Like I said before, I went to Edinburgh at the end of November, which was not the best time to visit, but we had a great trip regardless! We went back and forth on whether or not going to Edinburgh would be worth it this time of year. The sun sets at 4pm and it's extremely cold with the possibility of snow or rain. We decided to just do it and luck was on our side for the most part. It wasn't terribly cold and out of the 3 days we were there, it only rained once and was sunny for the rest!
We walked from Edinburgh Train Station to our apartment. We rented through Airbnb and we were in a great location right off of Grassmarket Street. We had an awesome view of Edinburgh castle in a very girly, cozy apartment. It was perfect for us! The owner gave us directions from the train station but of course we got very lost. We made it to Grassmarket, but couldn't figure out where to go from there. After about an hour we found it, met the owner who have us the key, dropped our stuff off and went to wander around.
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| Grassmarket Street |
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| This was the courtyard of the building our Airbnb apartment was in! |
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| Edinburgh Castle |
That night was the beginning of the city's Christmas festival and Susan Boyle was set to perform! We were really excited to experience the city's celebrations. We went back to where the train station was and there was a whole Winter Wonderland set up with lights, rides, booths and food! We got hot chocolate (which was amazing) and walked around looking at all the handmade goods that were being sold.
Then we went to where Susan Boyle was going to be as she was turning the lights on on one of the streets. We made our way as close to the front as we could, but were disappointed because Susan didn't perform! She did a countdown and then ran into her hotel! Bummer. There was a great fireworks show though.
We headed back to our apartment and stopped into The Last Drop, which is on Grassmarket Street, for dinner. It's a traditional pub setting, with traditional Scottish pub food. I had the macaroni and cheese and my cousin had a burger (I know, not very Scottish but we were tired and just wanted comfort food). We were sitting next to a couple from Pennsylvania and started talking with them. The woman was American but her husband was Scottish so they retired here in Edinburgh. She was giving us tips on where to go to meet rich young men, she knew what we were looking for.
The pub itself was very cool. As you can read from the sign it was the original site for hangings and is reportedly haunted by a young girl. They have a whole wall dedicated to pictures of gruesome scenes and papers.
We decided to end the night early instead of going to another pub since we signed up for a day tour to the Highland and Loch Ness for the next day. We went back to the room, put the fire on and watched an episode of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here, which is so good and it's on like every single day of the week there which was crazy to us, but we watched it every night regardless. It's like a mix of Survivor and Fear Factor.
So that's it for our first day in Edinburgh. I'll do a second part of this post when we did some more touristy things! Also, if you guys want to know about where we stayed, email me and I'll share the link with you!
