Edinburgh, Day 2, Part 1 (4/14/26)

Jay had just three things on his "must do" list for Edinburgh. 1) Sunrise at Calton Hill, 2) Sunset from Arthur's Seat, and 3) Afternoon Tea.

We thought it would be appropriate to do both the sunrise and sunset hikes on the same day, so our day started before sunrise. Calton Hill was just a few minutes' walk from our ApartHotel, and we set off bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I'd checked the route on Google Maps and there was a 'stairs' notice on the route. We didn't think anything about it, because there are so many stairs in Edinburgh that we thought it was kind of a silly notice.

Oh man, we should have paid attention.

"Jacob's Ladder" stairs

Just like Fleshmarket close reminded us of the stairs in Bellagio, these stairs reminded us of the stairs from Positano to Nocelle, Italy to get to Path of the Gods (Sentiero degli Dei). I don't know if it was doing it on fatigued legs, or the fact that we couldn't see the end of the stairs, or something else. Luckily, there are only 144 stairs in Jacob's Ladder, compared to the 1,500+ stairs to Path of the Gods. Either way, it was a small mental hurdle to get up these stupid stairs.

The good thing was that the trailhead (if you could call it that) was less than a block from the end of the stairs and before we knew it, we were at the top of Calton Hill with plenty of time before the sunrise.

They had this area cordoned off, but some brave strangers
ignored the fencing and gave us a great photo op.

Waiting in the brisk pre-dawn morning

Good morning, Sun.

We wandered around the hill for a bit before heading back down for a quick coffee for Jay and a chai for me at The Milkman, a tiny, Instagram-famous coffee shop in Edinburgh. Because it was so early, we had time to kill before the coffee shop opened, so we walked by the Scott Monument and revisited Victoria Street

Scott Monument

Pro tip: get up much earlier than the other tourists to get pictures
of amazing places without the crowds.

Seven a.m. finally rolled around and Jay was able to get his coffee from The Milkman. The chai was one of the best I've had, and we ended up visiting the next day as well.

We took our time exploring, and headed through Prince's Street garden to Dean Village. Since I'm not a fan of cities, finding these little pockets of gardens made me happy. 

It's hard to believe, when walking through the garden, that the road is just above us. We're no more than 100 feet from the roadway. The cherry trees might not have been blossoming in The Meadow, but they were in full bloom on Prince's Street. The air smelled so amazing.

We crossed Dean Bridge into Dean Village. 

Originally, we'd planned on walking in the gardens, but found out that they were private, so we decided to explore. We turned down a street and noticed that there were police and what looked like highway construction workers, but didn't think anything about it. We noticed a man up on a ladder next to a stone wall, putting what looked like small tree branches up all around the CCTV cameras and commented that their camouflage was much better than ours on our cell towers, then kept walking. Jay pointed out that there was a horse ahead and I was very excited to see it. I told him all about the horsebox, and how I want one for Skeeter. It would be so much easier than hooking up the truck and trailer. I had a passing thought of going up to see if I could pet the horse, but the area was so busy that we turned down the next street, which was lined with lorries.

It was only then that we realized we'd inadvertently crashed a movie or tv set. We spent a few minutes debating which it was and I decided it was the Harry Potter tv show based on the huge jars of candies I saw on the back of one of the lorries.

These look like they belong in Honeydukes Sweet Shop.

After we left the set, we found ourselves at the Dean Village Cemetery. Even though it was gorgeous, I was a bit disappointed that some of the grave plots were so new (late 1900s). As we moved further into the cemetery, we finally found some plots from the 1800s. I guess I just expected everything to be much older.

Eventually, we found the entrance to the Water of Leith path and enjoyed the scenery. Again, bits of nature tucked away in a city. It's every bit as gorgeous as all of the Instagram pictures.

By this time, we were getting hungry. We'd burned off our shared pastry and our stomachs were telling us to find food. Honestly, our feet were getting a little tired, too, so heading back into Edinburgh proper was more of a trudge. On the way back, we took a little detour into a church that had a community garden, and my hippie self was so happy with that.

When we got to the Grassmarket and found a place for breakfast, it was 9:30 a.m. and we'd walked almost six and a half miles. No wonder our feet were tired.

After breakfast, we had a bit before our reservations as The Chocolatarium. This was a "last-minute" add on to our itinerary after Jay took a virtual walk via Google Earth. What a great find this was! At home, there is a bean-to-bar chocolate store where we have done a mini tour, so when he found out we could do a tour at a bean-to-bar chocolate factory in Scotland, we couldn't wait to go. So, despite tired bodies and feet, we hauled ourselves to the tour.

Our ApartHotel was really rather well-placed
on the Royal Mile. The Chocolatarium was
maybe a block and a half from us.

The retail shop had lots of different chocolates for sale,
and they had a wide variety made in Scotland.

The tour started with the most amazing hot chocolate I'd ever put in my mouth. It was 51% dark chocolate and warm oat milk. It was silky and wonderful, and if the tour had ended with just the hot chocolate samples, I would have walked away a happy woman.

Alas, we sat in the "jungle" room with several other guests and learned about the history of chocolate, which was interesting, then we moved into the "kitchen" to make our own bars. It was explained how they took the beans and turned them into the lovely chocolate we got to make. Hanging on the walls by each work station were different molds to choose from, along with a variety of different mix-ins so we could personalize our chocolate bars.

While we waited for our chocolates to set up, we moved into the tasting room, where we got to try chocolates from around the world as our guide explained the history of chocolate, along with the differences between dark, milk, and white. She also explained why, to someone from the UK, Hershey's chocolate tastes like "sick" (vomit). It's because butyric acid is used as a milk stabilizer for Hershey's, but is not used in the UK. Super interesting.

If we would have had more time, I would have tried every
piece they had.

After learning about the history of chocolate, and sampling roughly a quarter of my body weight in it, our bars were set and ready for us.

Jay came up with much more creative names for his
chocolates than I did, but it didn't matter, because they
all tasted amazing over the next few days.

Holy cow, this post is getting almost as long as that day was. I'll finish up this day with a Part II. Day 3 will likely be a multi-part set of short(er) posts, then we get into the Highlands, in which we didn't pack as many adventures into each day.