The weather likes to play games with you in Edinburgh. One minute the sun is shining and it's a bit warm, then all of a sudden the clouds come and the wind picks up, then it starts to rain, and just as you pull out your umbrella...the sun is shining once again! It's exhausting trying to figure out what to wear and bring with you for the day.
On Saturday, we took a hired car to Rosslyn Chapel. The Chapel is famous for having holy grail associations...and it was the Da Vinci Code. Unlike in the movie, there was scaffolding and tarps all over the Chapel so you couldn't get a good look at it. The guide said that the scaffolding has been there for 13 years and that the one you see from a distance in the Da Vinci Code is a replica. The inside was beautiful, but smaller than I remembered. Apparently, there may be Knights Templar treasure buried underneath the flooring, but the won't dig it up. Too bad.
Our driver for the chapel also took us around the city. I saw the cafe(s) that J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in. He also told us the a story about a woman who was hanged, but didn't die (they thought she was dead) and when she woke up they called her Half Hanged Maggie (which was the inspiration for Rowling's character of Nearly Headless Nick). We also went up Arthur's Seat, a large mountain that overlooks Edinburgh. It was beautiful.
After our tour, Hank and I had lunch at a lovely Italian restaurant. Hank wasn't feeling really well, so he went back to the hotel to sleep and I wandered down the Royal Mile shopping and finally ended up back at the hotel. After a long sleep and some meds, Hank was feeling better just in time to meet up with the group for another ghost tour!!
This ghost tour was called the Ghosts & Ghouls tour. It took us around a few places on Royal Mile and told stories about the nasty past of Edinburgh. We ended up down in the vaults underneath the street where more horror stories were told. There were no ghosts, but our tour guide was awesome and we had so much fun that we all decided to go on a later ghost tour.
Our second tour of the night was called the Ghosthunter. By the time this tour started it was finally dark (10:30 pm). Our new guide was a little more creepy than the first and the stories because a little more graphic and disturbing. Again, the tour ended in the vaults, but this time there was only a candle the guide was holding that we had for light. As we were all standing at least 2 stories underground in the haunted vaults, you could hear these creepy footsteps behind us and what sounded like tables begin drug across the ceiling. Needless to say, we were all a bit nervous being down there the second time. I didn't even stop to take any pictures this time. I didn't want to be away from the group. This tour was my favorite part of the day!
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