Two Days in Edinburgh

It will be three years next month since I stepped into my current most favourite city in the world, Edinburgh. I fell in love with everything about this beautiful city filled with so many stories.

I do have many regrets about our trip, I have written in great detail about our trip on here and the one thing I learnt is that, as a parent, if you plan a holiday abroad or a staycation, always add an extra day. You never know how things may go or how your children might be.

Being organised was key, before heading off, I planned a full itinerary from what time to what time where we will be to even what restaurant we will have dinner. Unfortunately, we had to spend a couple of hours in the afternoon on Day 1 back at the hotel due to Miss A falling ill. As well as leaving the hotel at a much later time on our last day which meant we couldn’t do everything we had planned. 

However, as mentioned above, if we did have an extra day included then it would’ve been okay.

Nevertheless, I wanted to share my itinerary with you in case you might find it helpful! 

So here goes…

The location of our hotel was paramount, we stayed at the Premier Inn Royal Mile, it was right by the train station and the Royal Mile so everything was quite close by. 

During our time there we didn’t need to use public transport at all.

DAY ONE

9:15 aimed to leave the hotel by this time and reach Edinburgh Castle. It was around a twenty minute walk from the hotel,  it didn’t feel that long as there was lots of things to see and admire on the way.

9:40 spend two and half hours exploring Edinburgh Castle, (if you’re a English Heritage member you don’t have to wait in the long queues and can get tickets at a discounted price).

12:15 a ten minute walk away from the Castle, you can visit St Giles Cathedral, we spent half an hour here, entry is free but you are required to make some sort of donation if you wish to take pictures. After this, you can stop at the Cathedral’s cafe and have lunch!

13:10 Just five minutes from the Cathedral is the National Museum of Scotland which Miss A really enjoyed. We spent around two hours here, lots of history to enjoy and a dedicated area for children and kids based activities.

We headed back to the hotel after our visit, seeing Miss A getting unwell. But I’ll share what was originally planned and at what time.

15:45 Explore the iconic Royal Mile and give yourself at least an hour to do this. We ended up doing this the next day because of how Miss A was feeling but were only able to explore half of it.

16:50 Calton Hill – we did attempt this! But we failed halfway with a sleeping child in the pram and the rain pouring down on us.

18:00 This may seem early for some but it was the right time for us to head off for dinner as Miss A was hungry. 

We had dinner at Roti of Edinburgh which was lovely. Albeit Miss A, despite hungry, was asleep throughout our time there (unwell child problems of course) but got her meal packed with us which she ate later.

DAY TWO

I will share what was originally planned versus what we actually ended up doing.

Planned

8:30 Leave hotel and head off to Dean Village.

8:50 Explore Dean Village and aim to spend around 45 minutes here.

9:50 Edinburgh Zoo (I’m not a fan of zoos so I think even if we had the time we probably would’ve avoided anyways). Aim to spend two and a half hours here.

13:10 Royal Botanic Gardens – spend two hours.

15:30 Head back to the hotel to collect suitcase.

Spend some time at a cafe and then head off to Waverley Station for the train back.

What We Did

11:30 As Miss A ended up with a temperature at night we left the hotel at this time.

We then went off to explore the Royal Mile.

12:15 Royal Mile has many beautiful hidden closes and we ended up at Dunbar’s Close, I had seen it on youtube and was determined to see it. Such a peaceful beautiful place.

12:45 Headed back up the Royal Mile back to the same restaurant as the night before for lunch.

14:00 Ended up on Princes Street, the ’Oxford Street’ of Edinburgh, exploring shops and then of course Princes Street Gardens. We spent quite a while here as Miss A’s eyes landed on the kids play area.

15:30 Headed back to the hotel to collect the suitcase.

16:00 Waverley Mall – grabbed some sandwiches for dinner and went to the station for our train back to London.

HAVE YOU BEEN TO EDINBURGH?

For in depth detail of our trip don’t forget to check out my Edinburgh series:

Travelling with a Toddler

Queens and Castles

A Change of Heart