Edinburgh is beautiful. We only made one key mistake – we didn’t stay long enough.
If I had my druthers I’d have done a few more items from the list at https://www.visitscotland.com/places-to-go/edinburgh/things-to-do and visited the Camera Obscura, National Monument and the Edinburgh Festival Theatre.
We arrived in Edinburgh by train, leaving London in the morning and arriving 5 hours later in the afternoon.
We stayed in an Airbnb on The Royal Mile overlooking the street, up a narrow flight of stairs, next to a whiskey-tasting shop. Nice olde worlde furnishings and nice being able to see the action on the street below.
Our first choice was what to do on day 1: climb Arthur’s Seat or visit Edinburgh Castle.
Arthur’s Seat is an ancient volcano – a mammoth grassy hill with panoramic views over Edinburgh.
My favourite book in the whole world is Julian May’s Intervention, and there’s a scene where Jamie MacGregor climbs Arthur’s Seat and hollers telepathically to family. I had to go there first. Wikipedia even mentions her books in the article on Arthur’s Seat.
By the time we climbed down, the castle was going to be closed, so we wandered through Holyrood Park. Holyroodhouse and local streets.
We wandered back to the Royal Mile and found a good Scottish pub for dinner, then went for another glimpse of the castle by night.
The next day we had an early start for a day trip to Loch Ness on an all day tour.
One of the stopping points was Achnambeithach Cottage, dubbed the loneliest house in the world. No neighbours for miles, it’s near Glencoe village in Lochaber, Scottish Highlands. Apparently it’s now used as a base for mountain rescue, and does have an inhabitant.
Along the route, our comical guide pointed out other parts of Glencoe, where the final scenes of Skyfall were filmed.
We arrived in the village of Fort Augustus at the south-west end of Loch Ness, the main tourist village for Loch Ness and the launch point for various tours.
Rather than spend the whole trip on a boat cruise, we chose to grab a snack and walk to the Loch Ness View Point for a look around. It’s definitely large enough for Nessie to live there secretly.
We then walked through the village, checking out the locks on the Caledonian Canal. The Canal goes the full distance from the east coast to the west coast of Scotland, and includes Loch Ness along the way. It was pretty cool watching the lock open and seeing the difference in water height, as a boat passed through. There are 5 locks in Fort Augustus, and 29 across the full length of the Canal.
When we returned to Edinburgh it was again too late to visit the castle, so we just walked through the streets at night and found another pub.
Even one more day would have been good, but we had a tight schedule, catching a flight to Stockholm the next day.
Next time, maybe……
