Ghosts and Golfers

Yesterday I walked down the royal mile in Edinburgh then up to this hiking park called Arthur's Seat. I never found out who Arthur was but his seat is pretty high up. It took about an hour to get to a good spot to take a picture and if you want to there's an extra little bit you can go up but not many people did because it was so windy. I've seen Long Beach, WA get windy but this was taking it up a bit. It was blow you off the trail windy. But the view was great and the weather in the morning was sunny. After that my feet were sore again so I figured I'd take a short nap then figure the night out after that. The thing about Edinburgh is there's a lot of dark history, everything from torture, serial killers, sketchy doctors and the plague. The cool thing is the streets haven't hardly changed since the 16th & 17th century so its easy to picture how it was back then. So the thing to do here is take a ghost tour. I signed up for a tour that takes you not only around the city pointing out the streets where grisly situations took place but it also takes you down into the vaults. The vaults used to be the foundation of an old bridge, but the rock they used leaked so eventually they just built over it. When they did a lot of the poor people and the criminals moved in. So you've got this labyrinth of subterranean rooms, pitch dark and silent with a history of criminal behavior. It's supposedly haunted but I didn't see any ghosts. It was definitely creepy though and I think the whole group was ready to go.

Then today I took a trip up to St Andrews with stops at little fishing villages along the way. Very quint, maybe a thousand or so people lived in them. It was a fun lighthearted trip, the guide told stories about Scottish history and played music to set the mood. Then we made it to the golf course. It was pretty cool to see it in person after so many times watching on TV. I walked around a few holes when there weren't any golfers and got my picture taken on the Swilcan bridge. That was fun. Every pro golfer has most likely crossed that bridge at some point, plus uncle Rick! What a group. After that we drove around the country side some more, it was very green, a lot of sheep and potato farms. Rolling hills, the whole thing. I think that's about it for now, we'll see what tomorrow brings, its kind of weather dependent around here. Talk to ya later.