As wanderers, for each minute spent traveling there’s another minute spent on dreaming about the next big trip. We had several different European cities on our Travel Bucket List, and one of the things we want to do is sleep in a castle. We put our heads together we came up with a great idea. Why not visit Edinburgh, Scotland? I know it’s not the first place that comes to mind for many Americans, but in this post we’ll give you our 3 reasons to visit Edinburgh.
I’m sure you’re wondering how we came up with Edinburgh, Scotland as a great vacation idea. For starters you should mosey on over to the Guardian and see why Edinburgh has been voted the favorite UK City 11 years IN A ROW! Now that you’ve seen what they have to say on the matter I’ll give you the highlights that caught our eye. The first reason has to be Edinburgh Castle. It is absolutely HUGE and looks really fun to visit. The castle has several museums, some cool old prisons, and a Royal Palace where you can see some of the oldest crown jewels in the British Isles. If that’s not convincing enough for you take a look at how wicked this place looks. On top of visiting this castle, with a little research, we found some other castles that actually allow you to stay in them.
The second reason to spend some time in Edinburgh is some of the crazy festivals that they have year-round. According to Edinburgh’s Visit Scotland Site, there are tons of festivals, and the city goes all out in celebrating them. They have a very neat looking Mela Festival in the mid-fall where they celebrate a mix of international cultures and cuisines which totally looks amazing.
If that’s not your cup of tea, they also have the Fringe Festival which is billed as the largest arts festival in the world. This festival occurs in August, and features thousands of performances and displays. The festival is so big that in 2011 over 1.9 million tickets were sold across all events and festivities. The coolest part for us though, is that many of the events are free of charge, so even if you are travelling on a budget, you can enjoy the Fringe Festival.
If all the reasons listed above don’t convince you then this last one should do it. Have you ever heard of Hogmanay? Neither had I until a bunch of fellow travel bloggers participated in an event called Blogmanay! Basically, they all went to Scotland and covered one of the largest New Year celebrations in the world. Not only do they have a ginormous New Years Eve street party, but there’s carnivals and festivals going on the week before AND after New Years. If you plan on attending, make you sure you don’t miss an event near and dear to our hearts, Dogmanay :-) It’s where 5 different dog sledding breeds go out and compete in a mixture of races and different shows.
I am totally convinced that Edinburgh is an awesome place to visit, and we will be making plans to visit as soon as we can. If you want more information on the different festivals and other cultural information on Edinburgh, take a look here for lots of great info.