On our first day in Edinburgh, while waiting for our rental flat to be made ready, we walked about Princes Park. It was a beautiful, sunny day. We had prepared ourselves for cold and wet and the sunny weather was a pleasant surprise, especially after a long overnight plane trip (with very little sleep). We saw the monument to Sir Walter Scott and decided to climb it.
The stairs were surprisingly narrow, but we squeezed ourselves up the winding staircase and were astonished by the panorama before us. Edinburgh is a remarkably beautiful city when the sun is shining.
Then afterward, when our host met us at the flat to show us around, she asked what we had done with our day. When we told her about the Scott Monument she expressed surprise. She’d lived in the city for all of her life and had never made the climb.
I wasn’t surprised. This is frequently the case. Residents of an area frequently avoid all of the things that visitors plan to see and do. A friend of mine who lives in London has never been to the Tower. I’ve been there twice and it’s magnificent.
It’s a shame, really. I love to travel, but to see the wonders in your own backyard is often so much easier (and far less expensive).
Here’s my recommendation: when you travel, make a list of the things that you want to see and do, but leave yourself enough time so that you’re not rushing from one thing to the next. Allow yourself to shift your days, your plans, and always leave a few things unseen, undone. They’ll be your reason for a future trip.
Then do the same thing for the things around the place where you live. Make your lists of things to see and do. Then start doing them.
And immediately deviate from your plan. Explore. One of our best discoveries in Edinburgh is the graveyard at the Canongate Kirk. It’s easy to miss as you walk up and down the hill of the Royal Mile, but inside its walls it is peaceful and quiet. Around back the view is incredible. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, is buried there and is marked with only a tiny (and inexpensive, I’m sure) marker. Greyfriars Kirk is even bigger with more to explore, but Canongate is more to my taste.
You can avoid the tourists and tourist traps. Just plan ahead, ask around. Then go.
The Notes From The Road: Be There, Do That by Randy Murray, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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