I only had one week in Scotland and really wanted to explore the two major cities as well as make it into the more northern highlands for a bit.  This made me move a little quicker than I might normally move, but I was ready to make the best of it.  I arrived in Edinburgh after a short bus ride from Glasgow and immediately set to work on exploring the city.  The royal mile area is very beautiful but is packed full of tourists and buskers.  My hostel was located just off the mile so it was a bit secluded but close to everything.

The first thing I did when I arrived so enjoy the sunshine.  It was a beautiful sunny day and there was an outdoor beer garden with live music happening near the bus station.  I decided to sit down and relax for a bit as the hostel would allow me to check in in a n hour or so, so i had a bit of time to relax.

I checked into my hostel then decided to kill some time by checking out some of the breweries that were in town.  I hadn’t done much research on what to do in Edinburgh so this is often my fallback activity.  I felt like going out and exploring instead of trying to figure out what I wanted to do here.  I headed to my first stop which was Barney’s Brewery which is a small brewery located inside of a school’s courtyard.  They had a nice pub in front and so I enjoyed some beer in the sun on their patio.

After they had an OK selection and their beers were decent.  Nothing to write home about, but for sure better than the domestic stuff.  Next stop was a location of the St.Andrew’s brewery which was completely dead when I arrived.  I sat at the bar and had a few samples and the beer was pretty good actually.

I enjoyed their black IPA which was tasty.

After that I figured it was time to continue my wandering, so decided to check out teh various buskers that were performing on the street.  There was bubble guy

floating yoda

a bagpiper, none moving guy, metalic guy and creepy tree people.  I didn’t take pictures of them all, but there were alot hanging around.

I ducked into St.Giles Cathedral for a quick look

which was lovely.

.  I returned to the hostel and recovered a bit before heading to the evening’s pubcrawl.  Edinburgh seems like a lively city and I hadn’t had any luck meeting people yet, so I decided to give the pub crawl a go in order to meet some people.  This particular pub crawl was a bit special since the company running it has been running pub crawls for X number of years now and were holding an anniversary crawl on that night.

The one bar we went to was an expat place run by some Canadians apparently.  I was surprised to see moosehead in their beer fridge.

we sang karaoke and ended up at a place with a live band!

It was a fun night and we stayed out dancing into the morning.

The next morning I slept in a little bit and and then joined one of my hostel roomates from England on an adventure of the city.  Dani and I headed towards the royal mile and tried to determine what we wanted to do.  One of the things she seemed interested in was the camera obscura and world of illusions.  I typically don’t enjoy those sorts of things because illusion things can be seen everywhere in the world and are not specific to the place i am visiting, however, it was not too expensive so decided to join.

There were a bunch of photo ops and so of course we took advantage of them.

The view from the rooftop camera obscure was pretty neat.

Next stop was the national museum of Scotland which had a bunch of exhibits on a wide variety of topics, from Scottish history, to natural history, to technology.

The highlight for me was the  actual stuffed Dolly the sheep which was the first cloned mammal.

After leaving the museum, we headed down to the end of the Mile to the queens Scottish residence in Scotland called Holyrood place.  You had to pay too much to go in and  so we just viewed from the outside.

We chilled in the park next to the palace and then walked back up through the city to explore a bit more.  We ended up at a food festival in one of the parks where we had a free beer tasting session which included a decent ammount of free beer and then ate some food from one of the many vendors.  I can’t remember exactly what I had, but i do remember it was good.

After the food festival we were both pretty fool and so we moved on to the nearby park for a nice bit of rest and relaxation.  We chilled in the park until the sun started to go down which was a great way to spend the afternoon.

After returning to the hostel, one of the guys in my room was actually Canadian and had graduated from systems design engineering a few years before me.  He is a youtuber travelling around celebrating the various international days of stuff.  Such as international donut day or international bike to work day.  He then interviews people on the street in a comedy type situation.  He has been travelling the world doing these videos.  If you are interested, he is the Daily Dinkus on youtube.

Didn’t really get up to anything that evening and eventually called it a night.

The next morning I woke up and went for a run around Edinburgh.  My goal was to make it up to Arthur’s seat for a cool view of Edinburgh and maybe some additional places i may have missed in my walking wanders.

I made it to the top with few issues and enjoyed the views that it afforded me!

It was a great run and after getting back to the hostel, cleaning up and resting a bit, it was time to join the free walking tour of downtown.  I joined a crowd and we were off.  We spent most of our time in the royal mile area but did deviate a little bit to some cool sites.

We saw the elephant house which they claim was where JK Rowling came up with Harry Potter and are milking it for every penny.  You have to pay an entrance fee to enter the cafe even if you are ordering something.

At some point in the tour, the clouds opened up and it began to pour rain.

Everyone was pretty well soaked in a few minutes and we all just got used to the fact we would be wet for the rest of the tour.

We learned about Greyfriars Bobby who was the dog that would sit at the grave of his old master for 14 years until he died.  Some people say that an enterprising individual had replaced the dog with a new one in order to keeop the attraction alive, but in the end Bobby was given a statue just outside of the graveyard in his honor.

After the graveyard we continue the tour onto the streets of Edinburgh hwere there were some really nice buildings.

After the tour I went to try and find some Haggis as I was in Scotland and had not tried it yet, so this was getting higher on the list of things I needed to do.  I tried to go to the restaurant that was recommended on the toyur but it was full so I did a quick google search to find an alternative option.  I found one and enjoyed a nice pint and Haggis while reading my book.

After the haggis, I decided it would be cool to see the fort after deciding not to pay the entrance fee earlier to go see it.  I figured it would be cool and it really wasn’t that much money.

There were a few other people with the same idea.

I wandered around the fort, enjoying the museums and views.  The Scottish crown jewels were also on display.

After the looong day of running, walking and touring, it was time for a beer and the tour guide had suggested a place for local pub style atmosphere and said it was the place that he likes to go. Upon arriving I saw some of the other people from my tour and we got to talking.

I didn’t take any photos of the group of us, but we ended up having a short break and then meeting up later for a few drinks at another place they had heard about.  It was a great last night in Edinburgh and set things up nicely for the few days I had to spend in Inverness.  But that is a story for another day.