48 Happy Hours in Edinburgh
A beginner's guide to pub crawling, hill climbing and boo + booze touring the city
Kim and I hit the ground running. Well, as fast as the cobbles and clots of selfie-takers allowed. Just two steps out of Waverley Station it felt as though we’d been dropped into the centrefold of a history textbook. Or, picnic central.
Our basecamp would be St. Christopher’s Edinburgh Original, a hostel located in the city’s aorta. The 100-square-foot micro suite on the 5th floor permitted only one of us to move about the room at a time. The other had to take up the bigger real estate of the double bed pushed against the wall and purring rad. If you think we cheaped out, two nights rang in at $465 CAD (including two scratchy towels and a tea kettle).
After brushing the post-overnight flight fur from our teeth we were ready to take on the world. We joined the throngs of merry hen and bachelor parties fresh into their weekend mission of full-throttle debauchery. A dozen dudes in poker visors and matching tees paraded by, one wearing a small basketball net on his head while his brassiest friend asked curvy women if they wanted to touch his balls.
There were so many pet groomers and salons per capita! And cricket pitches. Let’s not forget the castle, smack-dab on the 360 mound. Nepalese restos, kebab huts and bakery windows displaying trays of egg-washed Cornish pasties and golden sausage rolls beckoned with tempting, aromatic whiffs. Outdoor tables were jammed with milk-skinned Scots draining Aperol spritz and foamy pints. It was total mayhem in the sun. Like gay pride weekend, but for everyone.
The best thing you can do in Edinburgh is simply wander excessively. Kim and I had few must-sees as we knew our 48 hour window would be rolled up in no time. Top priority was visiting the Greyfriars Bobby monument, a tribute to the devoted Skye terrier who spent 14 years guarding the grave of his owner until he died on in January 1872. Bobby only left the cemetery with a local cabinetmaker to visit a nearby coffee house that provided him with a meal—-it was a place he used to frequent with his beloved owner.
In the serenity of the Greyfriars Kirkyard Cemetery, Bobby was an easy find in the perfume of orange blooms. It was hard not to walk away without feeling like I had a football in my throat.
I’d later learn that the bigger balloon of tourists in the cemetery were on a mission to see the nearby gravestones that inspired J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter characters. They gathered like Swifties on the most colorful bend of Victoria Street too—this area is the alleged inspo for the famed Diagon Alley and The Elephant House is where J.K. headquartered while writing the Potter series.
Our version of magic was found in the haggis spring rolls at Bertie’s (also on Victoria) and The Gin Company where we were overwhelmed by the booze botanicals. The shelves held an arresting array of combos: rhubarb + ginger, orange + basil, pink peppercorn, marmalade sandwich and even a Christmas gin that “tastes like aromatic gifts of festive spice unwrapped by a roaring fire.”
After nabbing the last two evening ghost tour tickets from Mercat Tours, we ensconced ourselves at The Last Drop. The name of the bar is a nod to the last drop of alcohol for those who were hung in Grassmarket’s famed execution square. Others suggest that the ‘last drop’ reference is exactly that, through the trapdoor.
Along the pedestrian-only strip of the Grassmarket (where hay was once sold) we made our way through the vendor artisan pop-ups, feeling the weight of handmade leather journals and sniffing lemongrass and herb-studded soaps. We watched gyoza dumplings being neatly pinched and laughed over some silly anime pins and cards. After absorbing every last beam of the un-Scotland like sun we found space at a communal table at BrewDog. I had already pre-ordered this pizza in my head before we left Canada.
The squeaky halloumi and aubergine pizza with Napoli-smashed tomatoes, stretchy Scottish mozza and a balsamic swizzle was just the carb load we needed to distract us from the grip of our five-hour time leap. We watched more tipsy bachelorette parties stream by in boas, veils and sashes, some carrying ill-planned footwear, amazed that we (and they) hadn’t collapsed hours ago.
Round Two: The Next 24
Across from our hostel, we joined our fellow groggy guests queuing up twenty minutes before Belushi’s breakfast service closed. They poured sufficient enough coffee and had a spread of hard-boiled eggs, sandwich fixings, granola, tinned fruit and a panini maker that was doing double-time on Nutella sandos to go. Many opted for bowls of cocoa crispies which suited the entertainment of the big screen Saturday morning cartoons airing at all angles.
Satiated, Kim and I struck off for Arthur’s Seat (if you watched One Day, this is the place! Insert snotty sob and heart pangs here, right
?), which ended up being a network of swirling goat paths off of Queen’s Drive to the top. It was a quick departure from the congestion of bagpipes and ice cream-lickin’ bus tour clusters on the Royal Mile to the flora, forts and serenity of Duddingston Loch near the Palace of Holyroodhouse.It was a surprisingly mad procession of people and dogs of all sorts. The super scenic surprise was punctuated by the song of skylarks and the butter yellow gorse that engulfed the hills. What appeared to be a strange grey-hooded crow was our first jackdaw sighting—-then they were everywhere. We quickly added Arthur’s Seat to our favourite urban hikes list.
Getting to the panorama-packed top of the extinct volcano involved a little sweat equity but coming down is the dicey part. Upon descent, the path turns into a fun conveyor belt of rolling gravel. A few timid (or intelligent) hikers were coming down on their bums.
A Toronto expat friend had insisted that we visit Edinburgh Street Food near Calton Hill, so we did as we were told. The “casual global eating experience” has live music, 10 vendors, three bars and seats 500 foodies. However, after our panini breakfast we were far from hungry. Instead, Kim and I enjoyed the preview of smash burgers from Fat Patty’s, Detroit-style pizza, salt-licked fishbowl margs, Mr. Bones sticky ribs, cornmeal-dusted calamari and mountains of mac n’ cheese that servers breezed by with. We opted for Moonwake IPAs and stayed for another round because the soundtrack was so good. Insert David Byrne, Tears for Fears and Kim Carnes here.
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As we headed back to the groovy Grassmarket area, we weaved in and out of shops hawking heather and thistle tea, whisky truffles, Isle of Skye candles that smelled of Hebridean breeze, whisky and gorse (and probably grouse). There were naughty napkins, a lot of nougat, pet-me cashmere, Highland cow-everything, Loch Ness poop-in-bag, calendars with bare-butted men in kilts and shortbread of every shape from Scottie dogs to penis-shaped biscuits.
Kim and I grabbed postcards for the fam and a Scotland sticker for our designated travel trunk before making our way through Princes Street Gardens—unbelievably, the gardens sit in what was once the belly of Nor Loch, Edinburgh’s largest lake. It was drained in the 1820s as part of the New Town expansion.
Satisfied by the Edinburgh education that we had acquired, we squeezed into The Wee Pub (the smallest pub in Scotland) just as the rain began to wash the streets. A group of seven chatty women from Bristol and five punchy tatted guys filled the room with stories and volume, competing with the women’s FIFA soccer match and the adjoining milieu of Biddy Mulligans Pub. I was able to press into a corner to take the photo before the twenty seats were taken.
We’d wisely decided to skip vegan cake and tea at Maison de Moggy (Scotland’s first cat cafe) as the entry was 14 Pound sterling ($28 CAD each!). Instead, like Netflix pirates, we pressed our faces against the cafe windows for free and spent more money on beer at The Wee Pub because the rain didn’t let up before our boo + booze tour.
Led by a very animated guide named Michael, the Mercat tour of Edinburgh’s dark underbelly was a grim and gruesome romp, as promised. The first five minutes are designed to filter out the squeamish with tales of the cat o’ nine tails (used for lashings) and the non-spa-like rock salt treatment that followed. We were told of ears spiked to wooden crosses and jaws being sliced ear to ear before tongues were lopped off and thrown into the feverish crowd that gathered for the execution.
We stood on the paved grave of 16th-century preacher John Knox—-it’s parking lot space #23 at Saint Giles Cathedral. There were so many tales of executions gone wrong, survived hangings and candid discussions of job requirements for the lucrative body snatcher industry (which fell apart when people were encouraged to donate their bodies to science). This is Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde territory!
The real life, current day stories of a 12-year-old Irish boy who saw a woman in a blue dress in the vaults successfully goosebumped everyone in attendance. Then there was the woman who smelled hot, sour breath and felt the exhale of an unknown face on hers.
The tour concluded with a Stewart’s Skeleton Blues IPA (or whisky dram) in the dank and damp Megget’s Cellar which adjoins 120 known vaults pocketed under Edinburgh. The creepy tingles didn’t dissipate when the tour ended, they seemed to grow as we hurried back to our hostel to enjoy our phone booth shower and confines far above the chilling tunnels of the city.
For once, we did everything as planned and not planned.
Want to tramp across Scotland a little longer? Did you see last week’s post about some Surprising Things Learned in Scotland? From halloumi to roadside defibrillators and Evil Knievel motorcades, every day is a fresh page of huh.
Have you been to Edinburgh? What did you love most? What surprised you? I’ve now returned home with a to-read list that includes everything on this table.
How I wish Jules…… but you took me there. Ta.
We made it to Edinburgh while two people who weren’t rich could still walk around their hotel room. Love your photos, especially of things we missed.