The Royal Mile & Edinburgh Castle
A street where history is everywhere and even the statues have a sense of humor.
The Royal Mile is one of those streets where it feels like every few steps there’s another building with an amazing history. Stretching between Holyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle, it’s lined with centuries-old buildings, street musicians, whisky shops, cafés, and narrow alleyways (called closes).
We did a guided walking tour to get more of the history of this street and the gorgeous buildings along the way to the castle.
One thing that caught our attention was that many of the statues were wearing orange traffic cones on their heads. This is a clue into the the Scottish sense of humor, and one of Scotland's most beloved traditions. For decades, the Scottish people have been balancing traffic cones on statues after a late night of enjoying their favorite whisky as a tongue-in-cheek act of mischief. The city periodically removes them. The people politely put them right back. At this point, the cones are almost as famous as the statues themselves. We saw on social media that the Scotland fans at the World Cup in Boston got in on the fun there too.
As we wandered farther along the Royal Mile, unicorns started appearing everywhere, on buildings, carvings, flags, and especially near the castle. Scotland’s national animal isn’t the majestic stag or the Highland cow. It’s a unicorn.
This isn’t another example of the Scottish people’s sense of humor, the unicorn has represented Scotland for hundreds of years because it symbolizes purity, strength, independence, and the idea that a powerful creature can’t be tamed. And primarily because it was the only animal to defeat the lion in Greek mythology. Guess who’s national animal is the lion… that’s right, England.
Tucked away down one of those little closes I mentioned is the Writers' Museum. It’s such a gorgeous little building dedicated to Scotland’s literary giants: Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Walter Scott.
Also just off the Royal Mile is Victoria Street, which is one of the most photographed streets in Edinburgh. Its colorful storefronts curve down the hill beneath rows of old stone buildings, making it feel like something straight out of a storybook. Our guide told us that this is the street that inspired Diagon Alley in Harry Potter.
At the end of the Royal Mile sits Edinburgh Castle, dramatically perched atop an extinct volcano overlooking the city. It's been a royal residence, military fortress, prison, and the setting for centuries of Scottish history.
One of my favorite stories our guide told about the castle involved the Scottish author we have become so familiar with, Sir Walter Scott.
Scotland’s Crown Jewels were locked away after the union with England in the early 1700s; hidden so that England would not “acquire them” as they were wont to do with artifacts in countries they took over. The problem was that the folks who did the hiding never passed the knowledge on, and when they died so did the knowledge of where the Crown Jewels were hidden. In 1818, Sir Walter Scott had a hunch they were hidden somewhere at the castle. He led a commission that opened the sealed Crown Room, and behind a locked door sat the crown, scepter, and sword of state, exactly where they’d been left for more than a century. It’s hard to imagine discovering a room everyone thought might be empty and finding Scotland’s priceless royal treasures waiting inside. Not a bad day for a novelist.
After exploring the castle, we decided we'd earned a proper Scottish pub stop and headed to the Guilford Arms, a beautiful Victorian-era pub just a short walk away from our hotel. The first thing that caught our attention was the interior; full of ornate woodwork, stained glass, and old-world charm. We settled in with a pint of cask ale (cask cider for me), because when in Scotland…. There's something very satisfying about following in the footsteps of kings, queens, and famous writers and then doing exactly what generations of Scots have done afterward: finding a good pub.
For our final two nights in Edinburgh, we traded the Virgin Hotel for a little bit of old-world luxury and checked into The Balmoral. It’s a stunning hotel at the end of Princes Street, with its iconic clock tower, that felt like the perfect place to end our Scottish adventure, feeling like royalty ourselves.
