At the tail end of our recent trip to Europe, we stopped in Scotland to spend some time with our daughter. I planned a weekend trip to Skye for us and a couple of her friends, but we flanked that with several nights in Edinburgh. On the first leg of our trip, we checked into the iconic Balmoral, which we stayed at once before. The location is great if you’re coming in by train (it’s literally above the train station); it has a pool/sauna/steam room and one of the most on-it concierge teams we’ve experienced. We saw our friends at one of our favorite stores, Walker Slater—the best Fair Isle sweaters, tweed jackets, and I particularly love their socks. We always make a stop at the W. Armstrong & Son vintage shop and the fabric store for small-production Harris tweed lengths to bring back to NY to get a jacket made at J. Mueser. We finally got into Timberyard, and although I’m not so into coursed meals, the food wasn’t super fussy and the space itself is so well done, a sort of minimalist Scottish chic but with warmth, and a wood-burning center fireplace. On our return, we checked into The George, a grand 19th-century hotel, which was delightful. It’s super central but not on a busy road; the room we had was lovely—floor to ceiling windows, and it had some thoughtful touches like a pour-over coffee setup in the room and Byredo large-format products in the bathroom (bravo to every hotel that isn’t putting the mini bath products in their rooms!). Their staff was very warm and helpful as well—especially when we checked out in the early morning and I had somehow left my laptop in our room, only to discover it was missing when going through security—they had it shipped that morning for delivery the next day.
Other highlights from our time in this beautiful city: we had a great (and incredibly cheap) lunch at Chez Jules, where you can get a steak frites and a bowl of delicious French onion soup for 8£. We stocked up on beautiful Scottish sweaters at Dick’s, where every single product has a deep provenance story, had a great Vietnamese dinner at Sen, did some solid antiquing at James Scott, walked around the Stockbridge neighborhood and had a lovely tea at Howdah, picked up some great skincare at MODM (made locally), checked out Jorum Studio for Scottish perfumes, and found some great treasures at the many charity shops on Deanhaugh Street. I’ll be adding all of these into my Edinburgh Black Book—always add in new spots into my posts as I find them!
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