Edinburgh

Last week, my friend and I visited Edinburgh for a few nights. I couldn’t get over how beautiful the place is, so I thought I’d share some photos here on my blog! Also, if you’re thinking of visiting the city, I’ll run through the things we did and the costs involved.

Day 1

We flew up from Birmingham (the flight took around 50 minutes), and arrived in Edinburgh at about 3pm. We found our Air B&B (which was so nice!), got settled, and decided to take a walk to Stockbridge. Our B&B was fairly central but everywhere in Edinburgh is pretty walk-able!

We had an early dinner at Pizza Express, which overlooked the river.

After all the travelling, we were both pretty tired so we headed back to the flat to plan for the next day!

Day 2

Tuesday, we went up to Edinburgh Castle, which was pretty amazing. However, I thought the ticket price was a bit too expensive… £17 each! It’s definitely worth a visit and the views from the top are amazing, but the cost was a little steep!

After exploring the castle grounds and its museums, we wandered down to Victoria Street, which is idyllic. Each house is brightly coloured and the whole place had a great vibe about it.

We had lunch and visited Greyfriars Kirkyard, where JK Rowling’s characters have their own graves! I think it would be worth booking onto a tour if this interests you, as we only managed to find Tom Riddle’s…

While we were in the Harry Potter zone, we went to The Elephant Cafe, where Rowling supposedly wrote her first book! We had to wait about ten minutes for a table, but it was a nice atmosphere and there were so many quirky elephant ornaments!

After our hot chocolates and resisting the temptation of a slice of cake(!), we walked along the Royal Mile to Holyrood. When we got there, we found out that the Queen was actually staying in the palace during our time there!

After more walking, we decided to go back to the flat, stopping off at Cuckoo’s Bakery on the way! I got a Pimms cupcake… different but delicious!

Day 3

After the hectic day before, we decided to chill out a bit. We started with breakfast at The Dome…

 

Eggs Benedict. Cost: £9

Then we walked down to the meadows, where we ended up sitting for two and a half hours!

While we were there, we spontaneously decided to go and see a play at ‘The Studio’. It was called ‘Spring Awakening’ and it was really good!

Tickets cost £12 each (student price)

Day 4

Thursday was really warm, so we were glad we’d done most of the attractions earlier in the week. To explore somewhere different, we wandered across to Haymarket. However, it was so hot, and after a 30 minute walk, we didn’t fancy walking around… So, we decided to get the tram back to Princes Street to sit in the gardens. (A single tram ticket costs £1.70)

We’d booked a tour around Mary King’s Close, which is an underground street, so we headed over there after an hour or so. I really enjoyed the tour – it was entertaining and I learnt a bit about the history of Edinburgh. Tickets cost about £14 each (student price) and I think it was really worth it.

In the evening, we caught the bus up to Leith, where the Royal Yacht Britannia is docked. The weather was still so beautiful so we sat out at a balcony for dinner at Zizzi’s.

Day 5

Friday was our final day. We had to check out of our B&B at 11am so we had our suitcases with us and couldn’t go very far. We weren’t far from the Royal Botanical Gardens, so we wandered around there for a while, before starting our journey home.

I had a really good time, and I’d definitely want to go back there. Everywhere you look is beautiful and the buildings are gorgeous. If you’re thinking about going, I’d say do it, but perhaps go during off-peak times or during the week as it was pretty busy even on weekdays!

Have you been to Edinburgh? What did you do?