Why Edinburgh needs a local guide
The Old Town gets all the photos and all the foot traffic. The New Town — which is 200 years old — is where the locals eat and drink. Leith was a rough dockland fifteen years ago. Now it has Michelin-starred restaurants and craft breweries, and the old pubs are still there too. During the Fringe in August, the population doubles and the city loses its mind for three weeks.
Edinburgh pulls roughly 4 million visitors a year, and in August that number feels like it triples. Most of them walk the Royal Mile, photograph the Castle, climb Arthur's Seat, and consider the job done. They never walk down to Leith to see the waterfront pubs along The Shore, never eat at one of the restaurants on Henderson Street that would hold its own in any European capital, never wander through Stockbridge on a Sunday to catch the market and a coffee on St Stephen Street. To become a tour guide in Edinburgh means knowing the city in all twelve months, not just the Fringe-inflated August version. February Edinburgh — grey, windy, freezing, with the haar rolling in off the Forth — is when the real character shows. The pubs in the Grassmarket on a Tuesday night in November, the walk from Bruntsfield Links to Morningside for a proper fish supper, the view from Calton Hill when it is raining sideways. Become a tour guide in Edinburgh and you get to show people the city that locals actually live in. The one below the castle, past the tartan shops, down the hill and into the neighborhoods where the accents get thicker and the chips come with salt and sauce.