Remember the Edinburgh festivals Aug - Sep.

In an around Edinburgh

Falkland Palace in the village Falkland The photos show me and the Chinese girl Xuebing in front of the main entrance to . We are just about to entry the palace.

Falkland Palace

Dean Village is situated to the west of Edinburgh city centre and nestles alongside the Water of Leith; a tranquil haven from the bustle of the city, yet only a ten minute walk from Princes Street.
The Dean Village has a character all its own, and is proud of its sense of community. The villagers have united to form the Dean Village Association, dedicated to the physical and social conservation of this part of Edinburgh.

Read more about this fascinating place on its own site here.
Also take a look at my photos.

Edinburgh's South Bridge was constructed in the late eighteenth century to ease transportation problems in the city. The Bridge consisted of nineteen huge stone arches supporting a wide road lined with several three-storey buildings. A series of 'Vaults' (i.e., small chambers, rooms and corridors) were built into the Bridge's arches to house workshops, storage areas and accommodation for the poor.
However, ineffective water-proofing and overcrowding meant that by the mid-nineteenth century the Vaults had degenerated into a disease-ridden slum. The area was abandoned during the late nineteenth century, but rediscovered and opened for public tours in 1997.

Take a closer look at the middle picture ( click to zoom ). Is it a spot on the lens or a ghost ? uhhh...

The height of the night was our tour of the vaults. In the 16th Century, the Cowgate area
was a very fashionable place just outside the city gates.
Today it is a forlorn underpass as the South Bridge, built in the 1780s, towers over it.
At the time the bridge was built, the land under it was excavated for several floors of rooms and underground chambers, virtually forgotten until recently.
The vaults contained families of 7-10 people in rooms the size of a small bedroom with no ventilation or windows and a fireplace that provided some form of heat.
The vaults were lighted with fish oil lamps, which combined with stale waste from garbage and chamber pots which were emptied into the streets after the 10pm curfew each night, must had made the area barely habitable. Apparently merchants flocked to be there. Shops contained the businesses of cobblers and watchmakers and acted as storage for wine and other products, which were guarded by underground caretakers.
Norrie Rowan bought the site in Niddry Street in 1995 and started the excavations of the vaults.
The entrance was through a door on Niddry Street and after unlocking the creaky thing with a large skeleton key, our guide took us down several flights of stone stairs into a dimly lit hallway.
The rooms, numbering some 20 that have currently been excavated, were dank, dark and damp.
The area had been filled in about 100 years ago as disease flourished and as it became more and more wet. You could still see the trickling of water from the ceilings in areas. What a job it must have been to dig it all out. An even bigger job to fill in the rooms or collapse ceilings 100 years ago.