Scotland - Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Our first day in Edinburgh started out with a climb of Calton Hill. From here you get a pretty good view of the entire city. It was a great way to scope out our day and where we'd be heading next. You'll notice the picture below (with the yellow flowers). To the far left of that is the Palace of Holyroodhouse which is the King's official residence when visiting Scotland. We had every intention to pass by there but our wanderings kept leading us further and further away so we never got to see it.

The Royal Mile

We headed down Calton Hill toward Prince Street. Prince Street is a very busy, very touristy street with every kind of shopping you might be interested in. Not our cup of tea, we headed up the Royal Mile in an effort to go to the Edinburgh castle. Along the way we found this beautiful church that had been converted into a Maker’s Market (an artisan shopping area). Lots of cool and high quality items in the market and the inside of the church was pretty cool as well.

Further up the street, we arrived at the St. Giles Cathederal. It’s an impressive gothic style cathedral with a very intricate bell tower. The church was massive. Unfortunately there were swarms of people there so we decided to take some shots of the outside and move on. Also in this square was a statue of Adam Smith. How many towns actually have a statue to an economist. John Nash would have approved!

Further up the street was the Edinburgh International Festival building. It’s also a converted gothic style church but narrow and very, very tall (hard to get into a photograph). For three weeks in August, Edinburgh hosts this festival bringing all kinds of artists, musicians and theater into the city. I understand that they also let anyone put on any kind of show that they want. One person told us that the talent runs from exceptional, to super bizzare. Too bad we were about a month too early.

We made a quick side trip down to Victoria Street. It’s said that this street inspired J.K. Rowling when writing about Diagon Alley. Apparently, she wrote a lot of the first Harry Potter book in Nicholson’s Cafe in the city. Like Diagon Alley, this had a lot of quirky little shops and store fronts although I didn’t see anywhere where you could purchase a wand or a broom stick.

Edinburgh Castle

When we visited the Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness, we decided to buy an Explorer Pass from Historic Scotland. This pass gives you access to hundreds of sites, most of them free with the pass. For really popular sites like the Edinburgh Castle you have to book a reservation. Unfortunately, the only reservation we could find was on the last day we were in Edinburgh before we flew out the next day and who would know what the weather was like. Cathy didn’t like that idea and she was determined to see if we could get in. We got in line, showed them our passes and the next thing we knew we were in. This worked so much better as we had a great day of weather.

The Edinburgh Castle sits high above the center of the town. It’s a pretty foreboding structure. At the outer gates are statues of Robert the Bruce and William Wallace. After the inner gates are a series of gun placements that surround the castle. The views of the city were spectacular in every direction. As you work further upward within the castle, you pass into an inner courtyard that contains a chapel, a war memorial, the royal hall and the royal palace.

The castle even has a dog graveyard where regimental and officers dogs were buried.

A portion of the royal palace has been converted to hold the Crown Jewels of Scotland. We had to queue up and then pass into the area of the building that was like a converted vault. Unfortunately, there were no pictures allowed of the vault or of the jewels. Since I couldn’t capture a shot of the Crown Jewels you have to settle for a stock photo. They were very impressive.

We really enjoyed the castle, including seeing how the royals lived.

Dean Village and the Water of Leith

After the castle we made our way to Dean Village. This was a beautiful little village that abuts a stream that runs to Leith. This area used to be full of old grain mills for about 800 years until they were revitalized and are now some of the cities most desirable residential areas.

We walked along the Water of Leith as it was a beautiful walking path and in the shade and near the cool breezes coming off the stream. After all of this walking and exploring we were getting thirsty. We decided to stop at a pub and have a drink. Cathy opted for the featured cocktail which was created by the bartender. I’d been looking forward to trying a cask beer. I ordered one and I have to say it’s not my thing. Warm, kind of flat and it has a weird smell and taste.

We wandered towards Prince’s street as there were several sites we hadn’t seen along the way. There were great views of the castle and the royal mile. We also caught some of the notable statues and monuments of the city.

We had a pretty full day and saw a lot of the city.

Leith Harbor

We hadn’t really had much in the way of seafood while in Scotland so we decided to head out toward the port city of Leith. We found this great little pub along one of the docksides that had a huge selection of scotch and beer as well as an interesting menu. We ordered a bucket of mussels, fish and chips, a local beer and a cider. Yum! We figured this was a pretty good day to wrap up a great few days in Edinburgh and also to say goodbye to Scotland. We were getting up early (4am) to catch a ride to the airport and then on to Germany in the morning.

Thanks Scotland. We loved you and I’m sure we’ll be back!