A capital you can walk, on a hill you can climb
Destinations › Europe › Edinburgh
Edinburgh is two cities stacked on volcanic rock — a medieval Old Town spilling down the ridge from the Castle, and a Georgian New Town laid out in grids below it — with a genuine hill, Arthur's Seat, inside the city limits. The nonstop from Pearson runs only in summer, and summer here means the Fringe, which is either the entire reason you are coming or the precise reason to come in May instead.
Air Canada and WestJet both fly EDI–YYZ nonstop, but both are summer seasonal routes only, at around seven hours. Outside that window there is no nonstop from Pearson and you connect — Dublin is the easiest and often cheapest one-stop, otherwise Heathrow or Amsterdam. You arrive at Edinburgh Airport (EDI), and there are two properly named links from directly outside the terminal. Edinburgh Trams run from the Edinburgh Airport stop; the line normally runs the full length of the city to Newhaven, though at the time of writing it is operating part-route only. Lothian Buses' Airlink 100 is the express coach into the centre. Lothian services 17 and 18 are the slower local alternatives at ordinary city bus fare.
Lothian Buses and Edinburgh Trams share one contactless system called TapTapCap, which also covers Airlink and East Coast Buses and Lothian Country: tap the same card or phone for everything and the cheapest applicable daily or weekly cap is worked out for you, with the weekly cap running on a Monday-to-Sunday cycle. That removes most reasons to buy a day ticket, but the two modes validate differently. On Lothian buses you tap on when you board and that is it — no tap off. On Edinburgh Trams you must tap on AND tap off at the Platform Validator rather than on board, because every tram ticket has to be bought, validated or activated before you board. Trams also run two fare zones, City Zone and Airport Zone. Board a tram without a valid ticket and a Ticketing Services Assistant charges you the on-board fare. For day trips, ScotRail runs from Waverley in the centre and Haymarket in the west end.
Book online for a dated ticket before you travel. Historic Environment Scotland is explicit that once the online allocation sells out there is nothing available at the gate, and summer sells out far ahead. The standard ticket is tied to your chosen date rather than a timed slot; a separate flexi ticket buys one entry on any day within a window that begins on that date.
Free, and a real ascent rather than a viewpoint — you start at the foot of the Royal Mile and finish on a summit above the city. Wear proper shoes; the volcanic rock is slick after rain, which is most of the time.
Free entry, genuinely world-class, and the roof terrace gives you a Castle-and-Old-Town view people pay for elsewhere. The Scottish National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery and Modern One and Two are free as well.
The city's best eating is down here rather than on the Royal Mile. Normally a straight tram ride from the centre, but the line is currently running part-route, so confirm the tram is reaching Leith before you count on it.
Suits first-timers who want the castle out the window and everything within a ten minute walk, and who like a city that looks like a film set. Does not suit light sleepers, anyone wheeling a suitcase, or anyone with dodgy knees or hips, because almost every route in or out is uphill, cobbled, or up a stepped close. In August it is effectively unbookable unless you sorted it months ago.
Suits anyone travelling with parents. It is the Georgian grid, so it is flat, the paving is even, it is directly on the tram line, and it has the best shopping and the calmest evenings. Does not suit bargain hunters, and it can feel a bit corporate and empty after the offices close compared with the noise across the valley.
Suits people who want to feel like they live there: a village in the Water of Leith valley, a Sunday market, walks to the Royal Botanic Garden and the modern art galleries, and small independent everything. Does not suit anyone who underestimates that it sits below the New Town, so every night ends with a climb back up, and it is off the tram line, so you are on Lothian buses.
Suits eaters and drinkers, and anyone who wants better value and a waterfront. The tram line runs from here right through to the airport, which makes arrival and departure trivial when the full line is running. Does not suit a short castle-focused trip, because with the walk at each end it is realistically half an hour door to door from the Old Town and you will spend a two-day visit commuting.
Sheep offal with oatmeal, pepper and spice, served with mashed turnip and potato, and considerably better than the description. Pub kitchens all over the Old Town and up through Bruntsfield do a proper one. Vegetarian haggis is completely standard here, not a grudging substitution, and is on most of the same menus.
Edinburgh's own chip shop condiment and a genuine local marker: a thin, dark, vinegary brown sauce, not malt vinegar. The counter will ask 'salt and sauce?' and the correct answer is yes. Find it in the chippies on Leith Walk, Bruntsfield Place and Nicolson Street rather than anywhere on the Royal Mile.
Cullen skink is smoked haddock, potato and onion in a thick soup, named for the town of Cullen on the Moray Firth coast. Beyond it, langoustines, oysters and hand-dived scallops are the things Scotland actually does world-class. The Shore in Leith and the harbour at Newhaven, which is the far end of the tram line, are where to look for both.
A full Scottish breakfast adds a tattie scone, a flat square lorne sausage and black pudding to the usual, and the tattie scone is the one worth ordering twice. For grazing, Edinburgh Farmers' Market sets up on Castle Terrace directly under the castle rock on Saturdays, and Stockbridge Market runs on Saunders Street on Sundays.
Book a timed slot and take the first one. The way in is a steep curved cobbled route of roughly 350 metres up to Crown Square, averaging five degrees but hitting fifteen at its steepest, on cobbles that are uneven in places. If anyone in your group needs it, ask staff at the entrance about the mobility vehicle that runs up to Crown Square; it carries a wheelchair user plus companions, it must be requested in person rather than booked online, it is subject to availability, and it pauses around the firing of the One o'Clock Gun.
This is the single most useful piece of Edinburgh advice: do the Mile downhill, castle to Holyrood, never the reverse. It is about a mile of continuous gentle descent. Duck into St Giles' Cathedral and one or two of the closes, then detour two minutes off the Mile to the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street, which is free and one of the best museums in Britain.
Drop off George IV Bridge down the curving West Bow into Victoria Street and on into the Grassmarket, which sits in the hollow below the castle rock. Shortest possible walk, biggest possible change of scenery.
Continue to the bottom of the Mile for the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the Scottish Parliament, which is free to enter. Then choose your hill honestly: Calton Hill is a ten minute climb for the postcard view of the whole city, Arthur's Seat is a proper hour-plus hill walk on rough ground.
From Holyrood, the natural route back is up and over Calton Hill, which drops you at the top of Leith Street beside St Andrew Square. From there walk the flat length of George Street, or take Edinburgh Trams one stop west. Princes Street Gardens sits in the drained valley between the two towns and is the easiest sit-down in the city centre.
Ride Edinburgh Trams north-east to Foot of the Walk, The Shore, Ocean Terminal or Newhaven for dinner on the water. Tap the platform validator before boarding and again after you get off, both ends, or the system cannot apply your daily cap and you pay more than you needed to. It is a single line, so check the live status before you commit an evening to it, and note the same line runs the other way to the airport, which makes this a dry run for your departure.
The best low-effort seaside day from the city: a direct ScotRail service from Edinburgh Waverley, roughly half an hour, about hourly. You get two beaches, the conical hill of North Berwick Law to climb, the Scottish Seabird Centre, and Tantallon Castle on the cliffs a short hop further out. It is a real town, not a resort, so it works in shoulder season too.
Direct ScotRail from Waverley or Haymarket, under the hour, running frequently. A castle on a volcanic crag with arguably better views than Edinburgh's, the Wallace Monument across the valley, and an old town with a fraction of the crowds. From the same station, ScotRail to Glasgow Queen Street is a similar run if you would rather have a second city than a castle.
Lothian Bus 37, boarded on Princes Street on the shop side or at North Bridge, and roughly forty-five minutes to an hour out. This matters: the 37 has more than one southern terminus, so the front of the bus must show Penicuik or Deanburn via Roslin, and if in doubt ask the driver. The chapel interior is carved to an obsessive degree and rewards a slow look, and Roslin Glen below it is a good short woodland walk.
Be honest with yourself before you book: Edinburgh is physically hard work, and harder than most people expect from photographs. The Old Town is built along the spine of a ridge, so the Royal Mile falls steadily from the castle to Holyrood and everything on either side drops away sharply. Victoria Street, the Mound and the closes off the Mile involve real gradients and, in many cases, flights of steps with no alternative route. The surface is setts, square granite blocks, not smooth paving, and they are genuinely bad for stroller wheels, wheeled suitcases, walking sticks and anyone unsteady in the wet, which is often. Waverley station sits down in the valley, so you arrive below the city and have to come up out of it by ramp or lift. Edinburgh Castle's own entrance is that roughly 350 metre cobbled route, averaging five degrees and reaching fifteen at its steepest, though the mobility vehicle up to Crown Square is a real and underused option if you ask staff at the entrance, subject to availability. What actually works: walk downhill only. Start at the castle and finish at Holyrood, never plan the reverse with parents in tow. Base yourself in the New Town, which is flat and evenly paved, and treat every hill as a bus problem rather than a pride problem. Lothian buses are low-floor with ramps and the trams are level-boarding and step-free, so use them. The free national collections, the National Museum of Scotland and the Scottish National Gallery, are excellent rain cover for kids and cost nothing. And be deliberate about August: the Fringe runs 7 to 31 August 2026, the city fills far beyond its normal size, and the stretch of the Royal Mile between George IV Bridge and North and South Bridge becomes a standing crush of street performers and flyer-handers. That is a bad place to be with a pushchair, a nervous child or a parent who does not move quickly.
Scotland uses the UK pound sterling and is not on the euro. Three Scottish banks, Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland and Clydesdale Bank, issue their own banknotes, which circulate completely normally in Scotland. They are usually accepted in England but are occasionally refused by small independent shops and by ticket and vending machines, so spend Scottish notes before you head south. If a card terminal offers to charge you in Canadian dollars, decline and pay in pounds; that is dynamic currency conversion and it always costs you more than your own bank's rate.
Contactless is accepted essentially everywhere, including on transport. Lothian Buses runs TapTapCap: just tap your contactless card or phone when you board, every time, and the system works out the cheapest adult daily or weekly fare for you, with no need to tell the driver where you are going. If you pay cash on a Lothian bus it is exact fare only and you will not get change. On Edinburgh Trams the rule is different and catches people out: you must tap the validator on the platform before you board and tap off again after you get off, or the capping cannot be applied.
Edinburgh charges a visitor levy on paid overnight stays and it is now in force. It applies to hotels, B&Bs, hostels, serviced apartments and campsites within the City of Edinburgh, is capped at the first five consecutive nights of a stay, and is added to your accommodation bill. Expect it as a line item you may not have seen at the time of booking, and check the rate and any exemptions directly on edinburgh.gov.uk.
Type G three-pin plugs on 230 volts at 50 hertz, the same as Ireland and the rest of the UK, and different from both the Canadian two-pin and the round-pin europlug used across most of the continent. If you are combining Scotland with France or Spain you need two different adapters. Chargers for phones and laptops handle 230 volts; a 120-volt Canadian hair dryer or curling iron does not.
Edinburgh's tap water is soft, safe and pleasant, so refill rather than buying bottles. One local quirk worth knowing: drink from the cold kitchen tap rather than the bathroom tap in older tenement buildings, where the bathroom supply may still come from a roof storage tank. English is universal. A strong Scots accent and local vocabulary are not a language barrier, and asking someone to say it again is completely unremarkable here.
Tipping is voluntary. Around ten percent in a table-service restaurant if no service charge is already printed on the bill, and nothing at all when you order and collect at a bar. Edinburgh is a low-crime city, so the actual risk to your wallet is commercial rather than criminal: Royal Mile clan-and-tartan shops selling mass-produced imported goods as heritage, 'find your family tartan' upsells, and roving performers who demand payment after you have photographed them. During the Fringe, buy show tickets only from the official Fringe box office or the venue itself, never from resale sites or people selling on the street.
August is the whole question. The Fringe, the International Festival and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo overlap across the month — the population effectively balloons, accommodation is booked a year out, and moving through the Old Town becomes a contact sport. If the Fringe is why you are coming, come in August and accept the trade. If Edinburgh is why you are coming, come in May, June, September or early October: the same long northern daylight in early summer, a fraction of the crowd. Hogmanay at New Year is ticketed and sells out. Midwinter days are genuinely short this far north, which matters if you are planning outdoor time. Leith handles cruise calls, and ship days tend to add coach groups at the Castle and on the Royal Mile rather than swamping the town.
Compare the ways to get there, then build a day-by-day plan.
Air Canada and WestJet both fly EDI–YYZ nonstop, but both are summer seasonal routes only, at around seven hours. Outside that window there is no nonstop from Pearson and you connect — Dublin is the easiest and often cheapest one-stop, otherwise Heathrow or Amsterdam. You arrive at Edinburgh Airport (EDI), and there are two properly named links from directly outside the terminal. Edinburgh Trams run from the Edinburgh Airport stop; the line normally runs the full length of the city to Newhaven, though at the time of writing it is operating part-route only. Lothian Buses' Airlink 100 is the express coach into the centre. Lothian services 17 and 18 are the slower local alternatives at ordinary city bus fare.
Lothian Buses and Edinburgh Trams share one contactless system called TapTapCap, which also covers Airlink and East Coast Buses and Lothian Country: tap the same card or phone for everything and the cheapest applicable daily or weekly cap is worked out for you, with the weekly cap running on a Monday-to-Sunday cycle. That removes most reasons to buy a day ticket, but the two modes validate differently. On Lothian buses you tap on when you board and that is it — no tap off. On Edinburgh Trams you must tap on AND tap off at the Platform Validator rather than on board, because every tram ticket has to be bought, validated or activated before you board. Trams also run two fare zones, City Zone and Airport Zone. Board a tram without a valid ticket and a Ticketing Services Assistant charges you the on-board fare. For day trips, ScotRail runs from Waverley in the centre and Haymarket in the west end.
August is the whole question. The Fringe, the International Festival and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo overlap across the month — the population effectively balloons, accommodation is booked a year out, and moving through the Old Town becomes a contact sport. If the Fringe is why you are coming, come in August and accept the trade. If Edinburgh is why you are coming, come in May, June, September or early October: the same long northern daylight in early summer, a fraction of the crowd. Hogmanay at New Year is ticketed and sells out. Midwinter days are genuinely short this far north, which matters if you are planning outdoor time. Leith handles cruise calls, and ship days tend to add coach groups at the Castle and on the Royal Mile rather than swamping the town.