From York, we jumped in our little rented Fiat and drove north. We stopped in Newcastle Upon Tyne on the way for a nice lunch at the Blackfriars restaurant. The food was tasty, and the place was in an old building from the 1200s, but it was overpriced in our opinion.The stop in Newcastle was a good place to rest for the 4-5 hour drive to Scotland.
We took the coastal route and the scenery was stunning.
Once we got into Scotland, the scenery changed a bit and it became more hilly.
We returned the car after gassing up, and believe it or not, the whole trip from Manchester to Leeds to York to Newcastle then up to Edinburgh only took us 5 gallons of gas! Wow!
We were thinking York was going to be our favorite city…until we got to Edinburgh.
Just walking up the street to our Airbnb, our jaws were on the ground. This city is beautiful!
Our Airbnb is right off the Royal Mile in the center of old town.
It’s a great location and the place has a rooftop terrace with great views.
We stashed our bags and went to eat at a restaurant called No.1 Highstreet where we ordered some typical Scottish fare; Haggis, Neeps and Tatties. I know it sounds dirty, but the neeps are turnips and the tattis are potatoes. It was delicious!
Edinburgh is such an amazing city with plenty of things to do and see. We took a free walking tour that was pretty good. We have found that taking these free tours (which you can find in just about any city) is a great way to get acquainted with a place. Our guide for this one was a local guy who graduated from Edinburgh University who majored in literature and medieval history, so was really knowledgeable about the city.
The tour took us took a few historic places, including a graveyard called Greyfriar’s Kirkyard. The guide described it as like a “human lasagna” because of the way the bones were dumped there en masse over the years from other graveyards to make room for buildings and parking lots and such. He gave a conservative estimate of 100,000 people buried there. We’re pretty sure we saw bone poking out of the ground.
Pretty sure those are bones!
After our tour we went to have lunch on Victoria street. This is the street that is rumored to have inspired Diagon Alley in Harry Potter.
JK Rowling wrote and found inspiration for the Harry Potter books right here in Edinburgh, and that is evident just by looking around.
We wandered over to the National Museum of Scotland to learn more about the country’s history. The museum is free and has 3 floors of interesting artifacts covering thousands of years. Best of all, the museum is free!
Old Town Edinburgh isn’t very big. The Royal Mile (also called High street) runs right through the middle of it. It’s called the Royal Mile because at the bottom of the street is Holyrood Palace, where the Queen stays when she’s in town, and Edinburgh Castle is at the other end. We didn’t visit Holyrood but got a picture of it. Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum Jubilee was coming up, and it was closed on the day we wanted to go.
We booked our tickets for the Edinburgh castle online the night before which is a good thing. There were people milling about at the entrance who hadn’t bought in advance and were finding they couldn’t get in because it was sold out.
The castle is stunning, and I don’t think it’s possible to get a bad photo of it.
Inside, the views were amazing. You could see the whole city!
The castle ticket included entry into a war museum which was interesting. Lots of artifacts and uniforms from past military conflicts involving Scotland.
We also got to see the military prison, and an area that housed the Stone of Destiny, the Crown Jewels, and where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to King James VI.
Our next stop was Surgeons Hall, a medical museum.
This museum had some great exhibits abut the history of medicine and surgery in Edinburgh. Back in the day, Edinburgh was evidently at the forefront of surgery. Their need for research cadavers sparked some kind of black market for bodies so people started to dig up the freshly buried to make extra cash. Not only that, but the cadaver market was so lucrative that someone went on a killing spree and then suddenly Edinburgh had a serial killer on their hands. They eventually passed some laws to prevent this from happening. This is the kind of history we found in Surgeons Hall. Interesting stuff!
Oh, and they also had jars and jars of body parts in formaldehyde. Not for the faint of heart!
While trying to walk off one of our massive Scottish meals, we stumbled upon the Museum off Edinburgh.
This little museum was free, and had lots of very Edinburgh-specific artifacts. One of our favorite things we learned about this town is the term “Gardyloo” and this museum gave a good explanation of it.
Rumor has it that the bars used to close at 10pm and the drunks would wander out onto the street and when they heard the people yelling “Gardyloo” they would just look up to where the sound came from instead of getting out of the way. They say this is where the term “shitfaced drunk” originated. Not sure how true that is, but it makes for a great story either way.
It seemed like Edinburgh had a lot of cemeteries. Like old spooky looking cemeteries. It’s no wonder there were so many ghost tours being advertised. We found one called Canongate Kirkyard and took some pictures of the eerie looking gravestones.
On our final day, we decided to hike up to Arthur's Seat. This is a peak close to Holyrood Park that is supposed to have a terrific view.
The hike was really nice and not too difficult.
We can confirm…the view was awesome!
It was our last day in Edinburgh and we felt like we saw a good amount in 3.5 days.
Some things we learned:
Haggis is delicious.
Men actually do walk around in kilts.
A “close” is basically an alleyway.
Tweed, cashmere, and shortbread cookies appear to be items of national pride.
The history surrounding Mary Queen of Scots and her son James is super fascinating and they need to make a proper movie about it.
We limited our visited mostly to Old Town, so maybe we will return at some point to discover the rest. Definitely one of our favorite cities of all time! Now we are off to Amsterdam for a few days before heading home!
