Upon arrival at Edinburgh Airport, it gave us a rather familiar feeling - you see English everywhere. :) Ok, not exactly... the Scots speak with their own slang. Scottish sounded even more foreign than anything, there we were grateful to be able to use English.

Entrance was troubleless. The custom people asked us the standard questions, and we got ourselves Visa on arrival. A 30 minutes busride brought us to the city of Edinburgh, right next to the Waverly train station. At that point we actually did not really manage to orientate ourselves right... One thing i will surely remember - Jimmy Chung's Buffet :) We did not eat there, but that would be a good landmark i suppose. We went straight to the Castle Rock hostel with a lunch detour after getting some info at the Tourist Information counter. I would suggest you to actually print out a map yourself that guide you to your accomodation - Hostels should have city map too, and the queue at the Tourist Information seemed to be pretty long... not good if you are hungry and tired upon arrival.

The Royal Mile in Edinburgh is a long (read from Wikipedia, a Scottish mile long) street starting from the Edinburgh Castle all the way to the Holyrood Palace. It would be a must see and hard to miss attractions. Lots of shops and restaurants, plus hostels around the street. The other side of the river would have the modern version of this shopping street - the Princess street on the new town. A tip - if you will make quite some calls during your stay in UK, look for the Carphone warehouse on Princess Street opposite the tourist information. I got myself a 10GBP TalkMobile Pay As You Go (PAYG they call it) card and it offers rather good rate. I used it to call up local friends to arrange our meet-ups.

We only had around 1.5 days' time there, so we could only just visit some of the highlights. We did went up to the castle, and we wouuld recommend it too. The Museum of Scotland is also pretty good, and offers a nice view of the city at its roof terrace. If you want to have an overview of the city, perhaps Arthur's Seat would be a nice spot. Do take the right route up - we took the wrong one and went to another end of the mountain :)

the second day we onlly managed to visit the Museum of Scottland and the Edinburgh Castle. There are more things to see than the time we have. But i can say the two places are worth visiting. We managed to follow the castle guided tour, so it was nice to know the place better. Too bad we went over to the castle a little too late, so we only manage to see the crown room and spent sometime at the castle compound.

The highlight in Edinburgh for us, besides the tourist stuffs was the chance to meet old friends from Unimas. There are 4 of them in Edinburgh now and we have not met since 10 years! So it was really nice catching up, and we had a great time together. We even joked that we can start an Alumni chapter there :)

In Edinburgh you get to eat pretty much everything. But i think one thing you must try would be haggis. I will recommend you to skip the description and just try it :) To me it was tasty and kind of nutty, and i would try it again if i get the chance. We ate at the Last Drop, and it served us wonderful tasty food. It is located at Grassmarket and you will not miss it when you are there.

After the two nights, we left Edinburgh for a tour round Scotland with two nights in the Isle of Skye. It was a tour offered by MacBackpackers. It was a good choice since going on our own we won't be able to see that much, and the tour guide was perhaps the best we have ever met! The details of the tour will follow in the next part of the trip report :) til then... enjoy!