Day Seven - Has It Really Been a Week Already?

Another day of chucking rain. It's cold too which doesn't help. We were back at Scotlands People today.

I spent my day deep in the old parish registers. We took a break from café food at lunch time and headed next door to the pub

Today was another very productive day. However, we are looking forward to a break from the records over the weekend. Everyone is free to travel to their ancestral towns or villages this weekend, to sight see or just to relax.

For me, the weekend started with a Mercat Ghosts and Ghouls Tour

We met at the Mercat (market) Cross at St Giles Cathedral 

Our tour guide was Liz who gave us accounts of public lashings

and mutiliations

and public hangings outside the Court of Session

 We were then taken through some of the closes and told stories of the spirits that wander there

After three days of rain, the sun finally made an appearance at 8:30 at night

Liz took us into the underground vaults to end the night with stories of the history of the vaults as well as the history of the spirits that still inhabit them

The tour was a wonderfully entertaining history lesson into the 1700s and 1800s in Edinburgh and a great start to the weekend.

Did You Know?

· three of the nine founders of the Bank of Montreal were from Scotland. The Bank's coat of arms has it roots dating back to 1833. As a result the Scottish thistle and Saint-Andrew cross play a prominent role in the coat of arms of the bank. The three Scottish founders names were John Richardson, George  Garden and Robert Armour.

· After Queen Victoria and Christopher Columbus, Robert Burns has more statues

    dedicated to him around the world than any other non-religious figure.