City Break in Scotland’s Capital
One of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Rocky hills with outstanding sea views, inspiring landscape, buildings, monuments, cliffs, impressive Old Town, medieval houses, great castle and lovely markets. Welcome to Edinburgh.
Clearly you can easily spend a week in Edinburgh and find stuff to do. However, sometimes express trips come up and we need to set some priorities. So here we go folks. We took an afternoon flight from London City Airport (super convenient if you are around the city of London) and luckily the flight was only 1h20’. Because this segment is so frequent you can expect some delays but most of the times the pilot will catch up in the air and the delayed won’t be significant (of course there’s always some exceptions).
We landed just before 5.00 pm and took an Uber directly to our hotel on Festival Square. We got lucky and got the room with the Castle View, hence this was the first noticeable spot. Around 6.00 pm we went for a little night sightseeing walk. First thing again, the castle. You can easily see it from the hotel we stayed but surely other hotels they also offer some great views given the size of the city. After that we saw the Parish Church of St Cuthbert situated in east of Lothian Road. It is believed that the church is the oldest building in Edinburgh. We continued towards the New Town. I found super interesting the kilts, something truly related to the culture of Scotland and Gaelic/Celtic heritage. Nowadays kilts are often worn on formal events and some Highland games. Women have also adopted these ones. Kristina tried a few in one of the shops in that area. They looked marvellous but she couldn’t find the right size unfortunately. We walked a bit more in the area and then headed back to the hotel to change and grab a bite. We were both a bit tired so we decided to go to the hotel’s Club Lounge to taste some canapés and have some local drinks. Time to rest.
The following day we had a great breakfast at One Square, the hotel’s restaurant. It was a buffet with fresh and seasonal quality ingredients of Scottish provenance. They are known for working with local suppliers and farmers to ensure all ingredients sourced are of the highest standard. Both cold and hot options were included as well as à la carte alternatives. Local people love Haggis, their national dish. This looks like a large round sausage from the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep that are finally chopped, mixed with oats, herbs and boiled in a bag that is traditionally made from part of a sheep’s stomach according to Oxford dictionary. When I saw Haggis for breakfast, I had a flashback. I had tried this back in 2015 on one of my previous trips to Edinburgh when I was not vegetarian. I have to say I was not a big fan but fully respect people that love it. I had to work during the day so Kristina went on her own and explored the Old Town. It was her first time so she was super excited and loved what she saw. She went to the Castle Rock. After that Calton Hill (formed by a volcanic activity about 340 million years ago) where she took some stunning pictures. On Princes St there was a pretty cool Christmas market and she also highlighted the great spots to visit the following day together. We met in the evening and went for dinner. I booked The Scran & Scallie, a rustic-chic gastropub with a Modern Scottish menu, draught beers and whiskies galore. This place is also the popular venture form the team behind Michelin star restaurant The Kitchin and Kitchin Group of restaurants. We had the Jerusalem artichoke & pear barley risotto with some mixed salad leaves and chatenay carrots. Truly delicious. For dessert I had the Chocolate tart with hazelnut praline & orange. This was not too bad but certainly not as good as the main courses. Overall it was a very good restaurant and for those eating meat certainly a paradise. Time to rest.
In our final day, we had breakfast at 8ish in the morning. I must confess the coffee at One Square was fantastic. We were not super hungry as we had a big meal the night before but still enjoyed the large variety of fresh fruits with some delicious nuts. We went to the Castle Rock, this time together. After that we headed straight away to the Christmas Market. A little stop at the Scott Monument as it drew our attention immediately. We also saw the Scottish National Gallery from outside (next trip hopefully we can have a brief tour of the exquisite fine artworks). It was almost lunch time and thought of finding a restaurant along George IV Bridge but we ended up walking towards St Andrew Square to then reach Multrees Walk and tried our luck at Holy Cow on Elder St. This was a quite interesting vegan restaurant. No microwave, organic and homemade. We had a Smashed Avocado sandwich (rocket, avocado, cherry tomato, fresh basil, chilli flakes and lime) served on homemade buckwheat bread. We also had a freshly made soup of the day. It was a mouth-watering meal. I had an oat-milk flat white take away and head back to the hotel for check out. It was time to head to the airport. We realised our flight back home was delayed but at that point we didn’t care too much as our happiness was greater than the delay.
