I hope you had a lovely Christmas and New Year, and like me are now feeling sad that it's all over already! Now that we're in the midsts of January, I want to get holiday planning for the year ahead and look forward to the travels to come this year! Next up for me, I'm off to Krakow in Poland on Sunday, so please let me know if you have any tips on what to do and see there. I am already planning on going to Auschwitz and the Salt mines.
However, this post is about what I got up to for New Year's Eve! I don't usually do anything particularly exciting, so this year some of my friends suggested we go to Edinburgh for Hogmanay! Hogmanay is something I'd heard about and always wondered what exactly it was all about, so I thought it'd be a great thing to do to celebrate the New Year this year to do something a bit different.
Conveniently my friend goes to uni in Edinburgh so she helped us get discounted tickets and let us stay at her flat, helping to keep things on more of a budget! All of us live near Cambridge which is pretttyyy far from Scotland, so some of my friends decided to take the plunge and do the 7 hour drive up there and back.. very brave! I wasn't so keen on driving all that way so me, my boyfriend and two of our friends decided to drive to my house in York, park there, and get the train from there.
We spent the day on New Year's Eve wandering around and exploring the city. I've been to Edinburgh three times before so I knew a few places I wanted to see and to show my boyfriend who hadn't been before.
Here is the Royal Mile which we enjoyed wandering down, making a pit stop to buy some traditional Scottish shortbread!
We then headed all the way up the Royal Mile to Edinburgh castle! You can see the castle from down below on the main streets of the city centre, so it was great to go and see it up close too. There were also some magnificent views down onto Princes Street to the right...
As well as beautiful views to the left of Arthur's Seat in the distance!
As you can imagine, Scotland is very cold, and on New Year's Eve it was particularly cold due to gale force winds! However luckily the wind had died down by the evening and Hogmanay and the fireworks displays were still able to go ahead, yay!
Here are a few photos that I took whilst at Hogmanay, including the INCREDIBLE midnight fireworks display! Fireworks were let off every hour which was really nice, however the ones at midnight were extra special with accompanying music and lights! We had tickets for the 'street party' section which took place on Princes Street which is the main shopping street in Edinburgh. Before the fireworks at midnight, we made sure to get a good spot to see them and were also near a big screen so we could see Rag 'n' Bone Man performe live!
After the fireworks the real 'street party' began with everyone dancing in the streets until 1am! This was such a fun experience and definitely warmed everyone up after standing in the crowds freezing beforehand!
The Christmas market was still on so you were able to wander round there to go on the rides, get food and enjoy the stalls on display.
Overall it was a great night and would definitely recommend Hogmanay if you're thinking of doing something different for New Year's Eve this year! Although it was cold and the crowds were hard to get through, I'm really glad I went and absolutely loved the fireworks and street party!
Edinburgh is a great city to visit any time of year however so is not one to miss, especially if you live in the UK - definitely take a look at going on a mini break to Edinburgh this year!
No comments