From London, it’s a short 1 hour 30 minute flight to get to Edinburgh making it perfect for a weekend getaway. We left on an early Saturday morning getting to Edinburgh at 9.30 AM. We rented a car to get around the city and after dropping off our bags at the hotel, we headed out to the National Wallace Monument. It was an hour’s drive away from Edinburgh to the site which is near the city of Stirling. Entrance tickets were 10.75 GBP1 and you can find more info on the site here. Once you’ve paid for your ticket, there’s a bus service included which takes you up the hill to the monument. You can wait for the bus or hike up the hill which took us about 15 minutes. At the monument, you can then walk up the stairs in the tower to top for panoramic views of Stirling. Inside the tower, there’s a museum laid out on several floors. These make for good checkpoints to explore the museum on the way to the top. The museum goes over William Wallace’s and Scotland’s history. Once you reach the top, it gets very windy so make sure you take warm clothing. After taking some pictures, we headed back down and took the bus back down to the entrance.
By now it was around 1.30 PM so we headed back to the capital to visit Edinburgh Castle while we still had some sunlight. Finding free parking in the city can be a little tricky but we found a paid car park near the castle. We got to the castle ticket office at around 3 PM. Tickets cost 19.50 GBP but we got them for half price with our English Heritage membership. A free guided tour is included or you can hire an audio guide for 3.50 GBP. We had about 1 hour 30 minutes to explore the castle which is full of history. There are also some great viewpoints from the towers and castle walls. It was dark by the time we finished touring the castle when the site was closing at 5 PM. We then went for a walk around the city and came across a winter Christmas market which was set up in the Princess Street Gardens. There were several rides and the city is nicely lit up with Christmas lights. After getting some dinner, we then headed back to the hotel to get some sleep for an early morning the next day.
On Sunday, we left at 7.30 AM for Loch Ness, stopping for breakfast at Inverness at 10.30 AM. It’s then a quick 15-minute drive to the start of Loch Ness. Along the highway, there are several viewpoints with parking spots to get some pictures of the lake. We continued along the lakeside highway until we reached Urquhart Castle. This is roughly the halfway point of the lake so we decided to visit the lakeside castle. Tickets cost 12 GBP and there’s no English Heritage discount here. There’s also a free guided tour included with the ticket which leaves from the mound at the end of the castle. We walked around the castle ruins before the tour started at 1.30 PM. On the tour, the guide takes you through the site going over the history and the changing appearance of the castle through time. The tour takes about 30 minutes and ends in the keep. There’s also a pier at the site for boat tours that stop here. We were done with our visit at around 2.30 PM and started to head back to Edinburgh. When we got back, we went for another quick walk around the city to get some dinner. It was then an early night to be up to get our early morning flight back to London the next day.
