AFA Edinburgh #4 - A Bit About the City

Pronounced "ED-un-burrow". It started at least 1400 years ago as Castle Rock, which as you will see from the pictures is a really good name for it. It was a castle on top of a hill - very defense able. Then a guy named Edin from Northumbria (northern England) came, took it over, and named it 'Edin's burgh' - "burgh" meant "fort" at the time - and there you go, Edinburgh.
The Scots also affectionately called it 'Auld Reekie' (Scotch for 'old smoky') because of the smoke from all the burning coal in the fire places. Our tour guide also mentioned it might have had something to do with the smell also. The first picture below is looking up at the castle from one point in the city, the second is looking back the other way from the castle.

It, like many cities of its day was a walled city and the inhabitants were afraid to go outside the walls. So as the city grew, rather than move the walls, the city grew upward. In the pictures below, you are looking at 'old town'. These buildings are 100's of years old. And you can see, the buildings are very tall for the time period, practically skyscrapers. They were commonly 10 stories, and one even reached 14 stores. If the pictures were to pan to the left, you'd start to see 'new town' which is much smaller buildings. There is a pub right at the edge of where the wall used to stand call, "The End of the World."

We came to see an event called 'Tattoo' which occurs right in the middle of the Edinburgh festival season. (most of August) As you can see from the pix below, the place was packed with people and the mood was festive. There were street performers everywhere, many of them excellent. The picture in the center is the square where the hangings used to take place. The red building in the first picture is a pub on that square called, "The Last Drop" that supposedly dates back to the hangings. Edinburgh evidently had a big problem with witches at one time. So when they caught them, they would tie them up and throw them in the water. If they drowned, they were proven to be good girls and given a Christian burial. If they survived, they were hanged or burned as witches. (I believe we adopted a similar practice in the US)