The World's Nicest City

Queensferry Road intersects with Princes Street and it all begins.
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Sometimes, it almost seems unnatural for something to happen when you've been waiting for it for oh so long. But it does come round eventually, then suddenly its over and you don't know what to do with yourself.

Day 1: Arrival. We flew thru Honky Land which is really cool - the airport at least, the rest of it was darkness - the airport is like a museum and a shopping centre; together. Putting aside the old bomb of a plane we got out of Melbourne, the flight was great! (Cathay Pacific, if you're wondering) I like window seats, despite what everybody says about how good an aisle seat might be - there's no compromising the views you get on take offs and landings.

Definitely the most spectacular feature of Edinburgh is the castle sitting on the crags, a mile higher than anything else around.

Sir Walter Scot Monument.
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Heathrow airport is... *speechless* ...like a whole pile of tunnels in all kinds of directions (yes, that includes up and down). Some are freezing cold, some are boiling hot.... And there's no signs.... Some places are deserted, some are ridiculously busy.... Conclusion: It is the opposite of all opposites.

Oh, its very important to remember that if you are doing your own connection thru London, it's not likely that you will be able to fluke a seat unless you BOOK AHEAD - because that's what everyone else has done. Our flight was chokas. And if you do manage to find one with availability left on it, you might be looking at paying around 3 times as much for it...

Canon in Edinburgh castle.
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Princes Street is deceivingly long. It's also very busy - there are 100's of 1000's of double decker buses, driving around like little kids drive their toy cars - fast, crazy and invincible. But don't panic that was only my first impression.

This city is simply interesting. There's no vandalism, no birds that pick rubbish out of bins, no crazy government going round patching up every little thing that poses a hazard to the public's safety... Edinburgher's are treated as intelligent human beings. One of them even has the job of locking up the gardens for night. This stuff is unheard of over this side of the world.

Mons Meg - the biggest canon in history! It fired one of those things and it was found 6 miles away!
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Day 2: We started the day with purchasing a hop on-hop off Majestic Bus Tour. You can buy a ticket for all 4 routes for an extra few pounds, but we decided against it - just as well as I'm not the person to discover a city riding on buses all day. The Majestic route is the only one that takes you up to the Leith area, so we chose it for that reason.

It stops off at the Royal Britannia Yacht, and everyone gets out. We became sheep and followed them; we weren't actually interested in seeing the yacht.

Old entrance to Calton Hill Park.
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After just missing the next bus back and wasting more time, we left the shops nearby with not much more than a 2007 calendar... Hey, half an hour is a long time when your impatient to improve the quality of your day. The bus itself was very good, lots of commentary etc, it's just that I'm not a pro at using a hop on hop off service. But things did improve.

Definitely the most spectacular feature of Edinburgh is the castle sitting on the crags, a mile higher than anything else around. There - Edinburgh Castle in a sentence. And Edinburgh should also be proud to have the first castle I saw and stepped foot inside - Because, what can I say?  Its just a great castle to see for the first castle in your life. It took around 2 hours to leisurely stroll around it (or was it only because of the strong winds howling around every corner?).

View of Princes Street from Calton Hill
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The place is so huge - it would help if they gave you a map of it with your ticket so you don't miss anything. It really is an enormous place. Really. I'm sure its the biggest castle in Scotland. They're also pretty lenient about letting you take pictures of the inside of places, which is good, because not all castles are like that, I learned later.

Now, its only natural that when you leave the castle to stop off at the gift shop - restraining yourself to the best of your ability, then continuing down road, also known as the Royal Mile. It is a really nice quaint street (if you take out the tourists), with stacks of touristy shops and old buildings and food and drink places. Like Princes St, it's also very long. Didn't get to the end coz after standing up all day, your feet start to complain in a major kind of way, and the only way to get them to shut up is to rest for 8 hours.

Day 3: Dean Village is just like everything else here - awesome. The village is in a valley kind of area, right inside Edinburgh, and houses are scattered around in no kind of pattern or style, joined by streets of stone-paved roads. A river flows through the village and under a massive bridge, where at the top, cars are racing over and the city life of Edinburgh continues. We carried out our plan for today: walking. (That's really all you can do here.) Discovering the other end of Princess Street , Calton Park, is a different experience. Its nice up there though but, no toilets !! So we kinda had to hurry away quickly. The hills here are so powerful here; they are so much more interesting to hills that have trees on them. Three days in Edinburgh I found was enough to see all the big touristy places and do plenty of shopping and walking.  Still very satisfying, and a lot cheaper than visiting every building available.