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The next day….
We both intended to get up early (early means before 9) but it didn’t happen. We got up close to 11 (which means we missed breakfast). We hopped on the shuttle to town and then tried to find a place to eat. We both wanted breakfast food but it was near impossible to find. We finally settled on Starbucks and got muffins and fruit. Next we stopped at the tourist center and booked a tour of the Vaults (part of the underground city) for that afternoon. We jumped on a bus and went to the Edinburgh Zoo. She had never seen a lemur before so we looked through all the lemur exhibits (there were at least 5 of them) but couldn’t find a lemur! Eventually on our way out we finally saw one. They also had a skunk but it was hiding so Kara didn’t get to see it. There are several very cool things about this zoo. First is the hilltop view. It took us about 20 minutes to walk to the top but once you get there it is quite amazing. At this point I fell even deeper in love with Edinburgh. A note
about the hills: they are not mere hills; the city is built on an ancient volcanic rock and is surrounded by more very, very tall hills. We managed to get to the Penguin Parade just in time! They have at least 100 penguins of many different types there. The last cool thing is the multitude of monkeys and chimpanzees they have. I never knew there were that many types of monkey and chimpanzees! There were some that were about the same size as a bunny. There was a little boy in the monkey house with his parents and apparently the little monkeys were scaring him. He said they were scary and he wanted to go back to the lions because they weren’t scary. We couldn’t help but laugh.
After the zoo we went on a tour of the Vaults. The vaults are chambers that were built under the land bridges (bridge that connects some of the hills in the area) and sometimes continue into the city underground. They were built in the late 18th century and were meant to hold businesses. The problem with the vaults is that they were not waterproofed (a must in Scotland) and they were
of course dark and there was little to no ventilation. When they were first opened they were some of the most expensive real estate in the UK. The fell into disuse quickly mostly because you had to light them with lanterns or candles and there was nowhere for the smoke to go. Eventually they were used for pubs and brothels. The town council closed them down and for a while they were used illicitly by body snatchers to store bodies overnight before they sold them to the medical school. The medical school was in dire need of bodies because it was the best medical school in Europe if not the whole world at the time. Legally they were only allowed to have one body a year. The body would be of an executed criminal. Obviously this was not enough so body snatching became a very profitable trade. (One body would generally be worth 3 months wages depending of course on the condition of the body). The most notorious body snatchers in Edinburgh (most likely all of Scotland) were William Burke and William Hare, two Irish immigrants in the early 1800’s. They started out body snatching but it was a risky
business, because the town council had hired watchmen to watch over the new graves also the payment for bodies depended on how decomposed the bodies were. They came up with a new way to supply very fresh bodies. They started luring people to their lodgings and get them very drunk and then they would smother them to death. They would put the palm of their hand on the bottom of the victims chin and hold the victims nose at the same time, so they could smother their victims without leaving any marks. They always chose immigrants or other people who wouldn’t be missed. It is estimated they killed up to 30 people. They were finally caught after they killed a prostitute. She apparently was a very pretty and very popular prostitute and the head of the medical department and many of the students recognized her. They were arrested but there was not enough evidence against (though Burke and Hare didn’t know that). Hare turned state’s evidence on Burke. Hare was exiled and died in London as a homeless person. Burke was hung and his body was donated to the medical school. His skeleton is still on display at the school.
Also a wallet was made out of his skin (YUCK) and is on display at the police museum. (I skipped seeing that).
The vaults were very neat and it was cool to see all the artifacts that were found when the vaults were excavated. BTW they had been closed in the 1830’s and then reopened in 1994.
After the vaults we had dinner and then headed to the Edinburgh Dungeon. It isn’t a real dungeon it is more of a very elaborate representation of Edinburgh’s more terrifying past. It is also located in the “underground city”. You go through a series of rooms and each room has a theme and most rooms have at least one costumed actor in them. We started out in “Judgment of Sinners” room. There was a judge (who was acting very drunk) and he tried several people before sending us on our way (I know that sounds boring but it was funny and scary at times). We entered the Haunted Labyrinth, which consisted of lots and lots of mirrors so you always felt like you were about to run into something. That led to the Torture and Disease room. We were locked into
a cell and then one “lucky” soul was picked to have old torture methods demonstrated on him. There was of course the rack, and one of the more interesting tools were the tongue grabbers (basically looks like a very heavy duty set of tongs with gripped ends) that was used to rip the tongue out of someone. There was also pyramid on a stand about table high and the victim would be hoisted up above the pyramid and dropped again and again as their legs and pelvic was smashed to pieces. Seems like it would be pretty easy to get a confession right? I don’t know how some people held out! From there we headed to the Anatomy Theatre to see a dissection (of course not real!!) of one of Burke and Hare’s victims (see above story). After that was a water ride into the cave of Sawney Bean. He and his wife(?) fled to a cave in the late 1500s because they were being chased for committing robbery. They lived undetected in the cave for 25 years. The horrible part of the story is that they killed people and brought their bodies back to the cave to eat. They
had many children throughout the years, who also helped kill and eat people. Nearly 1000 people were killed by them. One victim escaped and King James VI, soldiers, and citizens raided the cave. They cut the hands and legs off of Sawney Bean and all his sons. His wife and daughters had to watch them bleed to death and then they were burned alive. The last room was a reenactment of the clan wars. We had to crouch down in this room and my knee gave out and I couldn’t get up. It was so dark no one realized I had fallen down so I was stepped on several times before someone could help me get up. All in all it was a neat experience. Apparently it is a chain and there are locations in York, London, and Hamburg, of course themed to the city’s history.
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