"work harder..."
then he turned and walked two steps away, and turned back and added
"and play harder!"
and he was gone...
doesnt it sound too close to wot we have here, in the right hand column >> for april?
blah, anyway, lets continue ^^
i'm skipping detailed desciptions of "the legendary tour guide LILY's tour" :P
aish, this will be really tough, doing it chronologically... coz we went back to many places again with "the legendary tour guide RUTH's tour" on the 3rd day... anyway, bear with me ba :)
let de pictures do the talking~
edinburgh castle, or hogwart's shadow #1...
george heriot's school, or hogwart's shadow #2... aye, the grey one. the one with four towers that later become the four houses of gryffindor, ravenclaw, hufflepuff and slytherin ^^ it's a school for royalties and nobles.
white lily and black choylan in edin~
edin~~
tartans and kilts, and the machines making them
this one requires a bit of explanation~ remember there's a third step in hogwart's dunno which floor's stair case which is a trap stair? here is how the old school edinburghian anti burglar system looks like from the outside. the 3rd step is not build for the size of a human foot ;)
one of my fav pics ^^ weather is important... :P
Mary King's Close (no pics allowed underground)
we assembled at the murky entrance stairs (probably the only functioning one left) to the under world of edinburgh at around 8.30pm. greeting us there was Mary's own daughter, a lovely 400-yr-old "young" lady, gracefully dressed in the fashion of her time, a dress of scarlet, laced in white, unmissable even in the dark of the underworld. her also unmissable scottish accent and her walking posture with straight back and fluid steps also proclaims her a well breed medieval edin middle class young lady. too bad i forgot her 芳名 XP
the original medieval town of edin was a matrix of 9-14 stories tall blocks cramped together. mary king's close, the busiest and most spatial of all streets, is barely 2.5 meters in width. now that's a good reason why they are called Closes... the poor, living in the lower level literally lived in the shadow of their betters, as the sunlight never shown at those quarters.
the sadin canned town was surrounded and protected by reinforced walls like a fortress. as the population swelled, they built higher and higher up within the wall, creating the world's first ever high rised buildings settlement.
somewhere in time, the plague came, sweeping away 1/3 of the whole population of edin. half the residence of mary king's close died among them. living in such close quarters and with virtually no sewage system at all, it is not unexpected.
the low ceilng of each level proved not to be architected to accomodate us modern day giants. well, not exactly in the case of yean and i but most male time travellers that night needed to take constant care watching their heads if they prefer not to bring fragments of the ceilings which were made out of 400 yrs old human ashes, horse hair and cement, back to our time.
mary's charming daughter took us down several levels of deserted chambers, showing us the homes of her long lost and long missed neighbours, their professions which includes doctors and scientists, the way they used to live, where their barns and stables were, and finally decending down onto the once buzzling Close that was named after her mother, a well respected merchant and resident of the Close. This once busiest street of edin, is now reduced to being its foundation, continuing quietly to bear the weight of the town...
some display at the entrance to the UG world
bugeee~~~~ the mask the doctors used to wear when they treated their plague eaten patients. the long nose was used to stuff spices that was believed to act like anticeptics.
and that's the absorbing end of day 2~
day 3 continues in historically and scenically rich edin. more pictures to come, if you are not already tired of them ^^
ow, and our first 1000hrs aged rubbers came out of their warm womb welcomed by the taste of strawberries~~~~ testing them on monday :D
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