Deacon Brodie's Haggis

Today was our free day to tour Edinburgh on our own. The group of seven of us (Jill, Jillian, Claire, Abby, Ashley, Alexa, and myself) started off the day with some necessary grocery shopping at the local market right down the street. We came back and had the brilliant idea of going out into town to a popular restaurant, Deacon Brodie’s, to try some Haggis. Essentially, haggis is all the left-over parts of a sheep, such as their liver, lungs, stomach, etc. It is cooked inside of a sheep’s stomach, but ours was not served inside the stomach lining as the brain-like pictures on Google Images suggested it would be.

Like I said, the restaurant we went to was well known for a reason. Deacon Brodie, the Scottish locksmith and craftsman it was named after, was an extraordinary man of all trades and great character. He was well liked and respected by all in Edinburgh. But that all changed when nighttime fell. Every time Deacon Brodie would make a key for someone, he would make one copy for himself then use it to sneak into all his customer’s homes at night to steal their expensive items, like jewelry and silverware. No one in the town would have expected him of such a thing until he got caught red handed stealing from a prominent clerk in Edinburgh. Since theft was punishable by death, Deacon Brodie was hanged right outside what is the present day pub named after him, coincidentally off a chair that he crafted for someone in the town. Some say that Deacon Brodie’s double character inspired the famous book Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.

Edinburgh Castle

A bit later, some of the girls and I stopped by Primark, an inexpensive department store. We all ate later that night in our kitchen, celebrating Memorial Day in the United States and enjoying having had the day and night to ourselves.