Edinburgh Castle and Mary King’s Close- The Full Monty day #5 - Edinburgh, Scotland

Today we had the pleasure of sleeping late as Steve was kind enough to give us a set of house keys so we could go and come as we pleased. Our main mission this afternoon was Edinburgh Castle . It is built high on a hill on top of an extinct volcano at the end of the Royal Mile. It is a bit like the Tower of London in that there are rings of fortresses and many buildings hidden inside. One of these buildings holds the Scottish Crown Jewels and the Stone of Destiny (or Stone of Scone) which was the coronation seat of ancient Scottish kings. It was taken to England by King Edward I and sat at the bottom of the British Coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, but was returned in 1996 after a 700 year absence. Most of the castle was actually destroyed by the Scottish to keep if from the British and has since been rebuilt, but one of the original buildings is this quaint small chapel that only holds about twenty people, St. Margaret’s Chapel, which was built in the 12th century by King David I to honor his mother. Also enclosed on the castle grounds were several Scottish war museums with alot of artifacts and displays. We even had the pleasure of attending a puppet show in the Great Hall (built 1511) that was being put on for some of the visiting school children, along with a lesson on owls from a lady that brought her pet owl Louie. We thoroughly enjoyed our time here and although we were here 5 hours, it almost didn’t feel like we had enough time.

For the evenings festivities, we went to The Real Mary King’s Close. This is a historical tour of several of the Closes that have actually survived from the 17th century. When the building above these closes was built (The Royal Exchange - now the City Chambers) instead of completely demolishing the existing houses, they used their bottom floors as a foundation. The closes were forgotten about until recently and then opened up again (in 2003) and you can now basically walk down several of these closes (most notably Mary King’s Close) just as people did back then. It is all kinda spooky. A guide dressed in period clothing leads you through the rooms and closes and tell you the historical data along the way, like how they dealt with the sanitation problems, what wages were like back then, how people lived, that Mary King actually was a notable business woman that lived on this close, what happened when the plague hit from between 1644-1646 and killed 1/3 of the town’s population, etc. You are also brought into a bit of the paranormal in that psychics have also claimed that this area is also a hot spot for ghosts. One of the ghosts is Annie and she was supposedly abandoned in her house by her mother 300 years ago with her doll when she was dying of the plague. After her death though she “woke up” to find her doll was gone and this made her very sad. So, today many visitors now bring her dolls to keep her company and let her restless soul be at peace. I enjoyed this tour immensely and it was probably my favorite part of Edinburgh. I love the history and trying to imagine myself in someone else’s shoes!