Edinburgh, the city that stole my heart in March. It left me so speechless that I'm still not sure how to start this post. Give me a second.

Okay, that didn't help. I still don't know how to introduce you to the awesomeness that is Edinburgh. I spent five days in the Scottish capital and I'm just going to say it: those were the best five days of 2017 so far. There is so much to see and so much to do that five days isn't really enough, but long enough to fall in love with the place. If you're going to Edinburgh, there are a few things you should do that have gotten Envy's Seal of Approval, which means you can't just not do them without damaging the awesomeness of your trip. Oh, and I also added all the stupid shit you shouldn't do, because when I was there I filled up the travel blogger fail quota for the year. Enjoy!


For all the lazy people out there: you will regret taking the bus everywhere. Yes, it's an option, but no, it's not the option you want to go for. You see, Edinburgh has all these little closes and staircases, hidden streets and bridges. Walk everywhere and you'll discover something new around every corner. Roaming the streets, looking for hidden stairs and closes was one of my favorite things to do there. One tip: ignore the stop lights, or you'll spend your entire trip waiting to cross the streets.

City of the Dead tours are not the cheapest thing to do. I spent 11 pounds on the tour to the vaults, but it was worth every penny. City of the Dead is the only organization that has access to the vaults and all I want to say it: Just do it! The vaults are haunted as hell. You'll hear things you can't explain. Footsteps where there shouldn't be any, thumping against the walls, singing... And the first person who comments on this post saying I was fooled by a loudspeaker is so getting banned from my blog.

When I was in the vaults, there was one man in his late twenties who thought it was funny to knock on doors to scare the shit out of people and make them believe it was a poltergeist. Like, seriously dude? First of all, you're not fooling anyone. Second, you're just pathetic.



So there are some cliffs in front of Arthur's Seat. They are not Arthur's Seat, no matter how bad you want them to be. This happened to me. I came completely unprepared, picked up an American guy at my hostel and together we decided to climb Arthur's Seat. It did not go as planned. That's another story for another blog post though. For now, let me just say that I didn't understand why there was nothing the mark the top of Arthur's Seat, completely unaware of the fact that I wasn't on Arthur's Seat at all.

It might not be the most original thing to do, visiting the Dungeon. After all, loads of major cities have their own Dungeon these days. But I met some awesome girls from Australia and England who wanted to go to the Edinburgh Dungeon and I happily tagged along. I don't want to give too much away, but I screamed my lungs out on the worst little boat ride of my life. I also officially received my witch's mark and I'm pretty proud of that, I must say.
One more thing: combine it with the free ghost tour. I did the free ghost tour the night before I went to the Dungeon and the scenes in the Dungeon made much more sense to me because I'd already heard some background stories.




To be honest, I've only scratched the surface of all the awesome things you can do in Edinburgh (and of all the things I managed to seriously screw up, but let's pretend I didn't say that). You could spend weeks discovering Edinburgh and the places around it. The list of do's and don'ts is virtually endless, but the most important ones of all are these two: