Such a beautiful walkable city

Visiting Edinburgh in August can be a treat or it can be quite a nightmare if you didn’t like crowd. August is when the street festival, Fringe, takes place as well as the Military Tattoo. We didn’t necessarily go in August for either of those events. Frankly, we prefer to avoid crowd; however, that was when we could go. I thought it wouldn’t be too bad to experience Fringe.

Fringe was amazing though we didn’t really buy any tickets to see a specific show. We just saw performances on the street from magicians, musical performance, and acrobat performance among others. It was fun to see street and independent performers getting a chance to be recognized and seen. However, the crowd was maddening! Be ready!

A trick to avoid crowd in a touristy place is to wake up early. However, during Fringe, no matter how early we started our day, the city woke up earlier than us!

We stayed in the city center and I made a mistake a couple of times thinking that city center is city center. At times, city center or downtown is not necessarily where everything is. Edinburgh city center is in the modern part of town. If you want to be close to cool tourist spots, the spots to stay will be in the Old Town Edinburgh or by Grassmarket Area.

We stayed at a Courtyard Marriott in city center. The hotel is fine and gave us free breakfast; however, it was a bit far from everything else. Yet, we still walked from it and we made it to many spots by foot.

Arthur’s Seat Hike

We started the day with a walk toward Arthur’s Seat. This is a dormant volcano in Edinburgh believed to be the site of Camelot. Cool, right? It was an amazing hike and it was about a little less than one hour to go up and a little faster going down. From the top of Arthur’s Seat, we saw a beautiful sprawling view of Edinburgh. The hike is not hard especially if you’re in a good fitness condition. We love to hike but we huffed and puffed the whole way and loving it.

Arthur’s Seat is not far from Palace of Holyrood House, a Royal Residence. If you plan to visit this palace, this can be easily done together.

The Royal Mile

We headed toward Edinburgh Castle by walking the Royal Mile. The Palace of Holyrood House is one end of the Royal Mile, and it goes all the way to the Castle. It was a beautiful walk as we saw various old buildings that makes Old Town Edinburgh so charming. We also saw an amazing sandwich shop called, “Oink” and we stopped to drool a bit looking at the amazing roasted pork on the window. Too bad, they weren’t open until 11 am. We were thinking that we had to go back somehow.

We were moving along and all the Fringe festivities were all ongoing. We stopped to see the St. Giles Cathedral and admired the architectures inside and outside. We then walked in Grassmarket area where we saw the colorful store front houses that was an inspiration for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter. Lo and behold..we saw another “Oink” store there, so we stopped for a bite and oh my it was tasty! It was basically a roasted pork sandwich and you can choose topping and sauce to go with it. Toppings can either be Haggis, Cooked Apple, or Stuffing. It was so good! We also stopped at this pub called “The Last Drop” for beers. This pub’s symbol is basically a noose because this pub was the location of the main city public hanging back in the day.

Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle can easily dominate a whole day. As we mentioned, we travel fast and we don’t have time to waste so we combined all of these activities into one day. It was a lot and our feet were hurting at the end of the day as we walked so much.

One mistake we didn’t do was buying the tickets to the castle ahead of time. It was stupid because with the Tattoo and Fringe, the amount of people who wanted to go to visit the castle was also a lot more. Well, they were sold out. Luckily, I checked my viator app, and to see if they had any skip the line tour to the castle and of course they had it.

Yes, it was probably more money; however, we were able to still go to the castle and the tour came with a very knowledgeable guide. Our guide was Ben, the Englishman, from Little Fish Tour.

Do remember – if the ticket sold out, this is a very good alternative to still get access to the Edinburgh Castle.

Edinburgh Castle is definitely a destination! Being the most seized castle in the world, it really has a lot of roles in this country’s history. There are a lot to see in the castle including the “Stone of Destiny” which is the stone that is used for every coronation of the King of the United Kingdom. It also is the location for the oldest building in Edinburgh, St Margaret’s Chapel.

Every day at 1:00 pm except on Sunday, a canon is fired from Edinburgh Castle. We didn’t know this until we visited and of course the next day was Sunday. Just our luck!

I think Edinburgh Castle needs to be visited to get the gist of the place. It has various museums inside the compound too including the National War Museum, Prisons of War, and Scottish National War Memorial. There is also a possibility for Afternoon Tea if you like to have an enjoyable afternoon sipping tea and snacking on scones.

Admission is : £19.50 for adult. Click here for more info Ticket Selection :: Edinburgh Castle (historic-scotland.gov.uk)

To get a tour, it was closer to $50.00 plus tip; however, it was well worth it.

For more pictures in Edinburgh, please click here to go to my Edinburgh’s Instagram post. Lu & Mike (@daubtrotters) • Instagram photos and videos

Let me know what you think! If you have any questions, feel free to let me know as well.