When it comes to literary history, few places can beat Edinburgh. From Robert Louis Stevenson’s morbid short story about grave robbers, “The Body Snatcher,” to Diagon Alley in Harry Potter, Edinburgh has been the gothic site of inspiration for writers through the decades.
In late November, a wintery haze closes in around the stone walls of the city and the bitter Scottish wind makes the atmosphere too harsh to venture outdoors. The sun is cold and weak, and it sets around 4pm. There never seems to be full daylight. The only people who can thrive in Edinburgh this time of year are people who are content to live like brooding, medieval vampires. Needless to say, there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be.
I’ve already spent a lot of time in Edinburgh and seen the main sites; but my friend Antonia came to visit from Belgium, and I had to find new adventures for us to have in the city of perpetual twilight. This called for a tour of Edinburgh’s food, nightlife, and odder tourist attractions.
Day 1:
We meet at the Castle Rock Hostel, which is located directly beneath the castle on the Royal Mile. At night, the window panes shutter with the winter wind, but the interior is warm and cozy. It looks like a medieval museum, with suits of armor on the staircase and chandeliers in every room.
First, we head to the Christmas market and get some loaded chilli fries and phad thai from the food stalls, surrounded by holiday lights. We sit on the steps of the National Gallery to eat before we begin our bar hopping adventure.
Our first location is Hoot the Redeemer, a carnival-themed speakeasy bar off of Princes Street. Then we hit up another speakeasy which looks like a vintage barber shop from the outside. It’s called Panda & Sons, and you have to be in-the-know to find it. The hostess leads us down some stairs to a fake bookshelf. She tells you to pull on it, and it swings open, revealing a spacious bar with the most delicious cocktails we’ve ever had in our lives. They are pricey, but definitely worth it. We sit at the bar and are mesmerized by the bartender’s skills as he gives us a little demonstration of the bar’s signature chilling method.
Now that we have a few cocktails in us to help us fight off the cold, it’s time for some music and dancing. We head back into Old Town and stop in The Frankenstein Bar for a late-night snack. Then we re-visit our favorite bar in Edinburgh, The Jazz Bar. It closes at 1am, so we cap off our night at the mildly-sleazy Bongo Club’s techno night.
By the end of our night, we’ve visited five bars across Edinburgh’s Old Town and New Town, had a few too many drinks, and made a couple of enemies along the way.
Day 2:
We’ve had a wild night, but we’re not about to let this train lose steam. We start our day off with a meat-heavy full Scottish breakfast, then we head to the Edinburgh Dungeon. This is a well-advertised tourist attraction located right beside Waverley Station. It is very touristy, so we’ve naturally avoided it thus far, but we end up enjoying ourselves anyways.
It’s an interactive show that re-creates episodes from Edinburgh’s morbid history. It covers the body snatchers who supplied Edinburgh’s anatomy school, the Black Death, and the story of Sawney Bean and his family of cannibalistic robbers who lived in a cave. The last one is a horrifying and probably true story. He really asked himself, why work for a living when you can rob and murder people? And why buy food from a store when you can cook and eat the people that you murder?
After surviving the Dungeon, we refuel with a coffee from The Milkman, then trek up Arthur’s Seat as the sun sets. As we approach the summit, we have to crouch close to the ground to avoid being blown off the side of the mountain like the idiots that we clearly are. After complete darkness descends, we visit Greyfriar’s kirkyard to enjoy the spooky, gothic atmosphere.
To end our day, we make an ill-advised visit to Ballie Ballerson, which is a very evil place where time has no meaning. One Pornstar Martini each somehow gets us completely wasted, and then we enter the ballpit full of drunk people fighting each other. It’s extremely slippery and disorienting, and for a terrifying few minutes, I thought we would be lost in there forever and drown beneath the balls.
We finally escape, and head up to the Royal Mile to look at the nocturnal view of the city and recover from our close brush with death. The castle is lit up for the holidays and broadcasts beams of light into the night. There’s a misty rain falling, but the alcohol in our bodies chases off the cold. No one else is around, and we are alone beneath the castle turrets.
The garrison sleeps in the citadel
With the ghosts and the ancient stones
High up on the parapet
A Scottish piper stands alone
And high on the wind
The highland drums begin to roll
And something from the past just comes
And stares into my soul
Mark Knopfler
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