London by Night

Parliment and Big Ben

The London Eye

Tower Bridge with Uni Friends

Edinburgh

Edinburgh city street. All the streets look like this. This is a view of the city streets and below is a clocktower at dusk. We were lucky, as the sun showed itself each day we were there, even if it was only four a couple of hours.

Edinburgh Castle is the perched on top of a distinct volcano. Until the time of Scotland and England uniting as one nation, the Edinburgh castle was home to Scottish Royal family. Today it still houses the Scottish crown jewels. Although it these crown jewels don't contain the largest diamond in the world (which the English crown jewels do have), the were still quite impressive.



The Scottish Royal Coat of Arms (above). We also saw at the castle one of only two dog cemeteries in Scotland. They also had on display the dungeons which were used as bunkers for soldiers in the world wars.

A yes, the stereotypical scottish getup. This gentleman was playing for money near the center of town.




This gentleman was our tour guide for the Edinburgh Underground (Vaults) Tour. This was a great. They were built in the 18th century due to overcrowding. The vaults were used mostly by merchants and craftsmen that had businesses on South Bridge for storing wine, dairy and other products and were guarded by underground caretakers. Families also lived in some of the rooms of these vaults but with no sunlight or ventilation and with the issue of waste disposal, these vaults were barely habitable. The vaults in Old Town Edinburgh were not properly waterproofed and soon became uninhabitable. They were then filled and their existence erased from public records. They were rediscovered recently, excavated, and opened for tours to the public. There are many ghost stories that surround them.

In addition to the vaults, our tour guide took us around and told stories of punishment methods such as pinning your ear to a wall, cutting tongues out, and hangings. He also told of how "body snatchers" would kill or steal recently buried bodies to sell to the medical school for a year's wages per body.