uk on Aldrin Jenson

Edinburgh, in a day and a half

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 01:10:00 -0400

Trip: Edinburgh, Scotland · Oct 26–27, 2026 · solo · on the way from London to India

I added Edinburgh to the end of a work week in London (that post is here) for one simple reason: I could fly to India from there instead of going back through London. I arrived on Monday evening and flew out on Tuesday night. It wasn’t much time. It was enough to fall a little bit in love with the place.

Edinburgh Castle and the Old Town behind me.

Getting there

I came up by train from Norwich on Monday afternoon and got in that evening, to a cosy little Airbnb room. The host was a guy called Baz, and there was a cat.

The Airbnb cat.

The ghost bus (Monday night)

That first night I did a ghost bus tour. It’s more comedy than history: funny stories told in a spooky voice, on an old black double-decker. The best part was seeing the city lit up at night.

The ghost bus.

The castle lit up at night.

The walking tour (Tuesday morning)

The next morning at 11 I did a “free” walking tour. It isn’t really free: you pay what you think it was worth at the end, and I paid £25 without hesitating. Two hours, and the best thing I did in Edinburgh. The guide talked non-stop about the writers who lived here, and I wish I’d recorded it. Things I learned, or at least what stuck:

It’s a UNESCO City of Literature, the first in the world, and the Old Town and New Town together are a World Heritage Site. J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter here. Robert Louis Stevenson was born here, and he wrote Treasure Island and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (I was right about that one). Adam Smith, the economist, lived and is buried here.
The debt story. Scotland lost a fortune on a failed colony scheme and was in serious debt. Joining England in the 1707 Union wiped that out, and money later went into building the elegant New Town, separate from the medieval Old Town.
The dark stuff. The medical school needed bodies, so people stole corpses from graves (the famous body-snatchers). Thousands of people were accused of witchcraft, and there were a lot of executions. The guide said a fair amount of Game of Thrones borrowed from this history.
Harry Potter everywhere. We walked down Victoria Street, which supposedly inspired Diagon Alley, and passed the Elephant House café. According to the guide, several cafés claim to be where Rowling wrote, and only one is the real one. The tour ended at the graveyard where a Thomas Riddell is buried, supposedly where the name Tom Riddle came from, but we never actually found the grave.
We stopped at the Scott Monument (the giant Gothic spire for Sir Walter Scott) and at Robert Burns, and passed a courtyard with the handprints of famous people set into stone.
The castle sits on top of an old volcano. It erupted, went dormant, and then glaciers in the Ice Age carved the rock into the cliff it stands on now. Once you know that, you can’t stop seeing it.

The Elephant House. One of several cafés that claim the title.

Greyfriars Bobby, the loyal dog.

Handprints of famous people set into the stone.

Walking around

After the tour I mostly just walked. I saw the castle from outside (I didn’t go in), went through the National Museum of Scotland, which I enjoyed, and down the Royal Mile, then the cosy little shops and the curve of Victoria Street. I went into St Giles’ Cathedral, which is huge inside, and prayed.

On the street, a performer was balancing and spinning on top of a moving staircase. I still don’t fully understand how. For lunch I had haggis at a place on the Royal Mile. It was a bit soggy, but honestly fine. Coming from Kerala, I’m used to food like that. I bought socks, and a bag to carry some things I was taking home for someone.

At some point I texted home, “I can’t believe I’m in Scotland.” I really couldn’t.

On the castle esplanade.

St Giles’ Cathedral on the Royal Mile.

Inside St Giles’.

The Mercat Cross and the City Chambers on the Royal Mile. The handprints are in that courtyard.

What I made of it

Edinburgh looks like Winterfell, the Stark family’s castle in Game of Thrones. Old stone, dark spires, a castle on a rock above everything. I saw it at night, in the rain and in daylight, and it was beautiful all three ways. I loved the Scottish accent.

It was also the windiest place I’ve ever been. At one point the wind was pushing my legs into each other as I walked.

I only had a day and a half, and I wish I’d had more. Next time I want to climb Calton Hill and Arthur’s Seat, which I didn’t have time for. I took a work call from the airport, got on a plane to Dubai, and felt really grateful that this is a thing I get to do now.

Notes to myself

Thing	Cost
Train from Norwich	£65.84
Ghost bus tour	£21.50
“Free” walking tour	£25 tip to the guide
St Giles’ Cathedral	£12
Lunch at the Filling Station, Royal Mile	£9.33
Luggage storage (Bounce)	£14.57
Edinburgh Castle, inside	next time
Calton Hill, Arthur’s Seat	next time (free)

Everything paid on the Wise card, as with the rest of the trip.

London, on a work trip

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 01:00:00 -0400

Trip: London (+ a Sunday in Norwich) · Oct 17–25, 2026 · a work week with coworkers, the weekends mostly solo · one backpack and a carry-on

This was a work trip first. A week at a client’s office in Canary Wharf. Everything else here happened around that: the first weekend before the others arrived, the evenings, and whatever I could squeeze into the last day. I kept reminding myself that the work was the point. If the week went well, the rest would be a bonus. It went well.

Parliament at sunset on my first day, after almost no sleep.

Day one, straight off the plane (Sat Oct 17)

I landed at Heathrow around 9 AM after a red-eye where I didn’t sleep at all. Immigration was nearly empty, and I was through in minutes. I took the Elizabeth line and changed once for Waterloo. Then I overshot by a stop and had to drag my suitcase back the other way until I worked out the direction. After that I got the hang of it. The carriages are smaller than New York’s, and it took me a minute to read the map, but it’s an easy system once it clicks.

Down in the Elizabeth line station, a busker with a little puppet band was playing to the tunnel.

A busker and his puppet band in the Elizabeth line tunnel.

My first proper London meal was fish and chips, right by the station.

First meal in London.

Then I left my bag at Waterloo and walked. Outside County Hall there was a giant Paddington Bear suitcase bench. Past the London Eye, over to Westminster for the Big Ben photo, and into Westminster Abbey.

Paddington, near Waterloo.

I had to leave the Abbey earlier than I wanted because some pilgrimage event was starting, but I loved the chandeliers. It’s one of those places where you can feel the weight of everything that’s happened in it, and I stood there and said a prayer.

Outside Westminster Abbey, before going in.

Then I took a hop-on bus loop. From the top deck I got the London Eye, and later Tower Bridge with HMS Belfast parked in front of it.

The London Eye from the bus loop.

A fun fact I picked up that day: the famous bridge with the two towers is Tower Bridge. London Bridge is a different, much plainer one a little upstream.

Tower Bridge, with HMS Belfast in front.

I got off at Buckingham Palace and walked into the parks. I sat in Hyde Park for a while. It’s huge and full of trees. I guessed it was bigger than Central Park, but I looked it up later and it isn’t. What I noticed most was the pace. People walk slower here. People were jogging, actually jogging, slowly, as exercise, not running the way everyone runs in New York. The whole city felt a notch quieter.

One of the royal parks on day one. Huge, green, and slow.

Next was Trafalgar Square, which had giant NFL helmet statues everywhere for the London games, and the National Gallery. Inside, I ended up in front of Van Gogh’s Farms near Auvers, painted a few weeks before he died. I bought a London magnet on the way out.

Van Gogh, Farms near Auvers, at the National Gallery.

Some small things I clocked on day one:

Everyone says toilet, not restroom. Rubbish, not trash.
There are almost no public bins. I carried an empty coffee cup for ages and finally threw it away inside a different café. And yet the streets were clean. I still don’t fully get how.

By evening the sun was going down behind Parliament, and I got the photo at the top of this post from the river. Chipotle for dinner, and I was asleep by 9 PM after about five bad nights in a row.

Parliament Square on the first evening.

Sunday I didn’t see London at all. I worked the whole day getting ready for the week.

The work week (Oct 19–23)

We stayed in Canary Wharf, close to the office, and the mornings looked like this.

The morning view over east London.

The days were work, and I’ll keep that part short. We spent the week with the client’s team, and it ended with a hackathon where each of us mentored a team. My team won. I mostly felt grateful, because I’d been nervous about it all week. Lack of sleep was the theme of the week, but I came away feeling it had gone well.

The evenings were the fun part.

The pub. On Monday night we ended up in a West End pub with live music. Around 9 a guy with a guitar started playing, everyone was singing, and I sang and danced along with everyone else. The Americans were the loudest people in the room. Later that night we passed the Palace Theatre, lit up red for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The Palace Theatre, home of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Steak, and Dishoom. One night was a steakhouse near the office with the whole team. The fillet was fine, but I couldn’t chew through it properly and managed about 60%. Another night was Dishoom, the famous Indian place, all of us together.

The Shard. One evening two coworkers and I walked along the river. We passed the Tower of London at night, with the Shard lit up across the water, and then went up.

The Tower of London at night.

The Shard, and a very London bus.

At the top we had drinks, took a lot of photos, and had a really good conversation.

The view from up there.

A dinner the client hosted on the top floor of their office, with chefs brought in to cook. Appetisers, sides, a main (I think I had salmon). It was a really nice evening with the people we’d been working with all week. I skipped the wine, since I don’t drink.

ABBA Voyage (Fri Oct 23)

The hackathon wrapped up that afternoon, and a coworker took a few of us to ABBA Voyage in East London.

The ABBA Arena in East London.

Inside, the arena is all lights.

Inside the ABBA Arena.

ABBA isn’t actually there. Their avatars perform, on a giant stage, with a live band. I kept thinking is this the future of concerts? They looked about 95% real. Afterwards I read up on how they did it: the band members did motion capture, and the avatars were de-aged to how they looked in the ’70s. It was genuinely one of the most interesting things I’ve seen at a show. I danced a little, though it’s not really a disco set. My favourite was “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, and of course “Dancing Queen”. Afterwards people kept dancing at an after-party outside.

The last two London days

On Saturday I did the Tower of London and the Crown Jewels. It was grey and rainy.

The White Tower, on a rainy Saturday.

Inside the White Tower is the Line of Kings: rows of royal armour, some of it for horses, including a suit made for a young Prince Henry. There’s also a huge dragon sculpture built out of armour pieces.

Royal armour inside the Tower.

It was Halloween season, and the moat was full of pumpkins and skeletons.

Halloween in the Tower moat.

Afterwards I walked through the West End in the rain: red phone boxes, the Hippodrome, and the giant Les Misérables front at the Sondheim Theatre, all lit up.

Red phone boxes in the rain.

Les Misérables at the Sondheim Theatre.

That night a few of us from work met for ramen next to a huge mall by a train station, and there was a go-karting place right next to it. It was my first time, and I came second, half a second behind a coworker. I did not expect to be any good at it.

The results. Second place, half a second off.

Then two of us went up the Walkie Talkie (Sky Garden) for drinks. I had a mocktail, and we talked. It was a really nice evening.

A mocktail on one of the rooftop nights.

On Sunday morning, before my train to Norwich, I did the British Museum. The Great Court with its glass roof is the first thing you see.

The Great Court.

Inside I saw the Discobolus (the discus thrower) and the Nereid Monument, a whole Greek temple front rebuilt indoors. I’d taken my sleep tablets too early the night before and woke up late, so I was half-asleep for some of it.

The Discobolus.

Waking up late also meant I ran out of time for St Paul’s Cathedral, which is the one thing I wish I’d seen. On the way to the train I stopped at Hamleys to pick up gifts for my cousin’s little boy: a red London bus and a colouring book.

Norwich (Sun Oct 25)

On the Sunday I took the train out to Norwich to see my cousin Amrutha chechi, her husband Suvin, and their little boy, Ezekiel. I got in late, so we just talked over home-cooked food and went to sleep. The next morning we went to church at Norwich Cathedral, which is about 900 years old.

Out of the train window on the way:

Countryside from the train to Norwich.

Inside Norwich Cathedral.

Then we had lunch at a café. I’d brought Ezekiel the red bus and the colouring book, and he cried when I left. It was the warmest part of the trip. Then I took a train north to Edinburgh, which is its own post.

What I made of London

London grew on me over the week. It’s slower and quieter, the parks are enormous, and there’s history on every corner. It has the pubs, and the rooftops where a drink doesn’t cost a fortune. It’s now firmly my second-favourite city, after New York. It’s a great city to visit, and New York is still home for me. My ranking so far:

New York
London
Barcelona and Edinburgh, which are too different to compare
Berlin

(If I count US cities, LA goes above Barcelona, and Chicago just below LA.)

Notes to myself

Wise card for everything. I paid for the whole trip (London, then Scotland, Dubai and India) with my Wise card. I didn’t carry any cash, didn’t exchange money, and it never caused a problem. I was really happy with it.
Sleep. I pushed through the week on very little of it, and paid for it with a foggy museum day. Next time I won’t take sleep tablets that early.
Still to see: St Paul’s, properly.

Thing	Cost
Big Bus hop-on tour	£42.49
Tower of London	£38
Rooftop drink (Shard / Walkie Talkie)	~£12–14 each
Train to Norwich (with a railcard)	£71.20
London magnet, National Gallery	the obligatory one
Everything else	paid on the Wise card