Rubberneckin’ in Edinburgh

It is said that every king has his castle. As fate would have it, I found myself visiting Edinburgh, Scotland with 4 other dear friends during Halloween. So, we did what any group of silly self-respecting American boys would do and all decided to pack up an Elvis costume for our conquest of Edinburgh. We’d become kings, now we needed some castles…

This trip began as many other European adventures do, with a train ride. I’ve outlined my complicated relationship with trains in both my Cambridge and Bath blogs. Outside of looking like a couple of morons lugging our luggage up to the front of the train and all of the way to the back again, my buddy AJ and I eventually found our seats with the rest of our crew. We settled in for what would be an incredibly fun train ride despite our initial ineptitude with locating our seats.

Traveling on trains with friends is just plain fun. You have more room than an airplane, can sit across from each other to talk, play cards, or write post cards. You can bring snacks and even bring your own booze. Also, some of the sites you see traveling throughout the country are beautiful. Our 4 hour ride to Edinburgh was spent catching up, roasting each other and, of course, doing some good old fashioned drankin’. We were a pack of hound dogs in a train full of suspicious minds fresh on a royal adventure.

Oh, and trains are also great for taking pictures as if you’re in a moody music video. I’ll let you guess which of the pictures below best depicts that possibility…

Edinburgh’s train station, like a lot of European cities, is centrally located, which really makes lodging and travel logistics much easier. As always, I’ve included a screenshot of our Airbnb’s location below and have linked to the listing here. At the time of writing this, it’s currently listed at $250/night. $50/night if you’re traveling with a group of 5 as we were.

Our place was about a 10-15 minute walk from the train station, for your reference. Any place you find in this area will put you within walking distance of just about everything. As you can see from the map, the city is divided into ‘New Town’ and ‘Old Town’. Those names could not be more appropriate. The ‘New Town’ is filled with the usual sturdy, grayish stone familiar to many cities in the region. The urban layout of that area is also more of a grid system. It’s newer…I don’t know what else to tell you.

The ‘Old Town’, however, is old. This is the part of town that you’re most likely looking at when you see pictures of Edinburgh. You’ll find the castle and ‘royal mile’ in the Old Town, a truly medieval feeling neighborhood with curving cobblestone roads and all manner of shops, scotch tastings, and restaurants packed in on top of each other. Someone is bound to be playing bagpipes on the streets and the whole thing would probably feel slightly touristy if it were anywhere other than Scotland. Don’t get me wrong, you will see plenty of tourists there, but it’s also genuinely a neighborhood the locals frequent.

Once we had gotten checked into the Airbnb, we set out to find our local pub to grab some dinner and a pint before getting into our Elvis costumes and hitting the streets. Our local pub was called The Conan Doyle.

Left to right: (Sammy, Chet, Brian, AJ aka ‘Fancy Al’; ‘Fancy’ for short)

We had our pints and meals, returned to the Airbnb and changed into our Elvis costumes while re-familiarizing ourselves with his kingly catalogue of songs.

We went to many places, but, admittedly, I was not in ‘Travel Influencer’ mode and don’t have many of the locations we discovered memorialized. I can say we went to The Queens Arms Pub, and that it’s worth going to.

One of the things that frequently crosses my mind looking back on that night is that we were regularly stopped for photos, and, somewhere out there in the world, there are hundreds of photos of 5 Americans dressed in Elvis costumes conquering Edinburgh.

The next morning we gathered ourselves and set out for ‘more productive’ ventures. We gathered ourselves with a cup of coffee and, for some, a cookie at Zebra Coffee. It’s a quaint establishment with tasty snacks and very attractive baristas…if you’re into that. After coffee and walking around a bit, we grabbed a tasty lunch at Howies. Highly Recommend.

We moseyed about the Old Town, walked the Royal Mile and elected to pony up and pay for access to the castle.

At some point, Chet and I did a scotch tasting and took ‘Bumble Pictures’. So did AJ and I.

Eventually, at some point later in the afternoon, everyone in the group had self motivating agendas. Some needed to nap, some needed to work, and some needed to continue watching the Gossip Girl DVD box collection that came with our Airbnb. Can you say VALUE?!

The weather had also turned fowl at this point. Motivated by getting to experience the ‘authentic’ Scottish weather, I decided to stay out and continue exploring.

I had known prior to visiting Edinburgh that J.K. Rowling had spent a considerable amount of time writing the Harry Potter books in Edinburgh, and that it was a heavy source of inspiration for her. While I had a vague understanding of this fact, it didn’t resonate with me until I spent more time truly getting lost in the streets.

A postcard I sent to my parents is probably the best way to describe this experience as it is both accurate and a true snapshot of my immediate impressions.

Writing to you from our train back to London from Edinburgh. Wow. What an amazing city. The whole time I could totally understand how J.K. Rowling got inspired to write the Harry Potter books. With an old spooky castle overlooking the city, twisting cobblestone streets, shops that are, “Purveyors of Magical and Esoteric Good”, ghosts (the most famous being a sweet puppy doggy), and tombstones with latin inscriptions that feel like incantations when you read them, it’s hard not to feel like you’re in a magical place!

Love you and miss you!

And it’s true. If you’ve been, or if you go, you’ll completely understand it. Nothing to take away from J.K. and her imagination, but if there is a place to gain inspiration for a magical story, it’s Edinburgh. The Old Town sitting directly across the street from the New Town really does feel like wizards and witches living amongst the non-magic (muggles). It is said that when J.K. needed a break from writing or had writers block that she would walk around the city and wander its cemeteries. As you walk through some of these cemeteries, there are literal names that she’s pulled from tombstones and placed into her stories.

As mentioned in the postcard, the most famous ghost of Edinburgh is indeed a sweet little puppalew. The poochie, it is said, was the companion of a local police officer. When the police officer died, the dog, it is said, sat beside his grave for 14 years until the pup itself passed away. To this day, a canon blast will go off once a day to signify the sweet poochino rising from his grave to run about the city just as he did when he was a beloved hero of the city. You can read more about the legend here. There is another, albeit less charming, but perhaps more practical explanation of the one o’clock gun fire that you can read about here. They’re all good dogs.

Eventually, the crew reunited for another glorious evening about the town. Much of which was not documented. Our final pint of the trip was at a pub that felt straight out of Peaky Blinders. It’s called The Guildford Arms and I cannot recommend it enough. I can’t share all of the pictures from this pub, but we’ll just say we showed our ass at this spot.

So, wether it’s castles, scotch, Elvis costumes, spooky ghosts, graveyards, Harry Potter fantasy, tasty eats or fun pubs (some of which have a cows ass hanging out the side)…Edinburgh has something for everyone.

It got cut off a bit in the picture, but the name of that street is, “Cowgate”….