Edinburgh 2nd Day - The Castle & The Underground
Our taxi driver drops us off at the top of the last street nearest the castle entrance
Leaving us this walk up the last of the hill to the entrance.
We're here!
But first, we have to walk through a long, wide grandstand area.
This will be one of only a very few places really crowded when we visit. It's 10:00 am and there are folks who have been here long enough already to be leaving.
This tells us about the construction we see going around us. We can visit to attend the Military Tattoo (I'd love to) and if we're lucky, sit with 8,700 0ther visitors!
Castle in the background
Getting Closer
Guardians of the Outer Gate
The ramparts looking down at us -
can't even imagine how terrifying it would be to be told to charge and take the fortress
Approaching the ticket windows and up the hill to the Inner Gate
View down to the city beneath us
Got the tickets and HEADPHONES -
really, the best way to investigate this castle is to use the excellent audio program.
Again we look up, and walk up - always up
Doesn't look any less threatening
Hard to tell where the iron-hard volcanic stone ends and the castle begins
You'll find I'm am intrigued (Jackie thinks I'm much too intrigued) with the relationship between the rock and the castle.
New Town, from the Castle
A panoramic view of the city from the Inner Gate
I realize the panoramic view is too small to really see - the width of the view was simply too large. So below are the 9 single prints, in order left - to - right, which were stitched together to make the panorama.
Yes, the ruin in the far right background caught my eye. I went to telephoto and got this shot. No, I did not find out what it was, or if I did, I forgot - sorry.
Pulled in even closer - its not a ruin, as I thought
Another true Scot hero
A long, long walk up - we took the cobbled road
Through the Inner Gate
More on the One O'clock Gun later.
BUT
Do you know why it was fired at 1:00 pm?
Because our parsimonious Scots didn't want to fire at noon, and it would take 11 more times as much powder!
Just outside the War Museam stands
From the back of the castle, down on New Town
Near the turret
Inside the War Museam
As we left the War Museum, we heard bag pipes. This young man was playing on the terrace next to the museum. He was an absolutely great player.
Looking up from the terrace, towards the Castle proper
Again, the castle seems to grow from the cold, black volcanic cone
Sorry - more volcano cone vs castle
The Chapel - the oldest part of the Castle
Inside the Chapel
St. Margaret's Book
View from the Chapel steps
Could not take pictures inside of the Honours,
but replicas are pictured on this page
Inside this portion of the museum, pictures were difficult to take because of the lighting
A pictorial history of the royal succession was impossible to photograph in its entirety
The true to size facsimiles of the Honours
Mary Queen of Scots
Scenes around the castle proper
The firing of the One O'clock Gun
Hard to see in the crowd - look towards the mid-lower left
The gun was smaller and quieter than expected
Looking back up as we leave
Out the Gate
The moat
And down hill we go on the Royal Mile to Merker Tower
The Tardis, Dr. Who?
A film was being shot here at the government building opposite the Merker Tower
Old cars and trucks were part of the plot
The street performers were back at the tower square
We wait for the Merker Tower for the Merker Underground guide.
Back when Edinburgh was in its peak, "on a good day the waste was ankle deep - on a bad day, often knee deep." And because the city was a warren of close's and multi-storey living quarters, visitors would go directly to Merker Tower. There they would find boys with torches who would know where to find where you wanted go go and would carry your luggage.
They were called Caddies. The word Caddy came from Edinburgh's Merker Tower, NOT golf.
ed
Caddy Earl sits and waits
This one runs almost straight down
This is the reason a bridge was built to the hill opposite.
In the snow or ice, animals nor carts could get to or from the Royal Mile
We walk to Niddry Street to the Underground Entrance
In the 16th Century, the Cowgate area was a very fashionable place just outside the city gates. Today it is a forlorn underpass as the South Bridge, built in the 1780s, towers over it. At the time the bridge was built, the land under it was excavated for several floors of rooms and underground chambers, virtually forgotten until recently. The vaults contained families of 7-10 people in rooms the size of a small bedroom with no ventilation or windows and a fireplace that provided some form of heat.
The vaults were lighted with fish oil lamps, which combined with stale
waste from garbage and chamber pots which were emptied into the streets after
the 10pm curfew each night, must had made the area barely habitable. Apparently,
merchants flocked to be there. Shops contained the businesses of
cobblers and watchmakers and acted as storage for wine and other products, which
were guarded by underground caretakers.
The look of the passageways without flash
There were several layer of room and passages - sometimes they did not line up correctly
The dampness in portions created stalactites
Without a flashlight, the place is awful dark and dreary
This is the Oyster Room
The room served as a place where people would gather and eat oysters -
it was full of shells when excavated
This is the White room - one of the cooler and dryer rooms in the Underground
Dead
bodies were kept here awaiting burial 
Right down the hall is a doorway that leads across to the University of Edinburgh's
School of Medicine. Bodies were known to be stolen from this room and
taken through the tunnel to the School of Medicine for dissecting
Imagine living and working in this dark, damp, area. The only light was from small fish oil lamps. There was no way to exhaust the fumes and no ventilation to draw air in.
This is the Cobbler's Room
Guides talk about various spirits remaining in the underground. One of which we attempted to experience was to be found in the Cobbler's room. No one made contact - or rather - he made no contact. He is said to approach women with unusual or expensive shoes.
These are not burial vaults. Merchants stored their goods, such as wine in these vaults.
One would rent a numbered vault and lock it to keep your goods safe.
An interesting note: A ship with a consignment of wine would come in and the wine loaded on a long horse-drawn cart. The wine shop owner would meet the shipment near Merker Square. The casks would be lined up and a free drink would be offered to anyone walking by. After everyone had their free drinks, he would check to see which casks had been most visited. He would price the wine then, based upon how much was used. The most used was priced the highest and kept under lock in the vaults. The least used was priced the cheapest and kept on the shop floors.
When the Underground was built, stone was gathered, stolen or purchased as best one could.
The rounded stone below has been proven to be part of a church -
the stone was taken to help build this wall.
No, not a jail, this a a attempt at humor by Merker Tours. This is the last bit before entering the Tour's main business rooms
Mercat Tours has sole access to the Underground. We used Mercat for both the Underground and the Walk of the Golden Mile. Visitors managing their own visit should contact Mercat Tours and consider using them. We found the tours managed by pleasant, very knowledgeable, experienced guides.
They have a small eclectic museum as the last last prior to leaving the underground.
It contains odds and ends, amusing signs and articles from the Underground that were found during the excavation.
Less than a quarter of the Underground is estimated to have been cleared.
Even our guide did not know why the "taxi" was here. They were never used in Edinburgh
Every day we looked for a place for lunch. This place was mentioned in our guide.
Each day we had a large bowl of soup and an huge hunk of freshly baked, crusty bread
Sitting
in the window, watching everyone walk by
A walkway through the Close to the street to the rail station
A lot darker and dingy than it looked from the royal Mile
A lot longer walk also
Looking back up through another Close
A close with steps rather than a long ramp to the Royal Mile
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We end our two days at Edinburgh - Off to the Highlands