November 4 , 2003

Edinburgh, Scotland…my future home



Well, what can I say about Edinburgh other than I want to live there. The whole city looks like a fortress with its massive stone buildings sporting turrets and tall spikes. Most of the streets are cobblestone and very steep since much of Edinburgh has been built in what used to be the huge mote

surrounding Edinburgh castle.

We arrived on Halloween, so to jump into the spirit of things we took a ghost tour that led us around town. Apparently ghost tours are extremely popular due to Edinburgh’s bloody history. On any given night there are about three tours. Naturally though, on Halloween there were nine or ten going on at all hours.

Our guide filled us in on the details of various plagues that swept through Edinburgh. When the Bubonic plague came through, they couldn’t bury people fast enough, so they tossed body on top of body into large pits or into the marshy loch, which was also their source of drinking water. Needless to say, this didn’t help the plague situation much. There was one story of what was essentially a pre-school where several children started to show symptoms of the plague. In order to stop the plague from spreading, the school was bricked up with the children in it. However, many of the children that were in the school were the offspring of wealthy and influential parents. The parents vehemently complained and rioted so that the government eventually conceded to unbrick one door and let the mothers go in to fetch their children. As soon as the mothers went in to gather