The Ecomodern Nomad: The Edinburgh Dungeon & Other Adventures Along The Royal Mile

Good Evening, Readers!

Today, I got up early with Katie and we ate breakfast. I just want to talk about something with you for a short minute. The voltage coming out of the sockets here in the UK is around double what we have at home. Google tells me its 230V, which is quite a lot.

I'm just speculating, but I have a feeling that might have something to do with the fact that the toaster toasts my bread to perfection within around 30 seconds, so the next 1.5 minutes are pretty redundant and can cause a lot of smoke and a nice piece of really toasty bread. And by toasty, I mean burned to a blackened crisp. On a related note, I can stand and watch the water boil quickly using the electric kettle, which I'm really not used to in Canada. So, that was my first adventure of the day.

Unrelated note... I see this beautiful architecture everywhere and I'm still not used to it. So heres a picture.

Also, another fun and scenic ride on a double-decker bus. One nice thing about the Lothian busline is that you can do is download the app and buy all of the tickets via the app. then just show your phone screen to the bus driver as you walk on and activate an e-ticket. I find it better than paying to take cash out of a machine. Or just finding a machine, to begin with.

My second adventure was called The Edinburgh Dungeon. Now, I'm not completely certain on whether this place was an actual dungeon or not. However, the theatre part of the experience (which lasted about 80 minutes in total, including two underground horror rides) was based on truth and I think the acts included actual antique torture tools.

The Edinburgh Dungeon experience includes walking down a few storeys into the ground. The atmosphere is scary as you go in. There are old arches at the entrance of the building, and you have to go down around 5 or 6 flights of eerily lit stairs to get to the check-in desk. Then you wait in a small, dark dungeon-like room to begin the tour. Scary music plays, and the lighting is very dim.

I don't have any pictures of the inside because cameras were prohibited inside the tour. BUT, it wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway because it was so dark down there. No pictures would have turned out very well.

Going on, the tour was pretty scary. We went with a group of around 20ish people. Everyone was pretty friendly and we all had fun going through the tour together. There were even some other Canadians there, they are from Chilliwack! I was impressed.

Basically how the tour worked was you were led through the underground dungeon tunnels by scary looking people, acting as dungeon workers, jailers, the peopler responsible for torturing and executing people, and even some medical assistants. Every once in a while, we would stop to listen to a well-spoken story about some horrible historical fact that happened in Edinburgh. Some of the stories included a ghost story about the Green Lady, a story about Sawney Bean who was a savage cannibal (along with his wife and children and grandchildren born through incest). Other stories included one about Burke and Hare, two guys who murdered people and sold their bodies to doctors so that the doctors could have fresh cadavers to study anatomy with. There was also some concrete history thrown in there, with the beheading the Mary, Queen of Scots (she was found guilty of treason). It was a really good tour, and very frightening. Good theatrics and two horror themed rides which I won't describe so that you can enjoy them for yourself someday.

The tour also came with this booklet, which serves as a pretty comprehensive guide to all the stories included in the tour and then some.

There was a lot of horror puns. It was weirdly hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing half of the time.

The gift shop had cute little horror touches in it as well.

Following the Edinburgh Dungeon, we decided to gallivant around the Royal Mile. For those of you who don't know what the Royal Mile is, its the road between Holyrood Palace and the Edinburgh Castle. I don't think its an exact mile, but the entirety of it is comprised of shops of all sorts. And so... we shopped! I think I visited around 80 small shops, so I'll only describe my favourite places here.

One of the first things I wanted to buy was something with plaid on it. I mean.. its Scotland, its like a rite of passage of visiting this country. I'm not even the least bit Scottish, so I didn't bother looking for anything clan-related (tonnes of shops have clan-related items like tartan and family crests, and some even specialize in this and can help you figure yours out which I thought was pretty neat). So I just aimed for a lovely cashmere and/or woolen shawl and/or scarf. Which I found!

This one is a woolen shawl that I wore this evening due to the fact that it is actually pretty cold here right now. Its around 14 degrees, and since I'm staying in a flat from the Victorian era, theres not much for proper insulation. Its drafty and cold, annnd theres a big spider living under one of the floorboards. But I love it anyway.

This one is cashmere. It is so soft and luxurious, in my opinion. I love it.

Next, we visited a little Scottish pub for some food. The atmosphere was great. Scottish pubs are everywhere.

The food was decent and I really liked the atmosphere. Staff was friendly as well. I think they were happy to see tourists there, annnnd they were laughing at my selfie stick.

After that, the hipster in me needed some indie coffee. Luckily, there was this really cute place just a short walk away from the pub we ate lunch at. I loved the feel of this place. I don't think I mentioned before that Edinburgh has a lot of upcycled/indie type places around it. I like the style of it... its comfortable and homey.

A map to indie coffee places around the city!

The place I stopped at. It had a lovely, quaint feel to it. I ordered a latte. This place was called The Milkman.

You could sit on pillows at the windows! So cute.

These kinds of coffee shops remind me of home in Sudbury. Sudbury might be small and not as busy as places like Edinburgh, but its home and I miss it when I travel.

The front of The Milkman. I think that sign is vintage so they just left it as it was. Vintage is very popular in Edinburgh.

Moving forward... We decided to check out a whiskey shop, because its another thing thats an important part of Scottish culture.

Look at all of those whiskies! There was so many types in this one store. And it was only 1 of like...5 or 6 whiskey shops we came across today. I'm not much of a drinker and I don't think I've ever had Scotch, but I bought some small interesting looking bottles as gifts for people.

The front of the whiskey shop we visited.

This is a picture of the Royal Mile as we walked along. Apparently this month is mostly comprised of Edinburgh International Festival and much of the festivities are in the old town around the Edinburgh Castle, so we saw a lot of people. There were people from all over the world there.

I look unimpressed, but I was actually having a great time!

I was really happy to see bagpipes. They sounded great! I actually like bagpipe music.

Here is another example of a store I visited today called Miss Katie Cupcake. This place was sooooo cute! Everything in there was handmade and upcycled. I bought matching teapot necklaces for myself and my best friend, annd teacup earrings, and a teacup ring.

For anyone who knows me well, they won't be surprised at all that I bought this. I absolutely love tea and tea culture. As we speak, I'm listening to Grimes and drinking a nice hot cup of British English Breakfast with a splash of milk and a tad of sugar. Its heaven. Pure heaven, I tell ya.

This ring! It captures my whole personality. Flowers, tea, upcycled.

This next little bit is just something I came across today while I was walking the Royal Mile. Apparently its one of the oldest cisterns in Scotland, which I thought was kind of neat.

One other thing you must know about me, dear reader, is that I am a total Christmas freak. I love Christmas! I love decorating for Christmas, the smell of Christmas, giving gifts, drinking hot chocolate, drinking more tea, the Christmas lights, just everything Christmas. So imagine my delight at finding a year-round Christmas store.

This place is apparently world famous and mentioned in other blogs on the internet. Its called Ye Olde Christmas Shoppe, and its a very tiny shop but its well stocked with beautiful things.

I bought an assortment of delicate glass Christmas birds, a few plaid Scottish themed ornaments, and a nutcracker for my mom. My mom is a nut for nutcracker Christmas ornaments. I think I got the Christmas plague from her. She always makes the Christmas seasons so beautiful for our family.

We ended our day at Starbucks. Its funny, but every other country I've been to, Ive stopped at a Starbucks and ordered the exact same thing. A sandwich with pesto, tomatoes and cheese (and sometimes meatballs), and a passion lemon iced tea. The passion tea is almost never on the menu, I have to request it, but most Starbucks locations have the tea and can make it as far as I'm aware. This little ritual has become a sort of trend for me when I travel.

Its funny because I almost never visit Starbucks when I'm home in Canada. Not sure how this ritual came about, but there it is.

The Starbucks we visited had a wall of cards that people from all over the world wrote messages on. It was really nice, and the cards were very diverse!