First contact with locals happened on the high street when we were looking into the travel guide to find a place for lunch. No minute later a woman offered her help with a clearly Scottish accent that was, however, still comprehensible. Her pick was the underground food court of a shopping mall where they only had sandwiches and fast food. Thus the next insight: the Scottish don't care much about food, either.
Talking about Scottish food would not be complete without Haggis. Its description (from another local) sounds little delicous: take a sheep, give the meat away, mix the rest with oatmeal, onions and spices, stuff it into the sheep's stomach and cook it. As sides you get "neeps and tatties", i.e. turnips and mashed potatoes. On the plate it looks much more delicous than that and tastes like sausages which is quite agreeable. By the way, more than agreeable is Scottish whisky (note the missing e, that would be Irish whiskey then).
Apart from eating and drinking, Edinburgh ist a really nice city. The main sight is the castle on a hill in the middle which, for some reason, had free entry (£8-£11 normally) that very weekend with the unavoidable long queues in the usual British discipline. The rest of Old Town is rather compact, hilly and with bridges over lower streets. There is a New Town (new as in 200 years) which is laid out a bit more regularly and "American". Overall, really pretty and looking around it is no miracle that Joanne K. Rowling lives here and invented Harry Potter and Hogwarts.
Another recommendation for evening entertainment in Edinburgh: a Ghost Tour. They come in different varieties of seriousness, i.e. with scaring and walks through dungeons below the city. Our tour was more a leisurely walkabout with a competent guide who knew a lot of appropriate stories and told them well.
Thus: do go there and even the journey from Manchester to Edinburgh leads through beautiful landscapes that are certainly worth a visit by themselves. Anyways, my pictures, finally.
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