How To Spend Three Days in Edinburgh
The Friendliest City in the United Kingdom
Edinburgh Scotland, the city you didn’t know that you always wanted to visit, is a delightful place for experienced and novice travelers alike.
A city with visually stunning architecture, lively mood, plenty of walkable attractions, and hands down the friendliest people in the UK, Edinburgh will charm your socks off.
Where to stay in Edinburgh
Having no shortage of accommodations, you can find everything from hostels, vacation rentals, historical boutique hotels, and familiar hotel chains here.
However, something to understand about Edinburgh is that having a car should be avoided at all costs. The charm of this city (particularly Old Town) comes at a cost to drivers, and parking is relegated to the outskirts of the city, but this is also where you’ll find most of the chain hotels. Fortunately, while hilly, the old city is very walkable and if you plant yourself centrally to the train station, you’ll not need a car.
My Recommendation For Where To Stay in Edinburgh
Old Town is lively, quirky, and highly accessible. If you don’t mind a little noise from the surrounding nightlife, the charm of this neighborhood will win you over. However, sidewalks are scant and the roads, while being very pedestrian-friendly, are largely brick or cobblestone and will do a number on your roller bags.
We stayed in a charming Airbnb and were in easy walking distance to shops, the castle, the train station, and everything else we wanted to do.
Three Days of Activities
This was my second time visiting Edinburgh and three days was still not enough time to see everything this city has to offer. However, if you’re limited on time here’s what we did.
Day 1 - Arrival
*As a general rule, regardless of what time of day you arrive in a new city, the process of arrival and accommodation check-in is often a considerable effort.
We arrived in the early evening, just as many of the shops were starting to close down for the night, so we grabbed some fish and chips and then checked into our nearby Airbnb.
Day 2 - Exploration
Probably the busiest day during our time in Edinburgh, I had drafted a list with no less than twenty-five different places that I wanted to checkout depending on how much time and energy we wanted to invest in exploration. Ultimately we didn’t hit everything on the list, but what we did achieve was a list of things that make for a great itinerary to share with you all!
Edinburgh Castle - Arrive first thing in the morning to avoid the crowds, we arrived as soon as they opened and had a wonderful experience with some of the staff working there.
2. Find the Heart of Midlothian - Located beneath your feet on the Royal Mile is a heart with a dark past. A heart-shaped mosaic set among the road bricks outside of the West Door of St Giles High Kirk, the heart is all that remains of one of the United Kingdom’s most heinous prisons, the Old Tolbooth. Local tradition is to spit on it as you pass, and if you read about the history of that prison you’ll understand why.
The royal mile is the stretch of shops and restaurants between the castle and palace
3. Walk the Royal Mile - Packed with tourists, and loaded with shops more than happy to over-charge you for mostly low-quality merchandise. The royal mile is also great for people watching and listening to local musicians.
4. Visit Victoria Street - Just off of the Royal Mile is one of the most charming streets you’ll find anywhere, and is also one of the most photographed. Walk down this uniquely angled street (which inspired “Diagon” Alley in the Harry Potter series, more for the diagonal angle at which it sets than for the shops it offers). However, some of the best shops I visited in Edinburgh were either on or just off of this street, so a visit is a MUST.
*For Harry Potter fans, a store called the “Museum of Context” is located about halfway down the hill, and is a place you’ll want to visit.
5. Buy A Hat at Fabhatrix - Located at the bottom of Victoria Street is an intersection of Cowgate and Grassmarket, where more shops and eateries worth visiting are located. So too is the Fabhatrix shop, where you can purchase a variety of different styles of headwear made right there in the shop. My husband and I both purchased wool caps that we wore throughout the rest of our trip.
6. Visit Greyfriars Bobby - Just up the street from Fabhatrix is a rather famous little cemetery called Greyfriars Kirkyard. A legend told by locals, is of a Sky Terrier named “Bobby",” who’s owner died and was buried in the Kirkyard, continued to visit his masters grave every day for fourteen years until his death. Various versions of this story exist, but what is agreed on is the love that this community had for Bobby. A pub named “Greyfriars Bobby” is located just adjacent to the kirkyard, and a bronze statue of Bobby is located just out front. Folks rub Bobby’s nose for good luck. We ate a late lunch here and had a lovely experience.
7. Enjoy the Art Scene - There is no shortage of galleries and shops in the Old Town and Cowgate area, so take your time and check some of them out. A regret I have while in this part of town was not stopping at the “Elephant House,” which is a coffee shop in which JK Rowling wrote a large amount of the first Harry Potter books. The inspiration for elements of places and character names were taken from actual places around the coffee shop itself.
8. Eat a Deep Fried Mars Bar - It’s a favorite of the locals in Edinburgh specifically.
9. Take a stroll through the Princess Street Gardens and check out the monument to Sir. Walter Scott.
10. Music can be heard everywhere in Edinburgh, including traditional bagpipes! Follow your ear and go have a wee listen.
Day 3 - Take A Day Trip to St Andrews
With so little time in Edinburgh to begin with, I struggled with whether to take this side trip or not. Ultimately the opportunity to spend an afternoon in the romantic medieval town that had captured my heart ten years earlier won out. Just a short train ride with an easy bus transfer away, St Andrews is an easy place to spend a day. Home to the very first Golf Course, the University of St Andrews (where Prince William and Kate Middleton first met), seaside castle ruins, and shops that are largely catered to locals rather than tourists (we did a lot of shopping here), it's a great place to slow down and try some Sticky Toffee Pudding after a walk through the cathedral ruins.
Just getting started
On our final day in Edinburgh, we checked out of our Airbnb and made our way once again to the train station in Old Town, but this time it was to pick up our rental car. As I’ve mentioned, you don’t want to have to mess with a car while you’re staying here, but for better access to some of the more remote points of interest in Scotland, you’ll want to have wheels.
The rental car options are all located beneath the train station, and as previously mentioned, Edinburgh is very hilly and the data signal is spotty at best. We learned the hard way that depending on our iPhone GPS was a mistake because as my brave husband quickly learned while driving a manual (from the right side of the car) our map wasn’t working and we didn’t know how to navigate ourselves out of town. My recommendations are that if you’ve never driven on the right before, be sure to spring for the GPS package that comes from the rental agency… it was a very stressful hour of guessing our way out of Edinburgh while trying to learn to drive an unfamiliar car.
All things considered
Edinburgh was a delight for both my husband and mother-in-law and didn’t disappoint as a place for a second visit by myself. I would jump at the chance to return and see the large number of things that we didn’t have time to see during this trip. All in all, Edinburgh might be one of my top three favorite cities that I’ve spent time in while abroad, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.