Edinburgh's Closes, Cowgatehead and Grassmarket

If anyone ask me my impression of Edinburgh, I probably would tell you about the Closes in Royal Mile. Closes are those narrow alley between buildings. We passed by them a lot during our carless days in Edinburgh. The medieval town was built on an undulating terrain and yet fabulously well-connected. Once we arrived the Waverley Train Station, we started to navigate towards the Old Town where our rented apartment was. From the exit of Waverley Station at Market Street, we walked across the road, into one of the nearest Closes to reach Royal Mile- Fleshmarket Cl. After that, we found Old Fishmarket Cl to reach Cowgate. Once we were in Cowgate, we turned right towards Cowgatehead for our apartment, passed by an arch tunnel where George IV Bridge was right above.

Other times, when we roamed around the Old Town, passing by Royal Mile, we used Jackson's Cl, or Anchor Cl, or the renowned Mary King's Cl. Similarly, we wandered and used Stevenlaw's Cl towards the train station and further up to Princes Street.

I found an informative site to illustrate the Closes of Royal Mile. Do check out the lizard's map of the Royal Mile- how the Old Town stretches along a high ridge from the Castle on its dramatically situated rock down to the Palace of Holyrood. It was a very fishbone street pattern, rather that lizard. ;p

Snapped this from Museum of Mound

Speaking of our rented apartment, it is located at the end of Cowgate. Or the head- that's why it is called Cowgatedhead(?). Anyway, The Cowgate is a street in Edinburgh. located about 500 metres of Edinburgh Castle. The street is part of the lower level of Edinburgh’s Old Town, which lies below the elevated streets of South Bridge and George IV Bridge. We passed by both the bridges few times a day.

Photo far left: Little Bomber and I walked along Cowgate, the arch tunnel ahead of us. 

Cowgatehead is a restored historicall building, it is strategically located adjacent to the many boutique shops, pubs, cafes and restaurants in Grassmarket and for the many more amenities along The Royal Mile. Through Closes, we explored Edinburgh by foot conveniently. 

View from our apartment

The unit was at high floor too. We had beautiful medieval urbanscape directly from the window of the living room. For that, we had to climb 4 flights of stairs to be 'home sweet home' at the end of our each tired day. It was a building conservation, lift was not added as part of the restoration/ improvement work, for some reasons. You can imagine when we forgot to bring out a bottle or a jacket from the apartment, mama was the one did the extra exercises to climb up (and down) the stair again for retrieval. 

Clean and simple studio apartment with fully-equipped kitchen.

When price and location were met, the other reason for me to chose this studio apartment was the bunk bed. Silly me, i know. But the girls were thrilled with that and willingly slept on their own. So was daddy (he doesn't need to sleep with anyone of them and got kicked at).

I booked the apartment from Silver Lining via Expedia.

The only time we got to explore Grassmarket was upon our check-out, we needed to dump our rubbish into the designated black bin at the junction of Victoria Street, as per instructed by the agent. Scooby Doo's Cafe Bar caught the eyes of the girls, and we had packed some snack and drinks with us for our departure to Falkirk Wheel. When the staffs saw me with the girls, one of them was nice to check with me if the chocolate milk that I ordered was for the children- so that she could prepared the drink in not too hot for their consumption. That's nice, isn't it?!