Day Ten- Castles & Closes

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Had a big day today to make up for yesterday afternoon! Although we only left the house at 11:30am, had to let everyone recover. Trudi and I headed straight to Princes street to do some shopping, mainly for Trudi to find some togs for the weekend party in Peebles. We then went to Edinburgh Castle where we spent about an hour and a half, mainly looking at the prisons. It was really cool to see where they kept all the prisoners, and they actually had pretty good living conditions as far as prisons in the 1700s go. They had a toilet in their cell, and got a pint of beer every day with their dinner. They were also given 6 pence allowance a day, sounds like an alright life for a criminal!

We had to have lunch and be at Mary Kings Close by 4pm, and by the time we’d seen all the prisons and some of the museums at the castle we realised it was 3pm. So we quickly left and ran back down to Princes Street to Five Guys, an originally American but now UK-ified fast food chain. We’d planned on staying away from these kinds of places (as we thought we were much classier than that) but Trudi’s uncle had told us it was a must-do for the UK so we decided to give it a go.

BIG MISTAKE.

The smallest pack of a burger, fries and milkshake were so filling and sickening we found it hard to stand up afterwards. I mean, it tasted alright, but it was so much food and so unhealthy I felt super guilty. Anyway, we managed to slide ourselves off the seat and make our way to Mary Kings Close.

MKC is basically a close in the underground city of Edinburgh. In the 16/1700s when the plague hit, they (I don’t know who “they” is but moving on) just built a new city on top of the original one, meaning there is now an underground city that was pretty much untouched until they turned it into a tourist attraction. It was really really amazing, and pretty creepy as well. I’m not going to lie I was a bit worried there were still some plague-infected rats scuttling around down there. It was super interesting, and we made it out at around 5:30.

We were heading to Trudi’s grandparent’s at 6:30 so after MKC we headed out for a coffee, instead of travelling all the way home then back out again. This time for dinner the majority of the family was there, and all the big children (adults aged between 18 and almost-30) sat outside on the grass with red wine and bouillabaisse, under the sun, until 9pm. We went home and played cards for a while, and now have gone to bed. Night!

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