📍Edinburgh, Scotland, Part I 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇬🇧

Day 1: We had an early, but quick, flight over to our final UK country: Scotland! Our first stop, obviously, breakfast. We went to the The Edinburgh Larder, which was highly rated, but we did not enjoy it so much. This is kinda saying a lot considering J and I eat a lot and enjoy just about anything we try. We didn’t let a disappointing breakfast affect the morale. It was time to sightsee in a city that already looked unlike any other city I had been to before. We went to the famous Edinburgh Castle, which was massive and incredibly old. Like, too old to fathom how old it truly was.

While touring just the castle, I probably got more steps in those few hours as I do a whole work day back in the States (we’ll address my lack of movement at a later date); there was so much ground to cover. As Emily loves to hike, our next stop was Arthur’s Seat, which generously added to the step count for the day but it was well worth it. We hiked all the way to the top of the mountain and somehow forgot to take a picture of the view of the castle, but it was there and it was nice.

As we were going down the way we came, we met a local man who was very chatty. He told us that if we turned around, we could go down a different and more scenic way. Now I am not one to backtrack uphill once I have made my decent, but we were not far at all and the views were worth it.

We took the nice man’s advice but didn’t exactly know where to go, so we aimlessly walked around enjoying the views. We finally got to the bottom of the hill (mountain? idk) and found we were VERY far from our hotel. We jumped on a bus which conveniently dropped us off at a restaurant right near our hotel. We were super hungry and did not care what we ate so when I saw the food in the window at Bread Meats Bread, I was halfway in the door before J and Em found me.

Between the early flight and many steps (and perhaps the dense burger), we were in need for a quick rest and some of us took it very seriously.

Once sleeping beauty woke up from her quick power nap, we went to explore Victoria Street (the street where JK Rowling got her inspiration for Diagon Alley [for all HP fans]).

We roamed around the cemetery and Princess Street Gardens and caught some of the sunset. Probably the only time you will catch me casually using the words “roaming around a cemetery” and “sunset” in the same sentence—this would typically mean I was lost and scared and to send help.

Day one was just about as successful as it could be for everyone…except the comforter in the room. Who let me eat anything in bed, especially something with this color sauce?? New country, same me. 😳

Day 2: I think I had a bit of karma for ruining the comforter because day two started with yet another slightly disappointing breakfast at Scran Bistro. We also were a bit unlucky with the weather (shoulda spilled white sauce instead of red sauce; lesson learned), but we were able to still do some sightseeing.

We went to Dean’s Village and just after we took our “Instagram pictures,” it started to rain. We began walking back to the bus station, but someone (cannot remember who gets credit for this) noticed the rain left us a nice surprise.

I had to take a call in the hotel, so J and Em went to Calton Hill and the Museum of Scotland. They found a rooftop view at the museum and had a successful afternoon.

They met me back at the hotel where we got ready for our tour of Mary King’s Close. The closes in Scotland are what we refer to as alleys where people had houses, shops, etc. and are extremely old. The Real Mary King’s Close is a tour of one of the closes where they staged it how it would have looked like in the 17th century. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures on the tour, but I can confirm they made it very life like and impressive. Coming from someone who loses interest faster than an infant, I was pleasantly entertained the entire time.

We ended the night having dinner at Grand Cafe (fish ‘n’ chips for the win) and stayed out for a few drinks for Em’s last night. The girl loves her champagne.

Day 3-5: J caught up on sleep and began to plan the next two weeks. We obviously had one last breakfast before we left and it was finally a good one! We went to Brewhemia and, apparently, we were so hungry we forgot to take pictures…except of when I spilled, yet again.

I was finally doing a solo trip so we were going our separate ways for just a bit. Of course, neither of us had planned where we were going just yet, so stay tuned for how that went…