  The results were even better on the big screen.  Yes, I know I am now officially a creeper.

this plant is everywhere, even in tombs

While walking in Leith, we ran into a nice lady that walked a ways with us to find a post box for post cards to send home.  She spent some time in Boston, and found the relatively open and welcoming attitude of Americans to be agreeable.  The Scottish aren’t as open and friendly as… get this, Bostonians.  We didn’t know how to reply to that.

As we walked towards Old Town, we tried to visit some rescue cats at the local shelter.  No joy there, they turned us away because we aren’t locals looking to adopt.  As they say here, they are fucking cunts.  Caught a bus back to the Old Town for lunch at the very cheesy World Famous Frankenstein.

World Famour Frankenstein is tacky enough to be in the Wisconsin Dells.  The food was a little overpriced (but not as bad as expected).  The worst part – 2 days of food poisoning that Erik got.  Ick.

waiting for mediocre tasting food poisoning

good party decor, no?

total tourist pic.

Took in another show.  This one was called “Good Grief” by an Australian performer (Natalie Harris).  It was quite good.  Her thing was about finding humor in the life and passing of her father who sounded like quite the character.  It was poignant, funny, and at times a little inappropriate as she told the story from day he died to a few years later and her dating experiences.  One of the highlights was when the performer ejected some douche for using FaceBook during the show and never bothered to silence his phone (we think he was just charging it, not really watching the show).

Did dinner at an Indian place called Vinyasa.  The food was good, but the service, even by UK standards, was atrociously bad.  Rice was not included, so Erik had to improvise with naan and some rice from Diane, else the curry chicken would have been curry soup.  It was a little weird and took about 20 minutes to get the check.

Last thing we did was Mercat Tours “Hidden and Haunted Tour” by Jarred, another local year round guide.  This style was totally different than Ian from the previous one.  This one was basically all in the vaults with a short section above ground.  Jarred was also very funny, and just as enjoyable.  

stop off at the Scottish National Museum

well, hello, Dolly! <3

Took a bus back to the hotel.  Bad stomach ache thanks for World Famous Frankennausea.  Not 
enough sleep that night.





























 Some pictures of a dress from the 1700's.  There are a few views, but look especially at the close up.

The world's smallest museum.  This is on a counter in a kitchy shop selling tourist crap.  It's a display of a leather business card holder made from the tanned skin of the 1820's murderer, William Burke.

Made from human skin; this is what macro settings on camera were made to capture!

Naturally we did another underground tour...

Day 4, Aug 13 (Monday)

Day 4, Aug 13 (Monday)

Shopping for rain gear.  Went to Tiso Outdoors, which is a lot like an REI, just not as big.  Bought Diane a new jacket and some waterproofing for mine (which worked really well).  Later had coffee and honey cocoa cake at Clock’s in Leith.  Diane found a nice place to hide a letterbox in the Leith Links, a local park across the street from our hotel.

Took a bus to Gilermton Cove, an underground attraction in a south Edinburgh suburb.  Bus service in Edinburgh is amazingly good.  There are tons of options and they go everywhere with high frequency pretty much all day and night. 

the unassuming front.

the dorky hats were required

punch bowl and kitty pic

Gilmerton Cove is a local mystery.  It’s an underground tunnel and chamber system that isn’t very large (although some is obstructed and filled in due to Drum St above it, and nobody knows how far that goes).  Nobody knows where it really came from; it was walled up sometime before the 1700’s, and then again after the 1800’s and then reopened by some local guy in the 20^th century.  There is no record of origin for it, and some of the shafts to the surface are at very true to east/west locations.  There are a couple of chambers with “tables” and a “bed” or “altar” that seem to have been used for rituals of some kind.  Local conjecture is anything from the religious war eras of the 1500’s-1700’s to all the way back to the druids.  This one gave us the creeps in a few places.  We were with a woman and her 3 very well behaved children on the tour.  It was nice to be with others that are passionate about history like us.

Walked over to the Abbey Lodge nearby for lunch.  Fun local place, not a tourist area at all.  Chatted up some locals that were doing some day drinking because they are retired.  The game shows were funny and a little odd.  They old men were clearly staring in rapture at them.

A nice shot of the cove.  The tool marks were on the walls from who knows when.  It was carved with great attention to detail and well finished.

This is some moss growing in the tunnel.  There is no sunlight down there.

Day 3, Aug 12 (Sunday)

Breakfast was good. Walked in the rain to Old Town. We looked for the letterbox on Calton Hill, but no joy there. It was gone. It rained a lot with a pretty strong wind. This day we learned that our rain gear is not working. Decided to find an outdoors store to replace it. We made to Mary King’s Close for our tour.

Ranger Bob, show us the path!

Calton Hill is covered with monuments

The tour was great; definitely recommended for anyone planning to spend any time in Edinburgh’s Old Town area as it explains the history, and more importantly, why the city is the way it is. This included what a “close” is, why they are the way they are, how the vaults and bridges came to be, and why the city is laid out the way it is (Flodden wall, for defensive purposes). They also did a good job of explaining a non-sensationalized version of the Burke and Hare story. MKC is much more of a factual and historical attraction – they went to great lengths to dispel common misconceptions about life in the Old Town from 1600-150 or so, including how and why people lived the way they did. We bought the book. 

Did lunch at The Guilford, a local free house. Steak and ale pie, and haggis. Very yummy!

it's not stopping raining, what do you think of that?

this speaks for itself

Took in another show – a stand up at by a young woman. “Lightbulbs in Daylight” was her bitter and

awkward and depressing take on the misery of modern work and dating by a young woman living in the UK. It was terrible. This was more of what we would call “Cringe Fest” in she was just bad. There were a couple of funny lines and it was sad to see her fail like that. Especially after she made jokes like “I’m not stable enough to use alcohol or drugs to cope” which was funny, but all sad. Her best joke was about her ex-boyfriend and his line “show me the dick”. She was also working the streets pretty hard to drum up an audience. There were about 15-20 people in attendance. We ending up giving her a fiver when she passed the hat, mostly out of pity.

The very sketchy hallway leading to the black box theater for Lightbulbs in Daylight.  At this point I was wondering if we walked into a drug house.

The very, very low budget venue.  We had some feelings this would suck once we got here but decided to stay.  I read on the internet that we should see one terrible show.

We finished the day with City of the Dead’s Double Dead Tour. This was awesome! It was about 100

minutes long and included vaults underground, Greyfriar’s Kirkyard/Cemetery, and the McKenzie crypt and ghost tour. The tour guide, Ian, played sort of a crazy punk kind of guy. He did a great job with his own spin on sensationalizing the poor, depraved, and brutal nature of Edinburgh in the 1600’s, with some Burke and Hare in there for extra fun (including grave robbing, other resurrection men, etc.). Got some great pictures from this one.

Our guide, Ian.  He did a slightly crazy punk act.  We enjoyed his presentations.

Here are some shots from the vaults portion of the tour.  No idea on how old these things are, but I'm going with "very" in at least a few cases.

The tour started in vaults, and then led to Greyfriar's Kirkyard.  We ended up in the McKenzie crypt which was neat.

If this looks slightly familiar, it's because this is the building used in Harry Pothead as Hogwarts.

The infamous McKenzie crypt.

Little things like this are all over the graveyards in Scotland.

Day 2, Aug 11 (Saturday)

Slept off some jet lag. I Love that Scottish breakfast! 1st class train ride from Central Station in Glasgow to Waverly Station in Edinburgh. We had a lovely conversation with a mother and her teen daughter on the train. We walked from Waverly Station to MacKenzie Guest House. It was nice, and when we checked in, Danny, the owner seemed very nice, too.

Waverly Station.  They know the art of moving people!

boo is pretty good at looking really confused,
 but I had to step in, as the master of dumb, and get someone to help us out.

waiting to find out that the pay toilets are at Waverly.
We learned where the free toilets were after a very short time.

When navigating Edinburgh on foot, one needs to think a little differently than in the US.  That sign, "Gayfield Place Lane" indicates this is a "lane" connected streets.

This was close to a daily sight for us.  It's "Assembly" which is one of the larger venues.  The grass really is that green.

Another shot of a close.  It's hard to read, but there is a sign right above the "tunnel" at the top of the stairs.  That's the street sign.  You need to think in 3 dimensions to efficiently navigate Old Town in this city.

We saw these love birds at the top of the stairs shown in the picture above.

 We walked the Royal Mile, got absolutely INUNDATED with flyers! The crowds are a bit much for us, though. Stopped for dinner at The Richmond Café, which was a strong mediocre. Washed hands, the suds came out gray! Eeew! (the ladies next to us did NOT wash their hands… )

Tried Magners cider, not bad, but much like the food, it’s a bit flavorless. This was made up for by the place not being super crowded. We bought tickets for Mary King’s Close for tomorrow.

I love that Barry Loves Everyone.

A break in the crowd!

This is "Hard Trick" a busker from New York.  We called him that because every time before he would do a trick with his acrylic ball he would say, "hard trick hard trick" to impress the audience.  Some of them were hard tricks.

He saw me taking pictures so I told him I would give him a pound (GBP) if he posed.

Went back The Mile and saw two shows.

“The C Bomb” – a show about a young sexually liberated woman that is told she had Chlamydia was fun. She decides to throw a party (the day after her 21st birthday party) where she invites all her partners from the past 2 weeks (about a half dozen) plus her roommate. There was a lot of silly inappropriate humor, so of course we enjoyed it. The producer and cast were pitching their show pretty hard; they hand out flyers and try to talk to basically anybody that will listen on the street to get an audience. This one was big – the show was sold out at about 50-70 people in a small black box theater. Since we paid to be there (as opposed to “free” shows) we didn’t tip much when they passed the hat.

Support services were not available.
 These  kids had to come up with their own set.

The second show was “Modern Horror Stories” which was a series of skits that told some kind of horrific story that always involved someone dying, usually horribly. Like “The C Bomb” this one was a cast of 6-8 young people, mostly in their 20’s to early 30’s. It was also good for some good laughs, and we particularly enjoyed the fortune teller section where a tarot card reader gives a guy what is basically the worst possible fortune that leads to his death. The “spirit” was very funny as he gave the teller the vision and described how screwed the poor victim was. We will likely build on this idea for the medicine show.

Barry Loves Me.

Spent the rest of the time walking around fringe and Old town. It was very interesting; lots and lots of

great people watching. The whole place is crowded like the Minnesota State Fair. Finally got back to the MacKenzie Guest House at 11:20 PM. 24,000 plus steps today





Some more from the streets of Edinburgh.

This is a statue for Greyfriar's Bobby, the cute little dog.  Rubbing the statue nose started only a few years ago because a tour told people it was for luck.  Apparently the nose has been replaced at least once already.

Harry Potter themed places and stuff is everywhere.  This guy, walking and staring at his phone, was also a portent of a common theme to come.  More on that later.

Use of pylons (cones) on monuments is a bit of a local thing.