Today I took it kind of slow - slept in, went for a run, moped around the hostel, and generally didn't get going until afternoon. But I headed up to the Edinburgh castle, which is pretty sweet. Edinburgh lends itself to Gothic novels (you can just imagine some loved-crazed woman fleeing the castle towards her lovers shack chased by the dogs of her husband... Or something...). The castle isn't a let down in this respect either. Dark stones on a giant crag of a mountain. Way cool looking, and apparently despised by everybody who lived there - the royals didn't, if they had any other option.
But there was a thing I wasn't expecting in my tour. They had a special exhibition on the prisons that used to be there - housing POWs as well as pirates. The exhibition was a little silly - wax works and sound system "prisoners stories," but they did have a couple of old doors that prisoners had carved graffiti into.
Most of these were carved by POWs during a rebellion, by French men and others, and a couple were carved by pirates, treated lower than the POWs. Pirates and rebels, British men who fought against the king...
... and flew the American flag! (That's what that is.)
I just wish I could have gone back and told this man thanks... Not to wax eloquent or anything, but it really struck me that somebody over 200 years ago and thousands of miles away believed so strongly in his cause. He didn't know me, or even if they'd win, but I still have a country that this man fought for. A whole "thanks to all our troops" moment, if you will.
After that I went to The Elephant House - where J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter!
No comments:
Post a Comment