Well today is a transit day, having spent yesterday doing a bit of laundry and walking around the University. This is where the world gets smaller. How small? Here it is…

So we are sitting at dinner the other night, casually chatting about all things pet (typical conversation goes “what do you think Knowshon is doing…”). Sitting next to us are two Americans also chatting about all sorts of things. In the most casual of ways I hear the guy say “Renton” – of course sitting there for about 3.5 seconds I think “no way”, then 2 seconds later ask “did you say Renton, as in Renton Washington?”. The answer, is yes, they are from Washington. I casually say – oh “I’m from Snoqualmie”, they reply “We live in North Bend” – flash my brain – couldn’t believe it – someone else on the planet from North Bend Washington that actually is in Scotland, even more mind blowing traveling the world. 🙂 Smallest synergy is that they live on Zemp Way (or Road or something) which was a really funny coincidence as the Zemp’s were neighbors and I was pretty good friends with Greg for awhile… So there it is – strange dinner fellows.

Back to yesterday, after doing some laundry and some errands (gifts), our princess from Lafayette decided that we needed to do a scary ghost tour of the underworld in Edinburgh. While I typically avoid ghosts, we realized that no place better to tempt the dark side than here. So off we went into the evening tour – which they walk you around a bit, but then you enter into a world of old storage areas – which were under a bridge. These areas were originally for merchants to store items, but over the years the areas were converted into very poor living quarters where 40-60 people lived in these areas – no windows, no light, no water, no sewage, etc. We kept hearing stories about how people threw their chamber pots into the street nightly, as well as miscellaneous body parts, animal parts, etc. Edinburgh was a smelly place.

In these merchant vaults people lived since there was no other place to live. Edinburgh used to be a walled city with 75-100k people living in the confines of the walls. Now the wall is gone and “new Edinburgh” is alive and well. Eventually the merchant vaults somehow got boarded up and built over and went for years (100+) without people knowing they were there. There was a college student living in a flat with a wall that backed to the vault in the 70s-80s where in a drunken state one night thought they heard sounds coming behind their wall. They of course beat through the wall and magically discovered the long lost vaults behind their flat. Now there are some bars and mostly our section is owned by an enterprising guy that does ghost tours. There was a Coven (Wicca pagan religion) room (witches meeting room) and supposedly lots of ghosts.

The owner also collects old torture devices. One was the “jaw breaker” where they stuck it between your teeth and then cranked the handle until your jaw broke (fun). Also various items to blow out your eyeballs, sever fingers, and disable you for life. Interesting times indeed.

We had a great meal yesterday on the street (paella) which was simply amazing. This morning there was a local 10K running out of our window, with Scouts actually serving water. Went down and had a quick chat with the scout leader just for fun, had some breakfast, packed and now waiting for our car ride to our hiking starting town of Drymen. Tomorrow’s hike is about 10 miles, should be relatively easy – not a lot of vertical, etc. It has been colder with a bit of wind, but I think we’re pretty covered on the gear front. I guess we’ll find out starting tomorrow.

Not sure what our wifi connectivity will be like from here – could be good or bad. My guess is the hotels we are staying at will have it so can continue the blog. Really going to try to stay off work this week as well 🙂

I think we’ll see Shrek – lots of folks sure sound like him. Two hard working dogs at a hairdresser. And the typical “large” coffee here – no one needs a Starbucks large – Starbucks is here but we don’t see many folks inside – seems like there’s a coffee shop every other shop on every street you walk down.