City hitlist
Behind the splendid façades of Edinburgh’s buildings – a rich mix of old and new – lies a city that knows how to party, writes Chris Pearson.
A look behind the splendid façades of Edinburgh.
STAY
Nira Caledonia
“You’ll like it,” says the cab driver as he pulls up at Nira Caledonia, on a wide cobbled street in New Town. “This is one of Edinburgh’s best-kept secrets.” The honey-hued Regency terrace houses a hotel with the air of an exclusive club. Its 28 rooms are furnished with chesterfields, oversized leather headboards and hand-printed wallpaper, while the public spaces are similarly moody and cosseting. Original cornices, skirtings and window boxes are juxtaposed with flatscreens and hot tubs. Fine Scottish produce (beef, venison, pheasant) meets the
Josper oven at the hotel’s Blackwood’s Bar & Grill.
10 Gloucester Pl, niracaledonia.com
The Glasshouse
This is one of Edinburgh’s many repurposed churches. The 77 rooms, many with expansive views of the Firth of Forth, lie behind a sheer wall of glass that soars above a glorious Gothic façade. It’s little more than a caber’s throw from Princes Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, and the Edinburgh Playhouse, the largest theatre in the UK, is a neighbour. Enjoy a picnic hamper in the rooftop garden in the shadow of historic Calton Hill, peppered with Classical Greek-inspired monuments, or gather around a firepit in the hotel’s snug when the weather is dreich. 2 Greenside Pl, theglasshousehotel.co.uk
DRINK
Weary of whisky? Down a G&T on the house after a tour of the Edinburgh Gin Distillery (1a Rutland
Pl, edinburghgin.com). “These are the two most important women in the building,” says our guide, patting the stills named Flora and Caledonia. Behind a Victorian shopfront, The Jolly Botanist Gin Bar mixes its signature cocktail, The Jolly Botanist, with poppy liqueur and cranberry, beneath a painting of a bewigged Victorian gentleman explorer
(“Show me gin, curiosity and bafflement” is the house motto). 260 Morrison St, thejollybotanist.co.uk
SHOP
Victoria Street in Grassmarket is arguably the city’s best shopping strip, and certainly its most colourful. Boldly painted shopfronts line the cobbled street; drop by tweed specialist Walker Slater, or Oink, where each day a pig is spit-roasted and served with haggis and apple sauce. At the end of the street is vintage clothing store W Armstrong & Son, a 177-year-old Edinburgh stalwart that claims to be Britain’s largest vintage clothing emporium. Shoppers fossick through piles that might harbour 1920s flapper dresses,
’60s hotpants and 1980s leather jackets.