Our one day in Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the perfect place to start your journey in Scotland! We spent one day in Edinburgh, half a day when we arrived, and half a day before we left. Since we’d already been to Scotland, we felt ok with just the one day! I’m so happy to start sharing our trip to Scotland! It really was the trip of a lifetime. BONUS: we were 6 weeks pregnant when we started this trip! Only my mom knew haha. So some of our decisions were based on me not feeling too awesome but I stand behind all that we did in Scotland!

If you want to see our last trip to Edinburgh and what I think you should do with more time there, see this post where I merged our two trips!

Getting Into and Around Edinburgh

Landing in Edinburgh is so chill. It’s not crazy busy or a huge airport, another big plus for flying into Edinburgh! And getting into the city is super easy. No need to have (or want) a car in this city, just take the shuttle from the airport into town! It’s about a half an hour ride and it’s only like $5 to get into town. Plus we liked sitting up top and enjoying the views of the ancient city and seeing all the homes and bed and breakfasts on our way in!

Where to stay in Edinburgh

We like staying close to train and bus stations when we aren’t renting a car. We hate wasting time just getting to and from our hotel to explore so it’s always really important to us to make sure we have the best locations, especially if you only have one day in Edinburgh! We weren’t up to doing much the first night we landed because we got to our hotel around 7 pm and had been traveling for a full day! All I wanted was some food and a shower. So we started nice and fresh the next morning!

Ps, I always use the same travel sites when booking hotels. I start with hotels.com because I know that they have fair prices and when I book 10 nights, I get one free! If hotels are out of my price range for that night, I go to Airbnb, then VRBO. I like the reward system with hotels.com and with a long stay in Europe you’re bound to get a free night soon. I didn’t have to sign up for a credit card to get a free night so I’m all over that.

Our first night we stayed at the Rabble in Edinburgh. The food was awesome and it was a cute hotel. No hotel rooms in Europe are big from our experience. We try to keep in under $100 a night so we get kind of picky. But this one worked out so awesome for us.

My piece of advice would be to stay near Old Town because that’s where the train station is and where a lot of thinsg are located! But do your research on locations and bus stops to make the best decision for your trip.

Our second night in Edinburgh and final night in Scotland we really decided to treat ourselves. We went to Scotland in August so rooms were already more expensive. Edinburgh was the first city we had to book because I knew that it would be getting full with all the festivities going on. We knew this was our last big trip before becoming parents, and it was also our five year anniversary! So we stayed in Grassmarket at the Apex Hotel. It was better than I could have dreamed of with the most incredible views and easy walking to the Royal Military Tattoo which ended pretty late at night! Grassmarket is a really cool neighborhood, too! Lots of yummy food right outside our door and easy to get to Old Town.

Baguette and crepes right down the street from our hotel door! They were really good! Also, I was 7 weeks pregnant at this point and ALL I wanted was a bagel with cream cheese, and a little coffee shop delivered! It was so good!

One Day in Edinburgh

Our plan was to rent a car later one the first day and do some day trips outside of Edinburgh, so we wanted some time to go explore and walk around this awesome place!

Walk around the Princes Street Gardens

Shop and walk the Royal Mile

As it was August it was SO busy! So many people and tourists. We’d been to Scotland in March before and almost no one was out on the street. Scotland is so wonderful all year round, but it is so magical and green in the Summer! Plus lots of festivals going on in Edinburgh, so it was busy for good reason.

The street lit up after the Military tattoo!

See the Royal Military Tattoo

If you are planning a trip to Scotland in the summer, consider going in August! The Royal Military Tattoo was one of the highlights of our trip! All summer there are tattoos and highland games all over Scotland. We just really wanted to see the largest one! We used visitscotland.com to plan and see when all the festivities were! They have an awesome extensive calendar showing cities and games throughout all of Scotland and when they are. It was really useful to us. A tattoo is like a concert, imagine lots of bagpipes, drums, fireworks, and dancing! It was such a spectacle and we enjoyed every minute of it!

The Royal Military Tattoo celebrated a bunch of different cultures and countries military music and battles. So many costumes, it was really something to be seen.

I made a post where I merged our two trips to Edinburgh and what to do with more time there, if you want to see it, click here!

See more posts from Scotland, here!