Visit to Scotland

I was in Scotland Mon-Wed this week for a day of work but of course, set aside some time to play as well. I visited Edinburgh which is the capital city of Scotland. While there I walked around for several hours checking things out. I toured the underground vaults that the city was built on. These where basically supports for bridges and buildings but ended up being used as places to take the sick, as brothels, doctors did illegal studies on human bodies. Basically the typical rape, mutilation, torture and murder that old Europe is famous for. The vaults are said to be one of the major places for paranormal activity. I was hoping for a bit of a scare myself but nothing happened. I then went to an old cemetary called Canongate. Buried there, among others, were Adam Smith (father of economics) and Robert Fergusson (Poet). I did not take any pictures of this because it was nearly 11:30 PM (best to see ghosts late at night) before I left the cemetary and my phones camera does not have flash.

When I first arrived I exchanged a few hundred Euros to Pounds. I found it odd that I ended up with 5 different kinds of 20 Pound currency:

Here is my hotel which is in the center of Edinburgh:
Views from my hotel room


I walked around Edinburgh for much of the first night. One thing that is amazing is the huge castle which sits on top of a large boulder in the middle of the city. People lived on the site as long as in the 9th century but the castle as it is seen today was mostly built in the 16th century.

And a couple of night views from different sides:

There is a road that leads up to the entrance to the castle called Royal Mile or High Street. Here is a picture at the top of that road looking at the only entrance to the castle. You can see that this is where the parking lot now is for visitors:
Here are random pictures I took just walking around the city:

So here are all my pictures that I took as a slide show. If you want to see them larger, click on the slideshow and it will take you to a site where you can view all of them larger and scroil;l through them as slow or fast as you would like: