A Long Weekend in Edinburgh: A Local's Walking Guide to the City

Edinburgh is one of the most walkable cities in Britain, and I mean that in a specific way rather than as a generic compliment. You can genuinely walk almost anywhere in it, if you are prepared to. From the Meadows to the foot of Leith is roughly an hour on foot, and that distance is entirely doable if the mood takes you. The real question is not whether you can walk it. It is whether what you are looking for is somewhere along the way.

That question is the whole point of this guide. Edinburgh does not reveal itself from a bus window or a tour itinerary. It reveals itself to people who are willing to walk, get slightly lost, and stumble onto something they were not looking for. Just come dressed for the weather. It is unpredictable in every season, and nothing ruins a good walk faster than being caught out by it.

Here is what I would do during a long weekend in Edinburgh, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

Old Town

The Old Town is where most people's Edinburgh begins, and for good reason. Walking up toward the castle and looking back over the city from that height is genuinely worth doing. What I would not recommend is the castle tour itself. It does not add much to the experience relative to the time it takes, and your weekend is better spent elsewhere in this part of the city, where there is considerably more to discover than the inside of the castle walls.

Walking down the Royal Mile and finding your way into the closes, the narrow medieval alleyways that branch off it in both directions, is one of the more genuinely exciting things you can do in the Old Town. Most people walk straight down the middle of the Mile and miss them entirely. Holyrood Palace at the bottom is worth the visit too, and gives you a proper dose of royal history alongside everything else the Old Town throws at you.

Bristo Square, Greyfriars Kirkyard, and the Meadows are where you feel Edinburgh's student life most directly, a completely different energy to the tourist-heavy stretch of the Royal Mile above it. And Victoria Street, the Grassmarket, and Cowgate come properly alive at night, when the cobbled streets and the tucked-away basement doors start to make sense.

Some of the best discoveries in the Old Town are the ones you have to actually look for. Sköll and Hati, a Norse mythology-themed bar hidden in a basement on Merchant Street, is one of the most inventive new openings the city has produced in years, shifting from one concept to an entirely different one at 5pm each day. The World's Smallest Pub is exactly what it says it is, and worth ducking into simply to say you have. And for food, Solti on Drummond Street has built one of the most devoted followings of any restaurant in the city, Nepalese and Indian cooking that consistently exceeds what the format suggests.

New Town

The New Town is where the shopping and eating tends to happen, and Princes Street is the obvious anchor. The Johnnie Walker experience is worth a visit for the rooftop alone, and I genuinely rave about the rooftop cafe there. The views across the city from that height are extraordinary. Uniqlo is, somewhat unglamorously, my personal favourite place to shop in the entire city, and worth knowing about if you need to restock anything for the unpredictable weather I mentioned earlier.

For cocktails, the New Town holds some of the best bars in the entire country. Panda and Sons on Queen Street has recently been ranked as one of the best bars on the planet. Bramble, one of the longest-running and most respected cocktail bars in Edinburgh, sits nearby. Lucky Liquor Co rotates its entire menu every thirteen weeks, which rewards repeat visits in a way most bars do not.

For food, Baba on George Street brings Levantine mezze and a serious cocktail programme to the heart of the New Town. Top Cut is worth knowing for a proper steak. And the Mussel Inn is one of the smaller, more understated venues in this part of the city, doing exactly what its name suggests with real consistency.

Dean Village and the Water of Leith

Dean Village is always worth the walk, in rain or in sunshine. Grab a coffee, find a spot along the water, and let yourself sink into a version of Edinburgh that feels genuinely apart from the rest of the city despite being minutes from the centre. Walking alongside the Water of Leith itself is one of the most underrated things this city offers, a long, quiet, green corridor that most visitors never discover because it does not sit on any obvious tourist route.

Wherever you stop along that walk, you will find good hospitality. In Stockbridge specifically, Skua is one of the most interesting small restaurants in Edinburgh, a tiny basement operation with Michelin Guide recognition and a kitchen that produces genuinely inventive cooking from a remarkably small space. The Last Word, from the team behind Bramble, is one of the coziest cocktail bars in the city, hidden below street level on St Stephen Street with paraffin lamps, taxidermy, and a genuinely excellent drinks list.

Further along, toward the Shore, you will find Barry Fish, the Keelson, and Nauticus, three very different venues that together capture what has made Leith's food and drink scene one of the most talked-about in the country over the past few years.

Key destinations for a long weekend in Edinburgh

Broughton Street, where we are hidden, has one of the most interesting food offerings in the city relative to its size. Alongside Nectar, you will find Bistro Coco, Lucky Yu, and Vinette, three genuinely different concepts sitting within a few minutes' walk of each other on a street that most guidebooks still underrepresent relative to what is actually here.

And Calton Hill, at the east end of Princes Street, gives you the single best view of the city if you do not feel like the longer walk up Arthur's Seat. The unfinished National Monument at the top, Edinburgh's own incomplete Parthenon, gives the hilltop a strange, slightly melancholic beauty that stays with you long after you leave.

How to actually use this guide

A long weekend is not long enough to properly do all of this, and that is fine. The point is not to complete the list. It is to pick a neighbourhood each day, walk it properly rather than rushing through it, and let the city show you what it wants to show you rather than forcing an itinerary onto it.

If you end up on Broughton Street at the end of a day of walking, come find us. Book a table at Nectar Bar and tell us where you have already been. We will probably have a recommendation for where you should go next.

Opening hours Tuesday to Thursday: 5pm to 11pm Friday: 5pm to 1am Saturday: 12pm to 1am Sunday: 12pm to 11pm Monday: Closed