One fine day while on vacation in London, my friends and I suddenly decided to go for a random 2 day trip to Edinburgh. So we cancelled all our other plans for those days and quickly booked train tickets, an AirBnB, and a tour.
Sep 2016
Maybe this was meant to be because I had been to Edinburgh before, in 2016, and loved it but somehow never got around to blogging about it except for a write-up about my birthday dinner there.
It’s one of my most memorable birthdays ever because on that day, I lost my passport – I dropped it on the plane from Jersey channel islands – and only realized it once we got to the hotel. I called the airport lost and found to lodge it, told my friends Zenie and John – “There’s nothing more we can do, it’s lost! No use wasting our day over it, let’s proceed with our tour,” – and spent the next 2 days touring. We saw the royal mile, went into a couple of castles, saw the Elephant House where JK Rowling first sat down to write Harry Potter, and I had my first ever pumpkin spice latte.
I eventually found my passport the next day. I called the airport lost and found from outside The World’s End pub (I had gone by myself and drank a hot toddy) and they said they had my passport and I could pick it up from the airport. This was kinda annoying because they told me they would call me if they found it. Moral lesson – always follow up!
May 2023
But that was back in 2016! Let’s jump back to May 2023.
We boarded a train at the King’s Cross station where I got a chance to try the Reddit-famous Gregg’s sausage roll which I was curious about. It’s good!
After several hours, we were at Edinburgh, where we had a quick bite at the station (I had a yummy doner kebab). Then Chi, Punch and I headed to our AirBnb to stash our stuff while Joey and Gelle did a free walking tour of the royal mile, because this was their first trip to Edinburgh.
The 3-bedroom AirBnb we got is so spacious and pretty! It wasn’t located centrally – we had to take like a 30 minute bus ride, but it was fine. There was a funny moment when Punch and I could not figure out how to open the door and we were so sure Chi couldn’t, either, but then she did!
After dropping off our stuff, we headed to the royal mile to meet up with Joey and Gelle. We took some photos around the area.
Edinburgh was way colder than London and I had not packed anything appropriate for the weather there, so Chi lent me a “Russian dowager empress” hat and I ended up buying a thicker wool scarf from one of the shops there. My hat was giving “Princess Sarah” – the cartoon character from our childhood (hashtag 90s kids) so they asked me to pose like her. 🤣
We also had some funny behind the scenes videos which I turned into an Instagram reel.
We then looked for a restaurant afterwards but most of them were full or supposedly full even though there were lots of empty tables. Is it because we don’t look fancy enough or something? Don’t I look like freaking Princess Sarah?
Luckily we did manage to find a cafe that served decent food, including haggis, a popular Scottish dish. I had it with my order of a full English breakfast.
The next morning, we had a Scottish Highlands tour booked. To be continued!
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