Saturday 24th September – Edinburgh

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Today we made it into town by about lunch time. Our first mission was a parking building. We took a token to get in but when we got in there we discovered they were going to charge £6.50 for 2 hours so we decided to leave. Well, I took the token to the machine expecting for it to pop out again saying 'No charges'... instead it said '£6.50'! I was not having that so I immediately pushed the 'call for assistance' button and expressed how unhappy I was having only been in the building for 5 minutes! Well after that we were told to drive to the exit and the guy would let us out... so he should!!! That would make it 1 to us and 0 to the parking people! After that drama we found somewhere decent to park and we were on our merry way! We decided to take on the main street called 'The Royal Mile' that led up to Edinburgh Castle. We wanted to check out the Underground Vaults and ended up signing up to tour for 8pm, leaving us with many hours in between. Some how we managed to fill up most of this time. At about 4.30pm we went to Holyrood Palace which is the Queen's vacation home but we were too late to get in so instead we hiked up a large hill to look out over Edinburgh. When we got up top we discovered the Holyrood Palace is set out the same as Buckingham Palace... just smaller. They are not very original in Edinburgh are they?????
After this we had our parking dilema #2 – we were going to go back and park where we had suring the day so we could have tea and go to our tour of Edinburgh Vaults. Well... because we got there after 3pm we were going to be charged £10 and that would pay for us until midday the following day.... We weren't about to do that!!!!! So we drove onto the road to park there in the hope that it would be cheaper and it certainly was! It was 6.28pm and parking was free after 6.30pm... that would now make it 2 to us and 0 to the parking people!
We had dinner at a corner pub and it was delicious! I had fish'n'chips and Steve had a salmon steak with vegies.
After tea we walked down to the church where our tour began from. The tour started out quite well and our tour guide shared a lot of history about Edinburgh – It really does not have a 'picture perfect' history, infact it was quite nasty! We went to the less nice parts of town and heard a funny story about poos, wees and dead cats. When Edinburgh built a wall around it and the population grew so houses were built up because there was no room to build out. There were no sewer pipes in houses so at 10pm every night everything you no longer wanted in your house (refering to the poos, wees and possibly dead cats) would get thrown out the window. When you went to throw it out the window you would open the window and yell out 'Gardy Lou' then throw it out because you weren't allowed to throw it on the wall of the building as this was classed as unhygenic (and having ankle deep sewage in the street is hygenic???). Now if you were a local and you heard 'Gardy Lou' you would shout out something along the lines of 'Hold your bucket' then press themselves up against the wall of the building, but... if you were a tourist/visitor and you heard 'Gardy Lou' from above you, you were very likely to look up and... I don't think I need to say anything else!
When we reached the Vaults (which were underground cave type areas that were very wet, smelly and cold) we were shown around the 1st and 2nd before advancing onto the 3rd and 4th. We were warned before hand that the spookey stuff usually happens in the 4th Vault but they don't think it is ghosts but some sort of energy. After a few stories we were asked if we wanted to stand in the blackened corner for 15 seconds and see if anything happens – one woman did and reckoned she could feel something tightening around her body and claws scratching around her neck then a guy stood there and felt nothing. Steve said 'Load of bull if you ask me' and I really wasn't disagreeing with him!
We dad another chuckle at Nicole's expense tonight when we arrived at our hotel and I think you will too! Because we are staying at 1 place for 2 whole nights we were going to bring everything out of the car so we could re-pack some things... well please see the attached picture of Nicole walking into our room and see if you find it amusing too!
That's all for now folks!
XX

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Photos

Photo 2
Up the hill... a pretty massive hill... and a potted flower

Photo 3
Steve rock-climbing

Photo 4
Holyrood Palace

Photo 5
Nicole and all her stuff