Out and about in Edinburgh
By Nick Curtis, Evening Standard
Last updated at 17:43 11 July 2003
Getting there
BA flights from all London airports take just over an hour, followed by a 20-minute taxi ride to the city centre. The train takes six hours, the overnight sleeper slightly longer. Driving - I did it once - takes almost a day.
Restaurants
The Witchery by the Castle (tel: 0131 225 5613). Historic dining rooms and an award-winning wine list for those who fancy the Gothic banqueting hall atmosphere. Dinner from around £30 a head.
Atrium/The Blue Bar Café, 10 Cambridge Street (tel: 0131 228 8882) - two trendy eateries adjoining the Traverse Theatre, very popular with the Festival crowd. Prices vary from cheap snacks to full à la carte.
New York Steam Packet, 31 Rose Street Lane North (tel: 0131 220 4825) - unassuming, unlicensed, but very friendly steakhouse.
Shops
Victoria Street, which winds from the George IV Bridge off the Royal Mile down to the lower level Cowgate, has a huge variety of antiques shops, a well-stocked antiquarian bookshop, a specialist cheese shop, and also the best luggage shop in the world, Mackenzie, 34 Victoria Street (tel: 0131 220 0089).
Princes Street features the usual suspects and the venerable Jenners department store (tel: 0131 225 2442). On parallel Rose Street there is a host of small shops, boutiques and restaurants.
Harvey Nichols (tel: 0131 524 8388) - including a restaurant called, ho ho, the Forth Floor - is on the east side of Saint Andrew Square. A Louis Vuitton store has recently opened.
Hotels and guesthouses
The Scotsman (tel: 0131 556 5565) - located in a prime position on North Bridge, this hotel occupies the former premises of The Scotsman newspaper. Voted the AA's best Scottish hotel for 2003. Rooms from £160 per night.
On Charlotte Square, The Roxburghe (tel: 0131 240 5500) offers many original features as well as up-to-date facilities including a swimming pool. Rooms from £99.
Right in the centre of town, just off Princes Street is Frederick House Hotel (tel: 0131 226 1999) which offers rooms from £100 a night for bed and breakfast.
What to do
The Castle on Castle Rock is a vast, imposing edifice containing numerous military and royal collections, not to mention the famous Stone of Scone. A cannon is fired from the battlements at 1pm every day except Sundays.
Further down the Royal Mile is St Giles Cathedral where John Knox preached his protestant sermons. At the other end of the Royal Mile from the Castle are the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the new Scottish Parliament building and the Our Dynamic Earth museum about the history of the planet.
Arthur's Seat, the hill to the south east of the city provides great views, or try Calton Hill, atop which sit the Nelson Monument and the National Monument, which was meant to be a replica of the Acropolis.
Along Princes Street are the National Gallery of Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy and the Scott Monument.
Celeb spotting
Edinburgh tends to be more famous for the people who left - Sean Connery, Shirley Manson from the band Garbage, Gail Porter - than for those who stayed. But JK Rowling still has a house in the city.
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