Ten fifty in the morning put me on the ground in Edinburgh, and the first decision of the day was smaller than it felt: bus or tram into town. I picked the bus, partly for the fare and partly because St Christopher's Inn sits close enough to Waverley that almost any route worked, and Waverley mattered more than usual this time, since tomorrow morning's Lumo train to London left from the same platform I would be sleeping fifty feet from tonight.
Check in was not until three, which left a few hours to fill and nowhere obvious to put a backpack in the meantime. I dropped it at the hostel instead, and turned the gap into a small errand list invented entirely on the spot. Reception pointed me to a self service laundry two streets over once I asked the right question, coins and a machine I had to figure out without instructions in a language I already understood, which somehow made it more confusing rather than less. The haircut took more legwork: I walked past three barbershops comparing prices taped to the window before settling on the one that looked open, reasonably priced, and in no hurry to overcharge a tourist who clearly did not know the going rate. Neither decision took more than a few minutes once I actually made it. Getting there took longer than either the haircut or the wash cycle combined.
Lunch was GDK, German Doner Kebab, a chain I only knew because of a trip through Europe back in 2023 and have quietly trusted ever since. Same reliable version of itself in Edinburgh as anywhere else, which after a morning of decisions made on the fly was exactly the kind of lunch I wanted: no decision at all.
By three I was checked in properly, and the rest of the afternoon went to nothing productive: resting, freshening up, watching rain arrive outside the window with the specific confidence of weather that plans to stay a while. I gave up on any version of a plan that involved being outside and let the room win for a few hours instead.
It eased off by early evening, enough that I finally went looking for the city instead of waiting for it to come to better terms with me. Everything worth walking to was inside about two miles of the hostel door: up onto the Royal Mile, a fiddler working the crowd near the top of it, down into the Grassmarket where the street levels off just enough to make you forget you are standing in the shadow of a castle, Edinburgh Castle itself holding its hill at one end of the Mile, Princes Street Gardens sitting below Old Town like the city had decided to keep one section permanently green out of spite for all the stone around it. I climbed toward Calton Hill for the view and did not go all the way up, tired enough by then that half a view felt like a reasonable compromise.
I climbed halfway up Calton Hill and decided half a view of Edinburgh was still more city than most places offer at full effort.