Saturday, July 2, 2011

Walk the Royal Mile.

If you ever find yourself needing to travel from London to Edinburgh, do yourself a favour and take the train. The last time I came up this way, I took the bus. At the time it seemed like a convenient and cost-effective travel option. As a result, I arrived in Edinburgh tired, cramped, cranky, and, thanks to my pint-sized travel companion, nursing a bruised rib. Taking the train, on the other hand, I feel comfortable. The seats or soft, there is something resembling leg room, and the scenery takes your breath away. As a result, I will roll into Edinburgh feeling relaxed, refreshed, and excited.

However, after 3 days of walking, drinking, meandering, running and all the rest, my feet are rather swollen. They sort of resemble a pair of very ugly gag balloons. So after catching a taxi and getting dropped off at my new, temporary homestead, my first order of business is to stretch out my legs and throw my feet up for an hour. After all, it is only the first day, and I do have plenty of time. The only problem being that I bore easily. After 1/2 an hour of rest and relaxation, I'm itching to take to the streets. Naturally, my first plan of attack is to hit that touristy mile of old buildings and scour the gift shops for those things that I have been asked to procure for certain people on behalf of certain other people. And if I fancy taking a picture or 3, then so be it.

As a result, this is exactly what I do. I procure gifts, I take pictures, I somehow find myself in a tea shoppe, looking out the window, drinking Scottish tea. As you do. By this time, though, I have made my mind up. No longer is this a leisurely night to keep walking to a minimum. No, I think I would quite like to take one of many many many many ghost tours on the Royal Mile. But dinner first. A nice, relaxing dinner in an old pub with delicious food and even better wine. What better way to refuel and prepare yourself for an over the top, theatrical history lesson? What better way, indeed...

I learned that sometimes, it's okay to lie. Sometimes it's okay to say "I felt it too," or "I do believe in it," or even "of course I didn't step inside the circle." Sometimes it is okay to lie in order to comfort a frightened woman.

The Auld Reekie tour in Edinburgh is a torture/terror tour designed to enlighten tourists about the city's violent past in an entertaining and spooky manner. It allows people the opportunity to scare themselves with a good ghost story. For me, it appeals to my sense of convenience (I happened to be walking by the meeting point just as the tour started). This sense is strengthened quite a bit by the sense given to me by my history degree. More strongly than any 'sense', the walking tour appeals to me as a historian. A historian who took a course on the witch hunts in Early Modern Europe no less. It allows me to put sights to facts, visualise scenes that I had difficulty imagining all those years ago. Of course the ghost stories would be entertaining, and might even make me giggle.

I do get my giggle! It comes from a story the guide tells us in the vaults. A story a out a Wiccan order who use the vaults for their ceremonies, and why they had to change from one room in the vault to another. Why did they change rooms? Because of a spirit of course. A big, bad beastie who seemed to like scratching people and blowing out candles. Naturally, the Wiccans trapped this spirit inside a stone circle. Standing outside, you are safe, but please, please don't stand inside the circle. Unless you're brave. Or, in my case, impatient and finding the circle to be a quick way out of the room and on to the next.

Despite this nice little giggle, I still walk away from the tour disgusted with the guide and disappointed in the tour. In my warped head, ghost stories are a great thing. You exploit the story of one or two people's death, and you twist it into this haunting tale. It tells the story of someone who might otherwise be forgotten by history, it gives us chills, and, if told right, it haunts us long after we leave.

In this case, the tour guide tells us an amazing story of many families who all came down to the vaults during one of many of the city's great fires. In coming down, they thought they were finding refuge. They were protected by the smoke, ash, and flames by the heavy, porous, limestone surrounding them. So they barricaded themselves into the vaults. After a while it started to get hot, and from there it didn't take these families long to figure out what was happening. But they had already barricaded themselves in. So with no escape, they tried to stave off the inevitable by gathering in the largest room. Slowly, painfully, these poor people were burned alive; cooked in a large oven.

And then she screamed. With everyone eating out of her hand, hanging on to every last word of this tragic story, in the pitch black she let out a shrill shriek. And thus (almost) everyone began to shriek in shrill terror. The heartbreaking, haunting story that would have left people spooked in its own merits was sold out in expense of a cheap scream. With adrenaline pumping and excitement roaring, most people forgot the story altogether, remembering only the opening poltergeist gambit, and the loud, echoeous chamber of screams.

Edinburgh isn't ruined by this experience, though. My last day in Edinburgh takes me on a tour of all the hidden cravats of the Royal Mile. Courtyards inhabited by Hume, the old Parliament overrun by lawyers and hidden by Victorian architecture, wynds and closes that serve to highlight the poor living conditions of the old city. It also takes me for a leisurely stroll down Princes Street to admire the Edwardian architecture of the new city and the gardens that hide the filthy site of the Nor Loch.

You should never apologise for being a tourist. Never apologise for popping into a world famous pub and ordering a dish called a "wee taste of Scotland." Or the Scottish coffee. Why? Because it is absolutely delicious. Because it might easily become your highlight of the Royal Mile, surpassing even the statue of Hume and his shiny toe. Also because you might find yourself waited on by a kind, cute Scottish man. Just to make the experience complete.

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