Scotland - Edinburgh

Edinburgh is such a cool city. There are so many beautiful old buildings, lots of parks, and it is all really nicely laid out.

We had a little trouble checking into our hostel, they lost our booking (even though we had paid a deposit), also two others checking in at the same time had also had their booking 'lost'. The guy on reception was so drunk he didn't know what was going on and it took so long to sort out. But in the end we got a bed and the hostel turned out to be really good, and the drunk guy a really friendly and helpful guy, when sober, and it was in the best location, right in the middle of town.

We think Edinburgh is the one of the best cities we have been to. We really liked it, and if we come on a working holiday in the future it would be our number one choice of location (so far).

Edinburgh Castle

The main sight in Edinburgh is the castle, which is perched on top of a crag in the middle of the city. We spent a few hours looking around it, saw the Scottish Honours (crown jewels), prisons, royal apartments, lots of war memorials and museums, cannons, and battlements. It was really good but chilly. The castle has been invaded many times through history and you can see the different parts that have been rebuilt.

This cannon could fire one of these cannon balls 3km


Prisoners of war display, and one of the many castle gates

There are a lot of tourist shops in Edinburgh playing bagpipe music and selling tartan. We went to a great market and got french cheese and a baguette which we took over to a lovely park filled with daffodils and ate in the sun while listening to a band which was playing as part of a spring festival.

Giant sized food at the market

Really close to the city, right by the Scottish Parliament, is Holyrood Park, 260 hectares of what seemed to us like Scottish Highlands. It was so cool to have this right near the city. The highest peak is Arthurs Seat which we walked up to (250m high), a very steep walk that afforded amazing views.

We went to the cutest little tea shop for scones with jam and cream and rhubarb pie. They had a little tea trolley with all the different cakes and biscuit on. Yummy.

We spent quite a while over a couple of days in the Royal Museum of Scotland. We saw a very thorough exhibition on the history of Scotland, which after several hours we saw only half or less, so had to give up as we didn't have enough time. We went to a temporary exhibition on Pixar (makers of Toy Story, Monsters Inc. etc). It was really cool with a lot of the original artwork. We could have spent a lot longer at the museum, as it was we extended our time in Edinburgh from 3 to 4 nights as there was lots of things to do.

We bought an engagement ring from a store in Edinburgh. We are very happy with it, its exactly what we were looking for.

There are some great pubs in Edinburgh, here is a picture of one we went to.