When I first started planning this trip two or three years ago, I bought a pair of hiking boots by Clarke that I planned to wear all over the continent. I wore them for a few weeks to make sure they were well broken in and fitted to my feet before I tried to trudge around a foreign country in them, then put them away, figuring that I’d wear them next a few months later, in Ireland.

Of course, things didn’t work out that way. My boots got put away in a closet and went unworn for a year or two while my trip kept getting postponed again and again. But when Jennifer and I worked out a way with my employer to get me a month off so that I could take this trip, I dug out my Clarkes and put them on before I even got on to my plane in San Francisco. They’re on my feet now, as I write this. I’m looking forward to being able to point at my boots and say, "See them? They took me rock climbing in the Aran Island, hiking in the forest around Wigtown, hoofing the streets of Dublin and Glasgow, and through the water logged vaults under the streets of Edinburgh." Today these boots walked me from Edinburgh Castle to the palace at the end of the Royal Mile.

Edinburgh is a beautiful city, and I wish I could stay here for the remainder of my trip, but I’ve already stayed one day more than I should have, and I really need to get up to Tain tomorrow. After Tain, I’ll probably be heading down to York; sadly, Wales will probably fall by the wayside on this trip, just like Italy and Germany and Switzerland have. That makes me a bit sad, since I would like to see Wales, but I guess I knew that parts of my trip would have to be canceled. I hadn’t intended to spend most of my trip in the UK, but I certainly have no regrets.

The vaults of Edinburgh, which my boots took me through as part of a walking tour, were quite impressive. Historically, they don’t go back that far; they were built, as I recall, in the last century under some of the older buildings in Old Edinburgh as a place where the wealthy could stick the poor. And as you wander around you can see small rooms where poor people lived. The vaults are made of stone, they’re cold, they’re damp, and you can see "miniature stalactites" (or is it stalagmites? I can never remember) forming on the ceiling as evidence of how long the vaults of have been unused. In fact, the vaults were pretty much filled in with debris and stone until about ten years ago when a home owner in the area started digging in his basement (and I have no idea why he would do that) and discovered these vaults all over again.

These vaults are fantastic! They bring me back to the times when I played Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, and our characters wandered through dungeons and underground catacombs and castles fighting monsters and looking for treasure. The vaults underneath Edinburgh are dimly lit and quite extensive, apparently, even though we only saw a few rooms and a few meters of corridor.

The vaults I visited were part of the "Ghost Hunter Tour" of Edinburgh. There are supposed to be only a few ghosts haunting the vaults, and only three in the part of the vaults that we were in but there is no denying that they are a great place to tell a good ghost story. Tonight I’m going on another such tour, but with a different theme… the "Mary King’s Close" tour. A "close", in the city of Edinburgh, was a very small, narrow street leading from the Royal Mile (the stretch of road between Edinburgh Castle and the royal palace) to other side streets… or sometimes just coming to a dead end. The closes were named, generally, after the people who lived in them — hence, "Mary King Close" — or after notable features or the type of business that went on in the close — hence, "Fishmarket Close" or (my personal favorite) "The World’s End Close", so-called because it was right next to the gate in the city wall which marked the very edge of Edinburgh until the middle of the 1800’s. Beyond the city walls, of course, there was nothing interesting for those who lived in the city, so the end of the city was pretty much the end of the world. There is a pub right next to the World’s End Close called the World’s End Pub. I may never go drinking there in my life, but I think it’s a great name for a pub.

These walking tours are a great way to get to learn about the city — I went on one in Glasgow as well — and a good way to meet fellow travelers as well. The touring company that puts them on in Edinburgh and Glasgow is Mercat Tours, and I highly recommend them.

And, of course, I never promised that all of my stories that came out of Europe would be interesting ones. This one simply goes to show that I have a pretty darn cool pair of boots.