Edinburgh

Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, and also Scotland's second largest city after Glasgow. In addition to the large number of tourist attractions and stunning scenery (described below), Edinburgh is also marked out from all other UK cities by being one of the top entertainment destinations. From clubs to pubs, and cinemas to theatres, Edinburgh has everything anybody could ever want and more.

As Edinburgh is the centre of Scotland's tourist industry, it is a great place to stay for a few weeks in a hostel and use as a base to explore the rest of the country. Most of central Scotland and Glasgow can be reached by train or bus on a day trip, and the highlands are a comfortable weekend break away.

Climate and weather

Scotland has a reputation for being cold, windy and rainy. To a large extent this is fair. Edinburgh however is near the coast in the southeast of Scotland. This means that it doesn't get nearly as cold as the Highlands or even central Scotland, and is less rainy than Glasgow and the west of Scotland. To be fair though, it's still pretty grey and unpleasant for a lot of the winter. The summer is short and not opressively hot.

Landscape and scenery

Central Edinburgh has easily the most impressive scenery of any big city in Britain. The Castle Rock is an impressive cliff in its own right, even before somebody built a pretty castle on the top. At the other end of the centre Arthur's Seat and the crags are a huge green space which you can see from anywhere in town. Climb up Arthur's seat, and you will see the Firth of Forth just a couple of miles away and the hills of Fife just over the water. To the south the Pentland Hills are a large area of national parkland, easily accessible by a short bus ride, and perfect for spending the afternoon getting lost.

Arriving by Plane.

Edinburgh Airport is located around 12km from the town centre. A regular bus link runs to the centre throughout the day, and less regularly at night. Several budget routes run from Edinburgh airport: Easyjet run flights to London airports and Amsterdam. Ryanair fly to Dublin, Fly Globespan fly to various european destinations, and Sterling fly to Scandinavian destinations. Scheduled flights also run to a number of European destinations, and charter flights run around the world in season.

Other nearby airports are Newcastle (25 minutes metro to central Newcastle, then 1.5 hours by train. Around 20 pounds single), Glasgow (25 minutes to central Glasgow by bus, then 45 minutes by train. Total around 10 pounds single), or Glasgow Prestwick (2 hours by train. Around 10 pounds one-way, 50% discount may be available for ticket-holders).

Arriving By Train.

The main station in Ediburgh is Edinburgh Waverley. This is located at the east end of Princes Street, close to North Bridge. Haymarket Station is located at the other end of the city centre, and may be more convenient for some locations, although all trains which stop at Haymarket also go to Waverley. The following intercity trains arrive here:

• GNER trains run from London Kings Cross, York and Newcastle.
• Virgin Trains trains run from London Euston, Birmingham and Manchester.
• Other Virgin Trains trains run from stations in the south of England, Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle.
• First Scotrail trains run from Glasgow Queen Street, Inverness and Aberdeen. Local services also run from all over central Scotland.

Arriving By Coach.

Edinburgh Coach Station is located on St Andrews Square at the eastern end of George Street. This is about 2 minutes walk from Princes Street, and 5-10 minutes walk from the train station. Scottish Citylink run coaches from around Scotland to here - in particular there is a service to Glasgow (every 15 minutes, 1-1.5 hour) which is cheaper than the train and runs until midnight. Coaches from England are mostly run by Megabus and National Express.

Arriving By Ferry.

The nearest ferry port to Edinburgh is Rossyth, which has Superfast overnight ferries to Zeebrugge in Belgium. See the Superfast website for details of the bus service from central Edinburgh to the port. The only other reasonable port is Newcastle, from where DFDS sail to Amsterdam. See the Scotland page for details of ferries from northern Scotland to Scandinavia.

Getting around by public transport

Travelling by train.

Scotrail run a number of local train services to the surrounding area. These are the best way to get to slightly more distant places such as North Berwick and St Andrews (train to Leuchars and short bus ride to St Andrews). Full details of all their services are available on the National Rail website.

Travelling by bus.

The two main bus companies in the Edinburgh area are Lothian Buses and First Edinburgh.

Lothian Buses run a large number of regular routes within the city of Edinburgh. Their maximum fare is a pound (although the minimum is 80p), with all-day tickets available for 2.30. Services stop at around 11pm to midnight, but there is a more limited network of night buses running every hour or so through the night (flat fare of 2 pounds, all-day tickets not valid).

First Edinburgh run a few services purely within Edinburgh, but for the most part their buses go to more far flung destinations such as Falkirk. This means that the prices are more complex, though for journeys purely within Edinburgh the prices are much the same as Lothian Buses. They also offer a day ticket, but you are likely to find that there are fewer First buses than Lothian Buses running to your destination, so the Lothian ticket is usually a better bet. First Edinburgh also run night buses, although often only at weekends, and with services only at around 2 or 3 am.

Both companies have route maps and timetables on their websites. Alternatively the Traveline Scotland website offers a journey planner for the whole of Scotland.

Getting around by car

Central Edinburgh is a nightmare for drivers. There is very little overnight parking to be found, daytime parking is expensive, and the roads system has been designed to make driving around inconvenient. Get the bus. If you are going to hire a car to travel around the remainder of Scotland, wait until you are leaving Edinburgh and hire it then.

Internet

Easyinternet provides a reasonable quality internet cafe in the McDonalds at the west end of Princes Street. Other cafes are scattered around, mostly in the student areas - head south along the Bridges and look around you. Alternatively use the terminals in one of the public libraries - the central library is on George IV Bridge and should be able to point you in the direction of branch libraries around the area.

Newspapers

Metro publish an Edinburgh edition of their free paper, available on buses and everywhere else during the morning rush hour. The Scotsman is published in Edinburgh, and sister paper the Edinburgh Evening News specifically covers local news.

Hostels

Edinburgh is a top backpackers destination, and as such isn't short of places to stay. SYHA (the Scottish Hostelling International affiliate) have two slightly out-of-town hostels at Bruntsfield and Eglinton Crescent. They are also building a large new city-centre hostel which is due to open late in 2006. These are competitively priced if you are already a member, and you are more likely to get some sleep here than in the more party-oriented independent hostels. On the downside they are often less social, and have more rules to stick to.

MacBackpackers is the largest independent hostel group in Scotland, and they have a number of quite reasonable hostels in Edinburgh. St Christopher's run their Edinburgh hostel on Market Street, directly opposite the back entrance to the station. Another noteworthy independent hostel is the Caledonian Backpackers, which has a late bar for residents and hosts regular gigs by bands from all over Scotland.

Bed and breakfast

Thanks to the festival and the concentration of sports venues, Edinburgh has hundreds of small Bed and Breakfast establishments. Outside of the festival period (August and early September) you should generally have no trouble finding one with vacancies at a reasonable rates. Two good areas to look are Gilmore Place (about 1km from Princes Street) - just go up Lothian Road, taking the right fork at Tollcross and it is on the right at the King's Theatre, or at Murrayfield (about 2km from Princes Street) - carry on along Westbound from the end of Princes Street past Haymarket station, and they are mostly on the left side of the road. Most buses from Princes Street going through Corstophine will pass Murrayfield.

Hotels

Edinburgh has luxury hotels in spades - perfect for the constellation of stars that regularly visit... Well, actually there are five star hotels at either on Princes Street, a couple of good medium to high quality hotels along the Royal Mile and Grassmarket, and a fair number of basic chain hotels such as Best Western, Travellodge and Novotel on Lauriston Place. Unless you want a late bar, most travellers find a Bed and Breakfast just as good and somewhat cheaper.

Cinema

Of the large multiplex cinemas, the closest to central Edinburgh are the Odeon on Lothian Road in the west of the centre, and the Vue Cinema in the Omni Centre to the east. The Cineworld (formerly a UGC) at Fountain Park is about 1.5 km west of the centre, and offers cheaper entrance (particularly before noon) and a slighly wider range of international and independent cinema.

There are two independent cinemas near the centre of Edinburgh: the Cameo Cinema on Home Street is part of the Picturehouse Cinemas, and has cheap showings on a Wednesday. The Filmhouse Cinema on Lothian Road has a wide range of independent and world cinema. Daytime showings on a Friday are at a discount rate, and student rates are pretty cheap. Morningside, to the south of the city centre has the Cameo Cinema, although this is probably not worth the trip out of town.

Nightclubs

The club scene in Edinburgh is more cosmopolitan than is normal for the UK outside London. The usual range of student and cheesy venues are there - most of them are ranged along Lothian Road and just off it. There are also the flashier venues in the New Town, catering to people who want to get dressed up and pay 4 pounds for a drink. Beyond this are a number of smaller clubs catering to various alternative music tastes - indie, metal, techno etc. These are scattered around the Old Town along roads such as Cowgate, or are at venues on the edge of the town centre such as The Venue or Studio 24. Many nights are extremely cheap or free to get into midweek, which is perfect if you have no job to get up for in the morning, and the dress code in most venues is more or less non-existent, so as long as you can still stand when you go in you are likely to get very little hassle from door staff. All of the information websites listed in the gigs section below contain at least some information about club nights, and if you need any more ideas just sit around your hostel or find a pub like Bannermans and look at the flyers in there.

Live Music

There is a lively gig scene in Edinburgh, taking in bands of all kinds, from traditional pub rockers to bleeding edge indie and electro and bleeding ear metal. Some of the major venues include The Venue, Studio 24, Cabaret Voltaire, Bannermans and Subway Cowgate. If you just want to hear a random band, walk around the city centre for a while - around 20% of the pubs have live music on once or twice a week, and most don't charge for entry.

Edinburgh generally loses out to the larger Glasgow when it comes to large bands touring. There are probably 20 or so major gigs every year at the Corn Exchange or the Liquid Rooms. The festival in August is a good time of year to see major bands playing Edinburgh.

There are a range of websites providing information on gigs: Ents24 provide complete information about national tours, and patchier information about local bands, Edinburgh Metal Scene covers everything which could be regarded as metal, and Misfits Online covers everything indie (more coverage of club nights than gigs). Alternative Nation is more Glasgow-based, but provides some information about Edinburgh.

Ripping Records on South Bridge generally has the best range of tickets for gigs in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Tickets for major events are also available from the internet - see See Tickets and Ticketmaster Scotland amongst others. Pretty much all local gigs will also have tickets available on the door.

As a capital city and leading tourist destination, Edinburgh has a large number of well-planned tourist attractions. You will doubtless have seen adverts for the Edinburgh Dungeons and Dynamic Earth. You can hardly miss Edinburgh Castle, or the Camera Obscura, which is lit up at night to look exactly like a giant neon, well, put it this way - it's a big tower and it's pink. Tourist information offices can provide details of any of these. There are a couple of attractions which get a little less publicity however, such as the Museum of Childhood - an impressive collection of historic toys on the lower half of the Royal Mile which is free to enter. The Scott Monument is 3 pounds to get into, but you get an excellent view of Edinburgh from the top.

Art galleries

The largest galleries in Edinburgh are run by the National Galleries of Scotland. These include the National Gallery of Scotland and Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Neither of these have a collection to compete with the National Gallery in London, or with other national galleries. The modern art gallery collection also leans more towards the first half of the twentieth century than genuinely contemporary works. There are still some fairly interesting pieces however, and Scottish artists are covered better here than anywhere else in the world. Also, entrance is free, so it they are worth a look even if art isn't particularly your thing.

Parks

Edinburgh is full of parks. In particular three are close to the centre:

• Princes Street Gardens, which runs along the side of Princes Street, mixes laid out gardens with a large concert venue and plenty of grass for sunbathing (if only there was some sun).
• The Meadows is just to the south of the university. It is basically a large open area, great for cricket or football and not too bad for just sitting around.
• Holyrood park to the east of the city centre starts at the end of Holyrood House and the Scottish Parliament building, and takes in the whole of the Crags and Arthur's Seat. This is as close as you will get to countryside in the centre of a large city in Britain. Perfect for walkers who don't have the time, energy or bus fare to get out to the countryside proper.

Walking

Urban walks.

Edinburgh is a very sprawling city - the centre is divided in two by the large Princes Street Gardens, and also has large blocks of land given over to monuments and administrative buildings such as the Scottish Parliament. As a result you will likely either have to walk a fair way or take a bus to get anywhere. The whole of the city is also extremely hilly - with the old town divided over two levels with South Bridge passing over Cowgate at around the fifth floor level. The main sights of are along Princes Street and the Royal Mile, so if you want to plan a simple walk, get a map and make sure you take in these two roads. There is very little need to plan however - the whole of central Edinburgh is quite picturesque and covered in worthwhile sights, so you could just wonder around until you are bored or tired.

Slightly more adventurous are the walks alongside the canal, which runs from Fountainbridge in the west of the town centre for around 4 miles (before it is cut off by a large and rather unpleasant estate). Passing below the canal at Slateford is the Water of Leith, which runs along an extremely winding path past Haymarket and the Modern Art Gallery before ending up on the waterfront at Leith. There is a tarmaced path alongside this for almost the whole distance, with clearly marked signs directing you along the stretches where you need to take the road. Both of these options are better in spring than high summer, since there can be quite a lot of midges.

Countryside walking.

If you just want to walk in greenery for a couple of hours the easiest thing to do is go up Arthur's seat. This is an impressive and slightly challenging hill surrounded by parkland right in the town centre. Alternatively Blackford hill, which is around 3 miles south of the centre below Morningside is a reasonably sized park/nature reserve with a hill that is a comfortable climb and gives a good view over Edinburgh. The Royal Observatory is also located here. Finally, Corstophine Hill is about 3 miles west of the centre in Corstophine (half the buses heading west down Princes Street go through here - see the route diagrams at bus stops). This is a fairly large park area and hill with well-marked paths and facilities for sports like mountain-boarding.

If you want to do some serious walking near Edinburgh, head out to the Pentland Hills for the day. The easiest way to get there is to catch a Lothian bus to Penicuik and walk from there. There are various trails marked out around the hills, but it is quite easy to get an Ordance Survey map of the area (from most large bookshops) and just wonder around.