Travel Tips For Edinburgh

Deborah — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 21:12:09 +0000

Edinburgh is a fantastic city for tourism, being stuffed full with castles, museums and other attractions. However, for budget travelers, it can be an expensive city, with entry fees to all those places adding up quickly. So after 7 days of exploring the city by foot, here are some recommendations:

Affordable accommodation

Caledonian Backpackers on Queensferry Street.
It’s just off Princes Street where the buzz happens. Free (and great) breakfast from 6am – 12noon. Free wifi and internet access. Super cheap bar. Mini beanbag cinema with an endless list of movies. Hot showers, comfy beds, generally clean. And the wall murals are great for pics.
Budget Backpackers on Grassmarket.
There are over 700 pubs just along Grassmarket if you’re into pub crawling. Grassmarket used to be a trading place and a place for execution way back. Creeps for those whose imagination goes wild! The facilities are a lot newer, room prices are cheaper however everything else is on a paid-to-go basis. Breakfast is at 2 pounds, internet access 1 pound for ½ hour, baggage storage 1 pound per locker…

Food, Glorious Food

Maggie Dickson on Grassmarket – they serve really good chilli con carne, great for a hearty hot lunch. They offer discounts for students at 7.95 pounds for 2 mains.
The Last Drop on Grassmarket apparently serves mouth watering haggis (haag-geese) but the line was always too long for the wait, so we skipped it. Try it If you’re around and let us know if it’s really that good. Haggis is the traditional dish of Scotland, it is hot peppered minced meat served with a gazillion other spices. Usually served with Neeps and Tatties (mashed potatoes and turnips).
Rose Street is a street filled with pubs and restaurants. Go there if you have exhausted all places for food. From Mexican to Japanese to (obviously) Scottish food!

Other places you should go & things you should do…

Free walk tour by Sandemans
The New Europe tours are designed for any kind of travelers for a first-hand introduction of specific cities in Europe. It is fun, engaging and educational – best of all it’s free. It’s quite impossible to download the entire history of a city but this tour dissects years of history into sizable bits for all. Tour guides work on a tips only basis, which means we get to rate our tour guide and tip what we think he/she deserves. Find us here on the Edinburgh walk tour’s website.

National Museum of Scotland is a great place for knowledge thirsty folks. There are 5 floors to explore and you should visit the remains of the first cloned sheep, “Dolly” stuffed and encased in a glass box on a rotating plate. Admission is free.
Edinburgh Castle
The castle at Edinburgh perches on volcanic rock and dominates the city skyline. During the medieval period the castle at Edinburgh became the chief royal castle. State records and crown jewels were housed there. The room leading into the crown jewels is very impressive (take particular notice on the ‘Stone of Destiny’) and do a google search to find out its amazing ‘adventure’.
Tip: Book online!
Climbing Arthur’s Seat or surrounding hills
The view from the large volcanic hill in the center of Edinburgh is a wonder on its own. Situated inside Holyrood Park, Arthur’s Seat takes approximately 1 hour to climb. Since it way icy and slippery we opted to climb other surrounding hills, but if you’re in Edinburgh in summer, spring or autumn – make sure you climb it!

The over rated places…

Tours to Loch Ness is way over rated, whilst the scenery there is beautiful, you literally spend 6-7 hours on the bus to and from Edinburgh. Loch Ness, (Loch in Scotland means Lake) is a pristine and quiet expanse of water with the famous legend of “Nessie” the Loch Ness Monster surrounding it.
John Knox House
Unimpressive and very much over-rated. John Knox only stayed in the house for a period of time and only a percentage of what tourists see are authentic fittings from the original structure. Admission fee is 3.50 pounds.

2010 in Edinburgh!

Deborah — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:05:13 +0000

Welcome to 2010 in Edinburgh (“Air-deen-brrrrrr”)! If you didn’t know Edinburgh is one of the best cities to count down and celebrate the new years – parallel to places like Times Square-New York, Hyde Park-London, Sydney Harbour Bridge-Australia and the likes. Incidentally the Scottish capital of Edinburgh put on one amazing show, with festivities that start almost as soon as the Christmas turkey is off the bone. The city wide party is called Hogmanay (“hog-muh-nay”).

Despite the cold, tickets are sold for an outdoor street party on Princes Street (the street dividing the new and old town). Thousands of revelers fill the streets as they party, elbow through the mad crowd and finally countdown to an awesome fireworks display at over Edinburgh Castle.
Instead of fighting our way through the crowd, we headed out only at 1030pm to scale the famous Carlton Hill where it’s said to have the best views of the city below. Little did we know that fireworks were to go off on Cartton Hill as well!

We were awe-struck by the colourful rainbows on the black silhouette skies as tonnes of fireworks burst into the air.

edinburgh, fireworks, new year, 2010, countdown

Journey With Deb » Travel: Edinburgh

Travel Tips For Edinburgh

2010 in Edinburgh!