If you’ve missed a couple of our posts, for our honeymoon we hopped on a plane over to Europe to eat and drink our way through some amazing cities. We flew into Dublin (post here), hopped on a plane over to Dingle (post here), took a bus to Cork where we caught our next flight to Edinburgh!
Edinburgh is in the southern part of Scotland. We caught a short flight from Cork, Ireland and arrived in Edinburgh early in the morning. Straight from the airport we took a cab to guess what… another cycling tour! I strongly encourage you to take city bike tours when possible, you get to see so much of the city in very little time! In our post on our stay in Dublin, we took a bike tour and it was awesome! If you are backpacking like we were, these companies always had a safe place to lock up our bags. From the airport, we got to the bike tour company a little early so we decided to venture around the neighborhood and find a good ol’ Scottish breakfast.
I am so glad that we loaded up on breakfast before our bike tour because unlike Dublin, Edinburgh is a city with A LOT OF HILLS. Some of those hills I had to hop off our bike and walk, but still totally worth it! Here is the bike tour company we used, Edinburgh Bike Tours. They took us ALL OVER the city. It was amazing, exhausting, and beautiful.
After our bike tour, we needed a shower and a place to check our bags, so we headed to our B&B. We checked into The Victorian Townhouse B&B where I finally got to meet Aileen, the owner. We had exchanged a few emails prior to our arrival, helping with some logistics and asking for some recommendations to make the most out of our short stay. She was so sweet, helped us find a place to drop off our laundry and made the most amazing breakfast. This was one of our favorite places we stayed during our whole trip, and we stayed in some 4-star hotels… This little B&B was so comfortable and clean.
When backpacking, we’d highly recommend using a laundry service when you’re running low on clothes. We didn’t want to spend 3 hours in a laundromat wasting time doing laundry when we were only in Edinburgh for 2 days. We paid about 30 Euro and had all our clothes cleaned and folded. Not only did the laundromat come and pick up our dirty laundry, they also delivered it when it was done back to our B&B where Aileen set it in our room for us. Totally worth every penny and was so simple on our end. We were out exploring the city while our undies and outfits were getting washed and were ready for us when we got back to our room. To give you an idea, we had already been traveling for a week and still had some clean clothes left, just pack smart and wear layers that can work with multiple outfits.
We walked everywhere in the vicinity of our B&B. We explored local restaurants, drank a couple bottles of good wine, explored castles and famous landmarks and took in all the beautiful architecture.
We only stayed in Edinburgh for a few days. I was also able to visit a couple yarn shops while we were in the city, one of the few things I brought back as a souvenir. If you’re backpacking, it’s a good idea to ship your souvenirs home. We shipped it to our parents’ house so we knew someone would be there to intercept the package when it arrived. That way it wasn’t lugging us down when we already had limited space.
After our short exploration through Edinburgh, we hopped on a plane over to Italy. Next stop, Milan. Milan was just the easiest direct flight to get to our next destination; Cinque Terre, Italy. Suscbribe for more travel trips and to read up on our next adventure, coming soon! Our favorite spot of the whole our trip, our days on the coast of Italy – can’t wait to write that blog post!
Have you traveled to Edinburgh? What were some of your must-visit places?
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