Our Travels...Edinburgh

On to Scotland the land of Kilts and Delicious Shortbread! Also, Whiskey is apparently a Scottish "thing" and there are many breweries in Scotland and Edinburgh.

Our stay here came at the perfect time, it was just days before Halloween and the whole city has sort of an eerie look to it because of the architecture - so it was perfect. We did a ghost tour on the 30th, which took us into the underground vaults that were built below Edinburgh city center in the 1700s.

spooky cemeteries!

The vaults existed initially to serve as shops and cellars underground, but because of the ventilation conditions they were eventually abandoned. They became home to the poorest of the poor, and disease eventually spread, which led to the deaths of many people in the vaults. During the cholera pandemic (if I remember correctly) some of the vaults were sealed off, and people who were diseased remained behind and were left to die. They say their ghosts still haunt the vaults, but luckily I didn't get spooked by any. It is also rumored that there is an active poltergeist that lives in one of the various cemeteries scattered around Edinburgh. All in all I think it deserves to be called "the most haunted place on Earth".

My favorite thing about the city was that it was small enough to walk the entire thing in a day, and we got to see all of the monuments, and great lookouts that the city had to offer. We visited Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace as well as the University and countless other cool-looking monuments that I never caught the names of.
And last but not least, there is an extinct volcano in Edinburgh. I would have loved to climb to the top, but truthfully we didn't have the right gear, and it was raining or gloomy every day so the view would have been shitty anyway. But you can see it in the background of some of my panoramic shots. It basically just looks like a huge mossy mountain. I did get to go to a lookout point opposite the volcano, so I could see it from afar. 

Edinburgh Castle

The Scot Monument, Day and Night, Full Moon! 

Next stop, Dublin. We nearly died on the plane ride from Edinburgh to Dublin on Halloween night. The turbulence was some of the roughest I've ever experienced...but we made it through in the end *phew*