Edinburgh 2019: Day 3

Today we stayed in bed extra long in the morning. I didn't have all that much planned for today anyway. When we finally left the hotel room we made our way up Calton Hill (with our legs aching from yesterday's ordeal).

The guidebook had made it seem like there was a lot to see, do and explore on top of Calton Hill but there wasn't at all much. The observatory was tiny. The monuments were cool especially the Nelson monument which can be seen from all over the city. We dubbed that "the Assassin's Creed tower" during our first day. Funny story is the story about the National monument which was to be built as a copy of Parthenon in Athens, but they ran out of money after only 12 columns and it remained that way. Locals have dubbed it "Edinburgh's disgrace" according to our guidebook.

When we had had our fill of the view from the hill we walked back down to the city. We had some time over so we walked down South Bridge looking for the Surgeons' Hall museum. It's really cool, but also really morbid and grotesque (and a bit gross). Edinburgh was prominent in the 19th century for discoveries and advances made in anatomy and pathology. This museum displays old and preserved organs and body parts, both healthy and otherwise and tells the story of how we went from not knowing a damn thing about our own anatomy pre-18th century to discoveries in the fields of anaesthesia and surgery. Most of the preserved body parts are from the 19th and early 20th century (so all of them at least 100 years old). And it's all so frickin cool! We didn't have enough time to go through it all in detail, but I definitely wish we did. No photography allowed of course.

After that we had dinner and then went to The Real Mary King's Close on the Royal Mile to catch the 6pm tour that I booked on Friday. Our guide led us below the current city to show us the streets and homes on the centuries old street buried underneath the buildings of today. He told the story of the plague in 1645 and how people lived and died in the closes (alleys) of Edinburgh. It was a bit too gimmicky, though, with a lot of it depending on technology rather than the spoken word. And they would benefit from having smaller groups. The group we were in was 21 people and it was very crowded in most areas. Smaller groups, more props and less gimmicky technology would improve the tour by a lot. The tour finished by the group listening to a pre-recorded (again: bigger impact if the guide had told the story) 17th century ghost story that supposedly took place in Mary King's Close. I really liked our guide! He filled the whole tour with a kind of fatalistic humour that made everything funny.

After the tour we decided to go back to the hotel. We took a detour through the Princes Street Gardens on the way to the tram. We bought some sweets and drinks from the nearby Tesco and had a quiet evening on the room before going to bed sort of early. Tomorrow we're going back home.