Blogmas Day 12 | Christmas in Edinburgh

No Christmas is complete for me without a visit to Ednburgh during the festive period.  It's a beautiful city at any time of the year, but transforms itself into a winter wonderland, with twinkling lights everywhere, mulled wine flowing and every Christmas song known to man!

In the morning when we arrived we had a wander round the shops on Princes Street (the main shopping street) and even popped into Harvey Nichols for a quick tour of the beauty hall.

Shopping really does build up an appetite, and we were soon on the hunt for somewhere to stop for lunch.  We decided to head away from the crowds because everywhere was packed out and ended up at Reekie's Smokehouse.  The smell of the smoked barbecue meat as we walked through the door was amazing.  We both ordered burnt ends, which are the ends of the beef brisket diced up and put back in the smoker - the result is a chewy bark on the outside and the most succulent, fall-apart meat on the inside.  The fries were salty and crispy - I had rosemary salt on mine and they were a taste revelation!

With full bellies were headed back towards Edinburgh's Christmas, a huge Christmas market with rides, music, mulled wine and food.  We stopped for the obligatory hot drink = I had a Pimms Apple Cup which was spicy and sweet and very festive.

We rounded off our day with a walk along George Street, which has a lot of more up-scale bars and restaurants.  The most pretty by far is The Dome, especially at Christmas where they pull out all the stops and have lights snaking up the columns and large lit wreaths in the windows.  It is gorgeous.

I thought I would share some pictures from our day..