Not my greatest moment

Today was a lot of fun. My folks and I had breakfast at a cute little restaurant on the Royal Mile, toured the castle, did the pub lunch thing, and even hit up the Whisky Centre tour (which should be avoided like the plague). Though I developed a headache from my wee dram of Johnny Red - what can I say, I'm a lightweight - we had naptime, then dinner at Ciao Roma, always a good choice. That's when things got interesting...

Mom and Dad agreed to go with me on the City of the Dead tour. I did Auld Reekie's back at Easter and enjoyed myself, except for that bit about almost passing out in the torture museum. City of the Dead gets great reviews, I'd had fun chatting with the other tourists before we began, and, aside from the rain, all seemed to be going well. Our guide, amazing leather trench coat and all, walked us around the side of St. Giles, and then, before she took our money, she started telling us about witches.

I knew that getting pegged as a witch in Good Olde Edinburgh never did much for one's lifespan, and I'd already been told about dunking in the Nor' Loch, but when our guide began to go into the various tortures used on one convicted witch's husband and children, the world began to get fuzzy. About the time she finished talking about a rat and a cage (think 1984), my mental defense tactic - namely, trying to drown out her voice with a rousing chorus of staples from The Sound of Music - failed me.

I don't remember much of the next five minutes. Apparently, I collapsed, hitting the church wall with the back of my head on the way down, and convulsed on the pavement for a few minutes with my pupils completely dilated. My poor mother thought I was having some sort of a seizure, and she and my dad tried to get me to my feet. I collapsed three times - I couldn't stand on my own - and the next thing I really knew, Mom was holding me and praying, and the rest of the group was long gone. We didn't get to go on the tour, so I have no idea what the Greyfriars Kirk poltergeist got up to this evening, but I have a lovely souvenir lump on the back of my head, a sore jaw, and a few additional bruises (the sidewalk's unforgiving), and our tour guide now has one more fainter to add to her tally. Five minutes to the first faint has to be a record, though it's certainly not one of my personal best moments.

Suffice it to say that torture really doesn't do it for me, and I'll not be seeing Hostel II. Ever.