This is my travel journal from my study abroad trip to the UK and France. The names of my teachers and classmates have been changed for privacy reasons.
DAY 3- May 22
Okay, so today we got up and had breakfast again. It was much simpler this time now that we knew what to do. Liz, Rebecca and I decided to get back on the green bus to try and climb the big hill. (Calton, I think it was.) It was raining, however, so we tried to find something else to do. We hung out at the mall for a bit, then decided to go on the tour again anyway. I mean, our ticket was good until two, so we might as well use that to our advantage.
The bus didn't go by the hill anyway. The road was blocked because of the rain so we just skipped Regent Road and went through Canongate. As soon as I can find either a scanner or a decent-sized map of the area I'll add it here, because that will make this story so much easier to understand. Alternatively, you could just look it up on Google Maps...
The tour hits a cul-de-sac at Our Dynamic Earth, a kind of museum about the history of the world, and noticed they had a film about astronomy narrated by David Tennant. (My inner fangirl went “eee!”) I doubt I'll get to go see it, though. That's fine. There's an awful lot to do here. Anyway, we got off the tour bus at the corner of Holyrood Road and St. Mary's Street. It began to rain, according to the rules of cosmic inconveniences, and it continued to rain for the duration of our walk.
We still had our maps of the tour, so it was easy to find our way. We went along Cowgate, under the South Bridge and the George IV bridge, turned past Greyfriar's Bobby, and went to the National Museum of Scotland. This was when the rain decided to stop.
I know Mom's going to ask me all about the museum. Dad might, too. How am I supposed to explain a museum? It's a history museum. It's a big building filled with all sorts of artifacts from different eras carefully arranged behind glass with helpful bits of information written nearby so that one may better appreciate the importance of the past, juxtaposed with perhaps a modern exhibit. And you're not allowed to touch anything and you can't take pictures of the really fragile stuff. It's like every other history museum in the world.
Having said that, the museum was awesome. Six floors of Scottish history and you're allowed to stand on the roof. Be careful in that basement level, though. That thing's a flippin' maze. (I'll get to that in a moment.)
The first thing we saw was a guide in period dress, standing at a table filled with things. The items were part of a woman's toilette several centuries ago, and the guide explained to me what each item was for. Shortly after, there was a demonstration of women's clothing. The woman from the table stripped down a little and another woman in period costume helped her get dressed again while explaining each article of clothing. I think this was 15th, maybe 16th century formal wear. We didn't hear the beginning.
We went directly to the top floor and experienced Scottish history in the wrong order. I'm not going to go on about everything I learned, because I'm pretty sure you can find a lot of it online or in a decent textbook. But I'll point out a few things I thought were interesting. Like tweed. There was a video and a display on how tweed is made. I never knew that you had to beat it into submission first.
I really loved the basement level. This one covered the BCE parts. In every history museum I visit, the further back in time an exhibit is, the more it fascinates me. And the UK's history goes back so much further than the US. (Okay, technically they both go back just as far, but I'm going from when America was first discovered by Europeans and started being called America.)
As you go back in time, there are fewer and fewer written records of things, and then you hit the point of pre-history. Then you take into account the changes of language, censorship, lost documents, unwritten knowledge and practical jokers, and it boggles my mind how historians can figure out the past. A good part of must be an educated guess. I don't mean they just look at stuff and pull something out of their ass. I know that they use what they already know about the time period and human nature and culture to find reasonable explanations.
How do they know what daily life was like for individuals of particular social classes centuries ago? Better yet, how do they figure out what all the artifacts are for? Yeah, I bet a lot of it would speak for itself, but what about the things they find from thousands of years ago? I saw cases filled with the remains of tools and objects from God knows how far back, somehow miraculously preserved enough to be recovered. Things I would just dismiss as rocks and bits of twig, but really had some kind of purpose.
I really want to go back to the museum. We didn't really take enough time to see everything, and I still want to go up on the roof. But we had things to do, so we walked back to our bus station and went to a local grocery store. See, the plan was to get something cheap that we could keep in our rooms to eat in case everything closed on us again. Back on campus, we found that a bunch of the others had the same idea. I picked up a packet of shortbread biscuits, a small loaf of bread, blackcurrant jam, and a big bottle of water.
I failed to get cups or a spoon, however. I have no problem drinking out of a two-litre bottle, but I don't know what to do about the jam. Use my fingers, perhaps. There's a sink right here so I can wash the sticky off.
Came back to the dorms to relax for a bit. I was tired after all the walking. And the limping. Yeah, my knee's started acting up again so I've had a hitch in my get-along the past two days. It doesn't really slow me down except on stairs. Watched Doctor Who on the BBC iPlayer, which doesn't work for me in the States, and then got back together with Rebecca and Liz.
We tried to call Alan and Michael back to see if they wanted to hang out later, but we had a problem. Firstly, only Rebecca's phone could make international calls. Second, she could call them, but they can't call her. Got ahold of Alan, who might have been sleeping it off, but told us to call back. He didn't answer his phone the second time, and we only got Michael's voicemail. Now, we didn't assume that they didn't want to hang out, because they could have easily been away from the phone, or unable to get to it in time. We don't know, they can't tell us. But we decided to let it go on the off chance they weren't interested in doing something. Might try back again later, though.
Because the walls are made of tracing paper, I heard some of the other girls planning to go on the City of the Dead tour. They were all going to go to the 10:00 tour, so that it would be good and dark by the time we reached Grayfriar's Kirkyard. This meant that we wouldn't get back until about midnight, and we had class in the morning.
I think our whole class went, and it was a great choice. The tour started around the big sign on a street I can't remember. We climbed the world's longest staircase to get there. Anyhoo, the stranger dressed entirely in black that we gave our money to turned out to be our tour guide. His name was Ian, and he's very good at what he does. We started with the underground vaults beneath the South Bridge. This marked the fourth time I've heard about how people would shout “Gardyloo!” and throw waste out the window.
They really like telling that story. Huh. Anyway, as we reached the gate to the vaults, we found that someone had apparently pissed right in front of it. Our guide looked down at it, looked up at all the windows, and shrugged and said “Hmm. Gardyloo.”
The tour has no special effects or lasers like the Edinburgh Dungeon, but it didn't need them. This guy's monologues were much, much more effective without them. Seriously, I had to ask him if he studied theatre. Turns out, he has. He's done Shakespeare, and I believe him because his performance was amazing. I was determined not to be scared, but the way he told us the stories really challenged that determination. The timing, volume, humour, everything was great. Just his history lectures sent chills up my spine. I'm proud to admit that I did not scream at all during the tour, but I did need to hold Liz's hand in the final vault and I slept with the TV on.
The ghost stories and the paranormal evidence wasn't nearly as scary as the history behind it all, I thought. And I'm sure parts were probably exaggerated for dramatic effect. It was educational, but it's an odd feeling to be frightened and learning at the same time.
“AAAAAAAAAA! THAT'S REALLY INTERSTING! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IN HERE!”
The horrific conditions of the vaults that the poor were forced to live in, the darkness, the unmarried pregnant women who died there...vault nineteen...
In vault nineteen, there were stocks in the corner. Just one, with chained manacles hanging from it. And the most terrifying thing about it was that the guide never explained it. He never told us what it was there for, if anyone had been in it, if it had any significance at all...the only time he even slightly acknowledge it was at then end of a story that didn't really have anything to do with it. It only sat there. And that was the part of the tour that haunted me the most.
He had given some of us torches at the beginning, (mine was the one running out of power) and of course he had us turn them all off so he could talk to us in the dark. They do that when you tour caves, too. "Let's just turn out all the lights. Whoops! I appear to have lost the only key to the door!"
The pitch-black, absolute, aggressively silent darkness. In a place so dank and hopeless where you're already buried alive with hundreds of years of history echoing through it. And the stocks just sit there, daring you to ask more and you don't because the answer would be too horrifying.
So those were the vaults. We left those behind and made our way to the cemetery, dodging the bouncers of a nearby club who insisted we should come in and have a drink. Part of me wishes we could have seen the graveyard in the day not because I was scared, but because I wanted to be able to see the headstones. It's hard for me to be afraid of graveyards when I've helped to mow one before. And after I frantically chased my dog through one to get him to stop piddling on the graves while he kept lifting his leg for drive-by squirtings.
Ian had to tell us to not try and nick anything in the graveyard, since it's a big problem. (By the way, if you'd actually go and steal headstones and bits of wall from a cemetery, you're officially a selfish douchebag, and I hope karma bites you in the ass someday. ) Once again, we got to hear more history. The area used to be a valley, but then they tried to bury so many people in so many ways that it's now a hill. We were standing on a hill made of dead people.
There were more corpses than they knew what to do with, so they'd do all sorts of things. Bury people in pits; cut up the bodies; boil all the meat off, then grind up the bones and mix them with concrete to build the city; shave all the hair off and use it as insulation. If you step back and look at that with your head tilted, it could be another form of recycling. Macabre recycling, but it's not like the dead were still using their bones. (I draw the line at making things out of human skin, though.)
Then we get to the crypts. The big stone tombs with the iron gates and bars over the top to deter grave robbers. And of course those tombs were used as prisons for the covenanters, who all died horrifically. And naturally, we all got to stand inside the most violently haunted one while our guide stood in the doorway. In his safety instructions, he told us that if we felt our feet get too hot or cold, or if we felt faint, or the ‘energy’, to step to the side. If it followed us, step to the side. If if follows again, step to the side.
I had a mental image of some irritated guy sidestepping all over the place. “Look, I don’t want to stand next to you. Take the hint!”
He also told us about J.K. Rowling walking through the cemetery, and how the names in her books also appear on the headstones. There’s actually a Thomas Riddle buried there. As we went to the last stop, I got all excited because I thought we were going to see that headstone. Instead, we saw the one for Greyfriar’s Bobby.
He had this one English girl, Abby, tell us the story. She didn’t know it. I don’t know what Abby (or, as he called her, the girl with the badger on her head) did to become the guide’s new best friend, but it was hilarious. He picked on her the whole tour.
After that, the show was over and it was ten to midnight. The buses had stopped, so we had to take taxis back. Some of the group took the night bus, the rest of us split up into two cabs. We got back to the dorm and I fell asleep almost immediately. But first I had to check under the bed for historians.
The tour hits a cul-de-sac at Our Dynamic Earth, a kind of museum about the history of the world, and noticed they had a film about astronomy narrated by David Tennant. (My inner fangirl went “eee!”) I doubt I'll get to go see it, though. That's fine. There's an awful lot to do here. Anyway, we got off the tour bus at the corner of Holyrood Road and St. Mary's Street. It began to rain, according to the rules of cosmic inconveniences, and it continued to rain for the duration of our walk.
We still had our maps of the tour, so it was easy to find our way. We went along Cowgate, under the South Bridge and the George IV bridge, turned past Greyfriar's Bobby, and went to the National Museum of Scotland. This was when the rain decided to stop.
I know Mom's going to ask me all about the museum. Dad might, too. How am I supposed to explain a museum? It's a history museum. It's a big building filled with all sorts of artifacts from different eras carefully arranged behind glass with helpful bits of information written nearby so that one may better appreciate the importance of the past, juxtaposed with perhaps a modern exhibit. And you're not allowed to touch anything and you can't take pictures of the really fragile stuff. It's like every other history museum in the world.
Having said that, the museum was awesome. Six floors of Scottish history and you're allowed to stand on the roof. Be careful in that basement level, though. That thing's a flippin' maze. (I'll get to that in a moment.)
The first thing we saw was a guide in period dress, standing at a table filled with things. The items were part of a woman's toilette several centuries ago, and the guide explained to me what each item was for. Shortly after, there was a demonstration of women's clothing. The woman from the table stripped down a little and another woman in period costume helped her get dressed again while explaining each article of clothing. I think this was 15th, maybe 16th century formal wear. We didn't hear the beginning.
We went directly to the top floor and experienced Scottish history in the wrong order. I'm not going to go on about everything I learned, because I'm pretty sure you can find a lot of it online or in a decent textbook. But I'll point out a few things I thought were interesting. Like tweed. There was a video and a display on how tweed is made. I never knew that you had to beat it into submission first.
I really loved the basement level. This one covered the BCE parts. In every history museum I visit, the further back in time an exhibit is, the more it fascinates me. And the UK's history goes back so much further than the US. (Okay, technically they both go back just as far, but I'm going from when America was first discovered by Europeans and started being called America.)
As you go back in time, there are fewer and fewer written records of things, and then you hit the point of pre-history. Then you take into account the changes of language, censorship, lost documents, unwritten knowledge and practical jokers, and it boggles my mind how historians can figure out the past. A good part of must be an educated guess. I don't mean they just look at stuff and pull something out of their ass. I know that they use what they already know about the time period and human nature and culture to find reasonable explanations.
How do they know what daily life was like for individuals of particular social classes centuries ago? Better yet, how do they figure out what all the artifacts are for? Yeah, I bet a lot of it would speak for itself, but what about the things they find from thousands of years ago? I saw cases filled with the remains of tools and objects from God knows how far back, somehow miraculously preserved enough to be recovered. Things I would just dismiss as rocks and bits of twig, but really had some kind of purpose.
I really want to go back to the museum. We didn't really take enough time to see everything, and I still want to go up on the roof. But we had things to do, so we walked back to our bus station and went to a local grocery store. See, the plan was to get something cheap that we could keep in our rooms to eat in case everything closed on us again. Back on campus, we found that a bunch of the others had the same idea. I picked up a packet of shortbread biscuits, a small loaf of bread, blackcurrant jam, and a big bottle of water.
I failed to get cups or a spoon, however. I have no problem drinking out of a two-litre bottle, but I don't know what to do about the jam. Use my fingers, perhaps. There's a sink right here so I can wash the sticky off.
Came back to the dorms to relax for a bit. I was tired after all the walking. And the limping. Yeah, my knee's started acting up again so I've had a hitch in my get-along the past two days. It doesn't really slow me down except on stairs. Watched Doctor Who on the BBC iPlayer, which doesn't work for me in the States, and then got back together with Rebecca and Liz.
We tried to call Alan and Michael back to see if they wanted to hang out later, but we had a problem. Firstly, only Rebecca's phone could make international calls. Second, she could call them, but they can't call her. Got ahold of Alan, who might have been sleeping it off, but told us to call back. He didn't answer his phone the second time, and we only got Michael's voicemail. Now, we didn't assume that they didn't want to hang out, because they could have easily been away from the phone, or unable to get to it in time. We don't know, they can't tell us. But we decided to let it go on the off chance they weren't interested in doing something. Might try back again later, though.
Because the walls are made of tracing paper, I heard some of the other girls planning to go on the City of the Dead tour. They were all going to go to the 10:00 tour, so that it would be good and dark by the time we reached Grayfriar's Kirkyard. This meant that we wouldn't get back until about midnight, and we had class in the morning.
I think our whole class went, and it was a great choice. The tour started around the big sign on a street I can't remember. We climbed the world's longest staircase to get there. Anyhoo, the stranger dressed entirely in black that we gave our money to turned out to be our tour guide. His name was Ian, and he's very good at what he does. We started with the underground vaults beneath the South Bridge. This marked the fourth time I've heard about how people would shout “Gardyloo!” and throw waste out the window.
They really like telling that story. Huh. Anyway, as we reached the gate to the vaults, we found that someone had apparently pissed right in front of it. Our guide looked down at it, looked up at all the windows, and shrugged and said “Hmm. Gardyloo.”
The tour has no special effects or lasers like the Edinburgh Dungeon, but it didn't need them. This guy's monologues were much, much more effective without them. Seriously, I had to ask him if he studied theatre. Turns out, he has. He's done Shakespeare, and I believe him because his performance was amazing. I was determined not to be scared, but the way he told us the stories really challenged that determination. The timing, volume, humour, everything was great. Just his history lectures sent chills up my spine. I'm proud to admit that I did not scream at all during the tour, but I did need to hold Liz's hand in the final vault and I slept with the TV on.
The ghost stories and the paranormal evidence wasn't nearly as scary as the history behind it all, I thought. And I'm sure parts were probably exaggerated for dramatic effect. It was educational, but it's an odd feeling to be frightened and learning at the same time.
“AAAAAAAAAA! THAT'S REALLY INTERSTING! I DIDN'T KNOW THAT! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE IN HERE!”
The horrific conditions of the vaults that the poor were forced to live in, the darkness, the unmarried pregnant women who died there...vault nineteen...
In vault nineteen, there were stocks in the corner. Just one, with chained manacles hanging from it. And the most terrifying thing about it was that the guide never explained it. He never told us what it was there for, if anyone had been in it, if it had any significance at all...the only time he even slightly acknowledge it was at then end of a story that didn't really have anything to do with it. It only sat there. And that was the part of the tour that haunted me the most.
He had given some of us torches at the beginning, (mine was the one running out of power) and of course he had us turn them all off so he could talk to us in the dark. They do that when you tour caves, too. "Let's just turn out all the lights. Whoops! I appear to have lost the only key to the door!"
The pitch-black, absolute, aggressively silent darkness. In a place so dank and hopeless where you're already buried alive with hundreds of years of history echoing through it. And the stocks just sit there, daring you to ask more and you don't because the answer would be too horrifying.
So those were the vaults. We left those behind and made our way to the cemetery, dodging the bouncers of a nearby club who insisted we should come in and have a drink. Part of me wishes we could have seen the graveyard in the day not because I was scared, but because I wanted to be able to see the headstones. It's hard for me to be afraid of graveyards when I've helped to mow one before. And after I frantically chased my dog through one to get him to stop piddling on the graves while he kept lifting his leg for drive-by squirtings.
Ian had to tell us to not try and nick anything in the graveyard, since it's a big problem. (By the way, if you'd actually go and steal headstones and bits of wall from a cemetery, you're officially a selfish douchebag, and I hope karma bites you in the ass someday. ) Once again, we got to hear more history. The area used to be a valley, but then they tried to bury so many people in so many ways that it's now a hill. We were standing on a hill made of dead people.
There were more corpses than they knew what to do with, so they'd do all sorts of things. Bury people in pits; cut up the bodies; boil all the meat off, then grind up the bones and mix them with concrete to build the city; shave all the hair off and use it as insulation. If you step back and look at that with your head tilted, it could be another form of recycling. Macabre recycling, but it's not like the dead were still using their bones. (I draw the line at making things out of human skin, though.)
Then we get to the crypts. The big stone tombs with the iron gates and bars over the top to deter grave robbers. And of course those tombs were used as prisons for the covenanters, who all died horrifically. And naturally, we all got to stand inside the most violently haunted one while our guide stood in the doorway. In his safety instructions, he told us that if we felt our feet get too hot or cold, or if we felt faint, or the ‘energy’, to step to the side. If it followed us, step to the side. If if follows again, step to the side.
I had a mental image of some irritated guy sidestepping all over the place. “Look, I don’t want to stand next to you. Take the hint!”
He also told us about J.K. Rowling walking through the cemetery, and how the names in her books also appear on the headstones. There’s actually a Thomas Riddle buried there. As we went to the last stop, I got all excited because I thought we were going to see that headstone. Instead, we saw the one for Greyfriar’s Bobby.
He had this one English girl, Abby, tell us the story. She didn’t know it. I don’t know what Abby (or, as he called her, the girl with the badger on her head) did to become the guide’s new best friend, but it was hilarious. He picked on her the whole tour.
After that, the show was over and it was ten to midnight. The buses had stopped, so we had to take taxis back. Some of the group took the night bus, the rest of us split up into two cabs. We got back to the dorm and I fell asleep almost immediately. But first I had to check under the bed for historians.
