When planning our visit to Glasgow, we decided to include a day trip to Edinburgh as well, since it's a short train ride from there. We booked the train tickets online, in advance via ScotRail, and collected them from the ticket machine at the train station on the day of our trip.

The train ride was pleasant and we arrived in Edinburgh about 45 minutes later, being on the Fast train. Speaking of trains - I absolutely recommend traveling by train as much as you can in the UK -- it's so much better and you don't want to miss the landscape.

The train station in Edinburgh is somewhat below the Edinburgh castle and as soon as we approached it, I could not stop staring at that beauty. I understood immediately why Edinburgh is so popular for tourists; literally, every corner of that city is beautiful, full of old, historic architecture. I couldn't stop myself from constantly taking photos.

We did little to no planning when it came to sightseeing, so once we left the train station, we continued walking up the street. The weather was dark, dreary, and COLD.

Generally, I don't have the patience to plan every single place we would be visiting, I prefer to discover them by walking. Of course, this leads to us missing, but it also helps with finding many maybe less popular things we'd never know about otherwise. This was the case in Edinburgh. We walked without an idea where we were, but we knew where we were headed - Calton Hill. Note that my phone registered 29,307 steps / 13.7 miles for our day in Edinburgh.

Turning on some random street to avoid construction (oh, yes, that we saw plenty of), we eventually ended up near Holyrood Park, a green delight, great for hiking. We took another turn and found the Palace of Holyrood. It was closed to the public that day due to some official visiting, so we snapped some photos of it quickly, and set on our way.

We climbed the hill towards New Calton Burying Ground, with panoramic views of the city. I again was mesmerized by the old graves, covered by ivy. This cemetery has a dark history behind it. It was opened in 1820, accompanied by a watchtower, to guard against grave robbers, knows as "resurrectionists".

The story goes like this… In the 1800s, Edinburgh was the world-leading city in the studies of anatomy. Until 1832, the only bodies legally available were those of the executed criminal, merely 55 bodies a year. Medical schools needed more and were paying good money for them. Grave robbers were watching the cemeteries for new burials, and at night proceeded to dig up the bodies to sell them for anatomical dissection. After several trials and failures to protect the graves (extra-deep graves, cages, etc), watchtowers have been built, with guards watching over the graves (that must have been a very fun job).

After a few minutes there, we kept walking to find Burns Monument and the New Parliament House, which looked abandoned. After some good minutes, we finally arrived at THE Calton Hill, which houses several incredible monuments and is one of the most popular places in Edinburgh. It also offers some spectacular panoramic views of the city.

It might not look so from the pictures, but the hill was crowded. We didn't spend as much time here as we would have liked, because of some obnoxious people that were literally breathing in our faces; I guess personal space is too much to ask for from some people...

In spite of the crowds, Calton Hill is a must-visit. Particularly striking to us was the Nelson Monument and the National Monument of Scotland that has nothing Scottish about it.

Once we left Calton Hill, we swiftly visited the Old Calton Burial Ground before we went on with our route and stumbled upon an oasis. About that, I will speak in a future post - stay tuned.


Until next time.
xoxo,
Em

Our Edinburgh trip continues here.