Princes Street

And I was just laughing.

I said, holy fuck, are you girls going to kill me or what? Are you going to cut me in half or what's going on here? Because, The Uber couldn't figure out how to get to Princess Street.

Princess Street in Edinburgh, like the major street.

And they're waiting for me in this corner.

And it took me half an hour to freaking convince Uber to drop me off miles away.

No

... you had to run up Princes Street.

Is that right? That's right.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And a Land Rover picked me up on Princes Street, and that was it [laughs].

Really?

Right.

By early October, Dwyer and Tommy had reached the center of Edinburgh, Scotland.

They checked into the Royal British Hotel, a prominent establishment located on Princes Street, directly opposite Waverley Railway Station in the heart of the Scottish capital.

The hotel is still operating to this day.

On Monday, the 3rd of October 1977, inside their room at the Royal British Hotel on Princes Street, the sinister trip was about to take a turn for the worst.

John Dwyer filled the bathtub in the hotel room for nine-year-old Tommy Hayden.

While Tommy was in the bath, he forced him under the water and held him there.

The surviving open source documentation does not reveal the exact hour when staff at St. Kieran's or Madonna House first noticed Tommy was missing, nor does it detail how the news reached the child's family in Dublin's north inner city.

The open record does not specify how the initial missing person report moved from local residential care homes to the Gardaí or how long it took for Irish authorities to contact police forces in Britain.

I was associated with mental handicap for, well, most of my life till he died, really.

But he achieved independence because when we were in Edinburgh, there was a group called the action group and it was a charity it was set up and it was to basically set up a like halfway house for people with that sort of disability to basically join the community so there was like a halfway house and then he ended up in a flat on his own in edinburgh lovely flower about four roads down from Princess Street.

Wow.

If you know where that is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you're in the Waverley Station and went up Princess Street that way and you look to your left, about four roads down, that's where he was.

Yeah.

Because for me, that's... unsurpassed for streets in the United Kingdom.

That and Princess Street, Edinburgh, I think they're really, and York, there's three cities there that are really, really special in the main areas.

But Northumberland Street, not for me.

Okay, halfway through the show, quick ad break.

With all of these mysterious fires coincidentally coming right around the exact same time, which is very interesting in itself if you ask me.

The Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, Scotland, opened in 1769, which marked the very first building on the incredible Princes Street, which we have shown in episode 67.

The whole street is straight out of the Old World, and I can't wait to get back there and see it.

This theater was rebuilt in 1830 by another Thomas.

And of course, no word on how that grand staircase was just lit up in flames.

And we all know how often our staircases just go up in flames.

No. Jenners, a well-established department store located on Princes Street, where the building is currently undergoing restoration, where we all know that restoration is destruction.

What an incredible building.

Have we found a place that is a better example of the old world that's possibly taking over my number one spot over Budapest? This place is incredible.

Located at 1 Princes Street, we have the Balmoral, or originally the North British Station Hotel, a 167-room palace hotel where they needed another competition to knock out another palace.

Can you believe this? They had so many master architects in the 1800s while people were riding around on donkeys, saddling up to ride around town with wagons attached to the back.

They hold these competitions to construct massive palaces that last forever, palaces that you don't see being constructed today in any of our towns.