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Published: February 13th 2018
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Edinburgh was not on my bucket list, but my daughter chose to go here with her Dad and I for her 21st birthday and we were happy to oblige.
We had a nice little easy flight from Stansted to Edinburgh (one hour) and for £8.50 each return we got the tram straight from the airport to Princes Street (about 25 minutes).
We stayed in a beautiful two bedroom apartment
(Destiny) on Rutland Square , where we had a lounge, kitchen and dining table, a master bedroom and ensuite, another large bedroom and a family bathroom with bath. This was perfectly situated about a two minute walk from Princes Street.
Night one - we walked about 5 minutes to
Foundry 39 , a bar/ restaurant playing cool funk and soul music and a buzzy atmosphere! Service was quick and food tasty - they even served a dessert on the house for the Birthday girl!
We headed to the
Ghillie Dhu for a nightcap, which looked like an old castle, had live music playing and fairy lights round the door -what more could a girl want?
Day 2 - my daughter is a
massive Harry Potter fan so we walked through the historic streets to the
Elephant House café , where JK Rowling first started writing the Harry Potter books. Drinks and cakes were reasonably priced and the toilet is smothered in graffiti from travellers around the world complimenting the Harry Potter books - very cool, if a little shocking when you first enter!
Next stop was Greyfriars Kirkyard graveyard. Not our usual choice of tourist destination but a good hour was spent searching for the graves that Inspired some of the Harry Potter the characters such as Moody and Thomas Riddle. Top tip save yourself a bit of time, by looking at this
graveyard map . They weren’t joking when they warned it about it being cold in Scotland and it didn’t get any warmer in the graveyard, but well worth it to see my daughter's face when the last grave on our list was found.
A quick photo stop at
Greyfriars Bobby and we headed down the quaint streets were more Harry Potter delights to be found. We stopped and had a much needed breakfast Bap (in the middle of the day!) and headed on to explore the shops
on Grassmarket.
We spent the afternoon looking through all the quaint shops on Cockburn Street and the more mainstream ones on Princes Street including Topshop, Jenner’s and Fraser’s.The Dome on George Street looked particularly lovely and served an afternoon tea, although we were just looking for Coffee so ended up in a café nearby. A quick pop back to the apartment to change and then we headed to very tastefully decorated hotel called
Angel Share for a pre-dinner drink (chandeliers and plush seating). Much more my scene than the graveyard!
We had a lovely dinner at
Gustos , which served nice food and wine and had a great atmosphere - perfect for a Birthday!
Day 3 - first stop was Harvey Nichols to by the daughter they much sought-after Fenty foundation in shade 120. Unfortunately they had sold out but we had a nice look round all of the designer clothes before heading to the Tiles pub for a quick have pub lunch before going to
Camera Obscura which was great fun. The highlight is a fifteen minute show where you have a “tour” of Edinburgh through clever trickery similar to a pin
hole camera. Other than that there all sorts of tricks and illusions, 3D images and quirky activities. We spent about 2.5 hours there and felt it was worth the entrance fee, if for the instagram photos if nothing else!
We were lucky with the weather and that we didn’t have any rain but it was a very cold January blowy day so we braved it to take some snaps of the castle from outside before heading to the Waterson‘s cafe on Princes Street, where you get a wonderful few of the castle from in the warm! They also serve a lovely array of cakes/other food. It was then time to pick up our luggage and go back to the airport on the tram.
I was very pleasantly surprised by Edinburgh . I’m sure the fact it was January helped, but I’ve never been to the city where there is room on the pavements to walk quite easily giving us opportunity to enjoy the beautiful historic buildings. everywhere we went the staff were friendly and helpful and the food and drink is reasonably priced for a large city. I would love to go back, perhaps
when the weather is a wee bit warmer!
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