THURSDAY-Edinburgh - Dinner at Whiski Rooms

On our last night in Edinburgh, we passed on another haunted tour we could have taken. Instead we found ourselves on a quiet street a couple blocks off High Street at the doors of Whiski Rooms, a comfy little gastropub that seemed to have a decent amount of locals inside too. This looked really cool. Not all who wander are lost, eh?







Jeri started with a yummy bowl of cream of mushroom soup. I had some slices of smoked venison served with fresh horseradish sauce and a couple poached quail eggs. Kind of an original take on the flavors of bacon and eggs actually. The smoked venison was really different. Being peat-smoked, it was very darkly smokey, earthy, and a great match to the 1968 Macallan scotch.




The Macallan was a very special treat for me. A single malt scotch casked for 33 years and bottled in 1968 - a rare vintage scotch. I've heard of such things, but never saw one offered anywhere.

Ok, for the scotch heads -- it was nothing like I expected. Instead of having any kind of strong or dominant aroma, it was amazingly light and clean. If anything, it smelled very much like grain, malt, and smoke. The perfect scotch smells in minimalistic combination. As a comparison, I had a Glenlivet 18 year after this and it was almost cloyingly brown sugar sweet in its aroma - something I've never noticed drinking Glenlivet of several ages over the years.







Our main courses kicked ass. Jeri's cous cous with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, and mushrooms wrapped in phyllo was an great balance of nutty blended with tanginess. My venison loin with braised leeks and potato croquettes was fantastic, and again combined really well with scotch.

We lingered over dessert talking about our trip, making our plans for travel tomorrow, and discussing where we might go next. Whiski Rooms was the perfect way to tie up the last day of our trip to Great Britain.

It's truly been a mad dash across Great Britain, but with incredible views, deep history, delicious food, and kind people almost everywhere we went. So long Edinburgh, and so long Great Britain! We'll meet again :)

THURSDAY-Edinburgh - Carlton Hill

I was so taken with the site of Carlton Hill from our bus tour, we hopped off as soon as we could and grabbed a taxi.

"Take us up to Edinburgh Castle please!" I told the driver.

"What, over there?" he pointed in the opposite direction to what I now realized was indeed a very close-by Edinburgh Castle. I'd seen it several times from locations near our hotel, but having seen Carlton Hill, the famous Edinburgh Castle looked... drab. Dull.

"Ok," I said, "well, that place over there."

"What, Carlton Hill?"

"Is that what it is?"

"Yes," he said.

"That's where we want to go!" and we tore off. After a short hike up lots of steps, we mounted the hill.




Carlton Hill holds the high ground in Edinburgh with commanding views of the city and beautiful monuments. And almost no one was up there with us. We wandered around with about a dozen other people looking at a collection of monuments and buildings on the hilltop. It was beautiful.




No, we never did visit Edinburgh Castle. It just seemed anti-climactic to us after seeing Carlton Hill.

THURSDAY-Edinburgh, Dark City

We did the bus tour this morning to see our way around Edinburgh. It's such a darkly lovely city. It's not dark in a gothic kind of way, per se. It's dark in the way you might take an average old European city and cloak it in a sort of sinister fairy tale. I'm not sure I'm making sense. Edinburgh sparkles, like pieces of jet or a smokey diamond.

WEDNESDAY-Edinburgh - Haggis, Neeps, & Tatties

The culinary pinnacle of the trip and a milestone in my tastebuds was due to occur in Scotland. You know I speak of none other than... HAGGIS.

I can think of few food items as feared as haggis. Fruit cake isn't really scary, just funny and not very good usually. Sushi, oysters-on-the-halfshell, and other raw meats don't agree with some people's palates. But when it comes down to genuine fear of eating something (other than like... bugs) the only other dishes I can compare it to are lutefisk and Chinese thousand year old eggs (neither of which I've dared to eat, so far).




Here's a slightly less vomitous picture of haggis than you might normally see. Haggis is a mixture of minced organ meats from a sheep, beef suet, oatmeal, onions, and seasonings. This unholy abomination is stuffed into a sheep's stomach, and simmered for a few hours until it's 'done'. It's essentially a sausage. A sausage shaped, and nearly the size of, a rugby ball.




Well, friends and neighbors, I did it. I ordered the traditional haggis meal with neeps and tatties (turnips and potatoes). The haggis is the very dark brown stuff -- I think you can pick out the neeps vs. the tatties. I accompanied it with a glass of single malt scotch in a manner that would have made Robert Burns proud. I felt perfectly prepared to ingest one of the most awful meals I'd ever had. I was going to do it with grace and style.




The haggis was good. Really, really pretty darn good! Haggis has a very rich and beefy flavor, despite being sheep organs. The oats inside are steel-cut oats that have an awesome chewy bite and a nutty flavor. The oatmeal makes a nice bridge between the haggis and your glass of single malt scotch so that that the two seem perfect partners! Above all, haggis is very peppery. It's spicy in an old-school way that brought to mind old recipes for preparing game. The more I ate of it, the more I liked it!!!

The potatoes were tasty and the turnips (also a first for me) were really good too - sort of a cross between carrots and butternut squash -- the flavor of squash with the texture of roasted carrots.

So, if you get the chance, get the haggis!!! It's really good!!!

WEDNESDAY-Edinburgh - Royal Mile

It's very very very touristy here and very very very historical too. High Street and The Royal Mile are synonymous, by the way.

My favorite feature of High Street? The closes! Pronounced "KLOHS" not "KLOHZ".




Closes are narrow passages that pretty much only one person can fit through, like an outdoor hallway. They're dark, and even in the middle of the day a little creepy. Some are a city block long, some shorter, some longer. I just love them!




I was very happy to find James' Court Close, a close that opens into a lovely little residential courtyard called James' Court!

WEDNESDAY-Edinburgh - The Haunted Vaults of South Bridge

After a relaxing morning of breakfast and a massage, we headed for High Street, the Royal Mile, in Edinburgh. Ok... you're need some background to get the context for our tour.


The dark, dirty, cramped city of 1600s Edinburgh wasn't cool enough for the nobles and royalty. They decided to build a whole new Edinburgh right next to it in a fancy Georgian style (we call it Roman revival).

There was still a really cool castle, Edinburgh Castle, on a great craggy hill the old side. The nobles wanted a nice road to go up to it. They finished construction of the Royal Mile (High Street) in 1788 by building it right on top of some of the old Edinburgh.

To support this, they used not only some of the old city, but built 19 major vaulted chambers, some atop others. These vaults were originally intended for storage for businesses above; High Street was the first purpose-built shopping street in Edinburgh.

But the vaults tended to be pretty leaky and wet; not a great place to store stuff. So instead, rich Scotsmen used the vaults for whoring, gambling, drinking, and all kinds of naughty stuff. This brought some legitimate businesses like cobblers who set up shop in the vaults, but mostly a lot of criminals. It was a pretty nasty, vicious, and dangerous place.

In addition, the King decreed that poverty was against the law, so you could be sent to prison or even killed for being destitute. The poor of Edinburgh moved underground into the vaults.

A little economics to set the scene: a good candle at the time was about $20 in today's money. If you had that kind of money, you could get a room somewhere, no matter how nasty, above ground.

Yup, you see where I'm going; the poor living in the vaults had no light. They lived in complete darkness, often starving, searching the damp vaults for scraps of food someone might have dropped, some wine spilled, anything they could get. You can guess where everyone went to the bathroom as well. Not a great place to raise the kids.

By the end of the 1800s the vaults were sealed up 'for good' to end the horror down below. In the 90s the vaults were reopened and offered a treasure trove of artifacts from the time. They also created a great tourist attraction for Edinburgh -- a city regarded by paranormal researchers as the single-most haunted city in all the world.

Whew! There's your background!



We got a haunted tour of the vaults, meeting our guide (Liz) at the St. Giles Cathedral on High Street (Royal Mile). Liz was a hoot and knew how to tell a ghost story. She started out by picking two fellas from the crowd to dramatize how people were whipped and tortured for public viewing at this location. Enjoy some of this on video by clicking here.

Needless to say, I couldn't take a pic in the darkness of the vaults. Despite little LED lights set in the floor and candles posted here and there, it was just too dark and flash was not permitted because it would blind all of us if we did. Liz even led us around with only a candle. I was pretty impressed with the commitment to dark and danger in this tour. In the US we'd be scared of getting sued if someone tripped, or worry someone would light themselves on fire with the candles everywhere.


Serious, this was dark. I really had to concentrate to make sure I kept my feet under me on the uneven flooring and at times the ceilings were low enough I had to crouch while she told the story in that room.








Liz got everyone wound up with a story about some angry ghost that tells people to 'get out' there. Then calmed folks down with the ghost of a friendly cobbler. But... this cobbler doesn't like 'trainers' (sneakers/tennis shoes) and likes to tug the shoestrings of little children who wear them.

There were a fair amount of kids on the trip. The Brits are pretty indulgent with their kids, just like in the US, but I wouldn't call them over-protective. It was perfectly ok to them to bring their four year olds down in the dark to hear spooky stories.

The last vault Liz brought us all into was very small and had a very low ceiling. It was also the only vault on the tour that wasn't lit with little LED lights set in the floor, or any light at all. All we could really see was Liz's face lit by her candle.

She told us about a woman on a tour a few months ago who was in this room and walked backwards into the rear wall until she smashed against the wall. She stayed pinned, flat against it with a look of horror on her face. She finally screamed "NO!!!", tore free, pushed through the others on the tour, and ran from that vault.

Tour operators caught up with her back at ground level where she said someone had pulled her back against the wall and pinned her there. In a gravelly voice, that person had said to her, "get out."

At this point on our tour, Liz said, "and now... we need to get out," and puffed out her candle, disappearing down the narrow corridors. The thirty or so of us jammed into this now pitch-black, low vault didn't waste much time making an orderly exit.


The ghost stories were fun, but one of the things that really stuck with you after was the dank smell from the vaults. There's no fresh air down there and the mildewy, earthy, sepulchral smell seeps into your clothes and comes with you into the dark Scottish evening, reminding you the rest of the night of the Edinburgh that was and still is... just beneath your feet.

TUESDAY-Edinburgh

I am seriously road-weary, thus the break in the blog posts. Plus, most of our day was lost to travel getting to Edinburgh on the train. Our open pass on the rail gives us lots of flexibility, but doesn't guarantee a seat. The first part of the trip I sat on the floor between cars, which was mostly cool and comfortable. But the restroom plumbing between cars was malfunctioning, and it also meant I sat in some kind of leaky water from it. No, I really don't want to talk about it. Or think about it. But a barrel of Bactine would be nice.

It was pretty cool to see the North Sea out our train window as we started coming into Edinburgh, so I tried to get some video of that here for your to enjoy, just click here to watch.

We walked out the strangest dark underground hallway from the train station in Edinburgh to enter the city. It came out in a dark alley on a dark rainy afternoon. That was pretty cool actually. We made our way up a very steep hill to the street level and grabbed a cab to our hotel.

And that was pretty much it. We ordered room service, scheduled some massages, and slept. Huge kudos to our travel agent, Laura, for booking an OUTSTANDINGLY awesome hotel for the end of our trip. Just when we're really spent and need some pampering, Hotel Roxburghe is PERFECT. We're gonna heal up, get some massages Wednesday, and hit it good again.