Edinburgh Day 2

After a fun-filled yet tiring first day in Edinburgh, I was surprised at how easy it was to get up the following morning. Perhaps because we had plenty more to look forward to over the next 24 hours.

First stop after breakfast was The Surgeon’s Hall museums, made up of the Wohl Pathology Museum, the History of Surgery Museum and The Dental Collection. Originally developed as a teaching museum for students of medicine, the museum expands over three floors consisting of bone and tissue specimens, artefacts and some quite mind-blowing facts.

It’s fascinating to see how medicine has advanced, how those living before anesthetic had to brave amputations. It’s not ideal for those that are quite squeamish, but really very interesting.

You could easily spend a few hours wandering the floors but we had a lunch reservation to get to. Putting the grizzly tales and images to the back of our minds, we headed in search of the restaurant.

The Sunday Times recently released their 100 Best Restaurants list with a few Edinburgh additions. One of them was Wedgwood, located along the Royal Mile, where we had booked up a table.

They offer a varied lunch set menu, so it’d be rude not to have all three courses.

We both started with the venison, rabbit and pancetta terrine.

I then had the hake with chorizo and fennel, James went for the braised beef.

Both finishing the meal off with a sticky toffee pudding each.

The meal was lovely, however it was hard not to compare it to the meal we’d had the day before at The Hadrian. A restaurant not included in The Sunday Times Top 100, yet equally worthy.

We exited the restaurant and went out into the rain. It wasn’t too heavy so didn’t affect us too much and Edinburgh looked just as good in the drizzle.

Next on our agenda was the Scotch Whisky Experience.

A great tour about the distillery of whisky, including a barrell ride, a free tasting and a look at one of the biggest whisky collections, including some of the oldest.

For the tasting, there was a choice of four. We were given a scratch and sniff postcard that determined which whisky we would prefer based on the smell we liked the most.

At the end of the tour we were given a box and allowed to take home the glass we’d drunk from as a freebie.

We could have continued the whisky drinking, however we decided to kill a couple of hours at the cinema watching Everest. A fascinating, deeply moving true story that is worth a watch.

We came out of the cinema feeling quite peckish so after a little bit of research we found a burger joint around the corner with great reviews.

Similar to some of the establishments back in Bristol, we felt right at home.

We dabbled in a couple of cocktails and order some croquettes, chips and a couple of spicy burgers. I had beef, James went chicken.

Later that evening we had a comedy show to get to but not before a visit to The Dome.

An incredible building that had been beautifully decorated and I don’t mean with nice wallpaper.

If I wasn’t feeling Christmassy before, I certainly was after our visit there. I’ve never seen a place go to so much trouble to create this wonderful Christmas scene inside and out.