In which I forget which one’s Arthur’s Seat, spend a lot of money on tea and fall in love with a beautiful city.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Edinburgh: a city I have been dying to visit ever since coming to York. It’s only two and a half hours by train, and after a 5.30 am start and a long snooze on the train, we had arrived on a beautiful day in an even more beautiful city.

Having planned to immediately make the most of our morning energy and climb Arthur’s Seat, we embarked up what we assumed was the infamous dormant volcano for panoramic views of the city. Unfortunately, we’d been a bit hasty with our trekking and had accidentally began ascending the thing next to Arthur’s Seat, which was not, in fact, Arthur’s Seat. By the time we realised this, however, we were already halfway up and decided that we would still get great views from the top of the thing we were climbing. I like to call it mini-Arthur’s seat. Thankfully, the view was great and we had saved enough energy to get back down and make our way through the city centre in search of a specialist tea shop we had heard word of.

Eteaket is an Edinburgh based leaf tea expert shop and with several pages of all kinds of teas to choose from, we were spoilt for choice. After a pot of Scottish Breakfast tea and a few tea purchases later, we were ready to make our way up another of Edinburgh’s hills up to Edinburgh Castle. It was really expensive to get in, so we satisfied ourselves with some more great views and hearing the one o’clock cannon fire before heading back to the city centre for an afternoon of meandering through Edinburgh’s three main high streets and various tartan shops.

Just before getting our train back, we were fortunate enough to see a beautiful sunset and to get high enough to take several beautiful photos of the sun behind Edinburgh Castle. I’m so happy with how they’ve all turned out. Sun spots on photographs are a bit of a guilty pleasure for me and I’ve managed to add a few great ones to my collection.

All in all, it was a wonderful day with just the right mixture of sightseeing, shopping, food and photography. Edinburgh is a truly gorgeous city and I would love to come back one day to discover some more of the less touristy places. Are there any places you would recommend for next time?

The purchases of a tea addict