Day 2 – First Full Day

For us coffee snobs, we got a recommendation to go to Milk Man for coffee and pastries from a friend who is from Scotland. Spoiler alert – we went to Milk Man several times because it was so good! After some caffeine, we had tickets for Edinburgh Castle starting at 10am. Tickets were £43 total for self-paced, self-guided tours. We meandered throughout the various parts of the castle as it is much bigger on the inside than you would think. We spent about 2 hours here before we wanted to keep exploring the Royal Mile since Edinburgh Castle is at the beginning of it.

We walked to the Grassmarket area to get a great view of castle and chill out for a bit. We were craving fresh, healthy food so we stopped at Hula Juice Cafe ($59). After food we just kept strolling the Royal Mile, stopping at various shops that sparked our interest – we got more local art to take home with us. We eventually hiked it up Calton Hill for more panoramic views and take in the scenery. We took the bus to get closer to Dean’s Village, which is known for its stunning village and being along the Water of Leith.

I had bought tickets for Mary King’s Close later this evening for £24 per person. We ended up eating just around the corner from it at Gordon’s Trattoria for $88 (very overpriced for mediocre food that took forever to get). The Mary King’s Close tour is a more tame ghost-type tour with acting guides that give real historic facts and stories of Edinburgh hundreds of years ago, specifically during the plague. It was very interesting and I recommend do this or a ghost tour as you’ll get to go into some spooky places.

Day 3 – Second Full Day

There were no real plans for this day so we decided to get train tickets and go to Glasgow. We got train tickets the night before from Waverely station to Glasgow central station for $50 per person. The train was just over an hour long and scenic. We went to the Gallery of Modern Art for a free look at art and statues, followed by some shopping. Chris was wanting Thai food and we found one of our favorite restaurants of the trip called Rosa’s Thai. For only $56 we each got a great lunch.

From here we took the Glasgow Subway to get closer to the Botanic Gardens. We strolled through the gardens for an hour or two before making our way back to the train station to get back to Edinburgh. Once we got back to Edinburgh, we went to the Scotsman Lounge for live music and beer. We wanted to try Dishoom Indian food but the wait was over an hour – instead we went down the block and had Mexican food at Wahaca for $64.

We had tickets for the Johnnie Walker experience at 7:45pm and made our way there to get ready for our tour. We were iffy on whether we should do this tour but it was recommended by our friend that we HAD to do it. Neither of us are huge Scotch whiskey fans, but we were told that it would still be worth it. Upon the tour starting, you take a flavor quiz to see what your flavor profile is. Mine was “fresh” and Chris’ was “creamy”; you would use these profiles throughout the tour.

There was acting, lights, music, you name it! This experience had everything that we weren’t expecting. It is a 90 minute tour that includes a guide and 3 hand-crafted cocktails. For $81 total, this tour was definitely worth it! Afterwards, we got some gelato and found the bus to take us back to our Airbnb for the night.

Day 4 – Leaving for London

We got return tickets from Waverely Bridge station to the airport for £8.50 per person and made our way back. We got to the airport around 10:30am for our 12:55pm flight back to London-Heathrow for one more night of vacation.