I've been on too many tours

Mmm, sweet sweet cappuccino. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways! I can feel the caffeine coursing through my veins. Such a junkie. ^_^

I’m just chillaxin’, as they say, in the computer lab at Queen Margaret’s, doing my best to not be sad that my hostel reservation-making didn’t work. I’ll have to try again later. I found an awesome sounding hostel in Paris to stay in which is apparently very well known, has lots of amenities including precious, precious luggage storage, and has its own pub! Yay! Not that I’ll have anyone to go to the pub with, but it’s the principle of the thing. Seriously, this place sounds great, and it’s really close to all the sights I want to see, like Notre Dame and the Musee d’Orsay. Now, if I can just get the Ryanair website to work….

I read Sabrinah’s live journal for the first time today, and she wrote about how she was eating white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. I feel a craving coming on, lol.

So…. Last night I went on the “City of the Dead” ghost tour with some of my friends here, and it was pretty entertaining. The only problem was, Diana started getting really scared because, as it turns out, she had seen the tomb we were visiting on the Discovery Channel (ranked the No.1 most haunted place in the world, no less), and hadn’t been able to sleep after watching it. She kept saying as we left that if she’d known that that was where we were going she never would have gone.

We all scared the Mackenzie Poltergeist away just afterwards, however, with a trip to the Greyfriar’s Bobby Pub with our tour guide David, who’s quite the entertaining fellow. Now, you may be asking, Greyfriar’s Bobby? What the hell kind of name is that for a pub? Well, I’ll tell you, because apparently I enjoy regurgitating information I hear on city bus tours.

Once upon a time in an earlier Edinburgh, there was a policeman, who lasted a surprisingly long time on the force, as conditions for policemen at that time were particularly harsh. After a couple of years, he acquired a watch dog- a little Skye Terier whom he dubbed Bobby. Soon after that, our heroic policeman perished, and was buried in the same churchyard which our ghost tour visited. The loyal Bobby followed, and, for the next fourteen years, lived on his master’s grave, leaving only to eat at a nearby sergeant’s house each day just after the one o’clock gun was fired at Edinburgh Castle. Now that’s dedication. I don’t think saluqis are even capable of forming attachments strong enough to remember someone for three days, much less fourteen years.

Since I seem to be in a story-telling mode, ya’ll are going to also get to hear a little about Burke and Hare, the first known serial killers. At this time, Edinburgh’s medical school was in desperate need of bodies to dissect, as they only were allowed to experiment upon convicted criminals who had been executed, or dead vagrants whom no one could identify. A lucrative trade sprang up in body snatching, bu8t the problem with that was that the bodies weren’t always terribly fresh. This was the climate into which Burke and Hare arrived from Ireland. Burke married a woman who owned a building, and met and befriended Hare. About a month after they became friends, one of Burke’s tenants, an old sickly man, died, leaving behind a £4 rent debt. Burke was outraged, since the old man left no money or valuable possessions, so he and Hare stole the old man’s body out of his coffin before it was buried, and sold it to the medical college. They received just over £7 for the body, and rapidly realized that this could become quite profitable. They arranged with a doctor at the medical school that they would be paid £8 for bodies sold in the summer, and £10 for bodies in the winter. With these wonderfully high sums in mind, Burke and Hare set out on their killing spree, in which they killed at least sixteen people. The victims were befriended in pubs, gotten drunk, and brought back to Burke’s flat where they drank still more, and were suffocated in a particular way which left no marks. Their method is still called Burking today.
Naturally, it was only a matter of time until they were caught. It all went downhill when they unwittingly murdered a famous prostitute, who was recognized by many students when she appeared dead at the medical college the next day. Burke and Hare were captured, and burke was convicted of the murders. Hare got away scot-free (haha, see, it’s funny because….), because he agreed to testify against Burke. Now, here’s the great irony of my tale. After Burke was executed, his body was sent to the medical school where it too was dissected. What’s more, his body was skinned, and a variety of objects were made out of his skin, such as the calling-card case made from his left hand which is on display at the police office here in Edinburgh. It’s actually a very pretty little thing- the leather was dyed a dark brown and has golden embossing on it. Weird.

Now wasn’t that a cheerful little story?

Alright, I’ve wasted far too much time at this point- I really do have essays to be working on, and I only have 50 minutes until the computer lab closes! Crap!
*runs screaming into closed door. bounces*