Setting Edinburgh alight

Today we awoke quite late in our last minute booked hotel, thankful for a 12pm checkout. We took our time getting our stuff together before leaving and dropping it off at our hostel for safe keeping until we could check in.

We decided to explore Edinburgh on foot and strolled around the length of the Royal mile/ High street and checked out some beautiful old parliament buildings as well as some 'modern artistic' parliament buildings (ugly as all heck).

We found a cafe on the very busy street and enjoyed some caffeine before making the hike to pick up our torches in preparation for the night.

By the time we got our torches and made our way back to the main drag it was time for us to check into the same hostel for the third time!

We ate some tinned soup and relaxed until it was time to don our cold gear and head to The Meadows where we met up with almost 20,000 other people who were going to join us in our Torchlight procession.

The Torchlight procession is the opening act for Edinburgh's Hogmanay festivities - 4 days of events celebrating the new year.

After waiting in queue in 1° toastie temperatures for an hour we had our torches lit and somehow managed to snag a spot right up the front behind the Vikings.

The procession was led by bagpipers and drummers and we created a river of fire through the old town looking up at Edinburgh Castle!

As a completely random note; being part of a mob storming towards a castle was fun, I get why folks used to do that all the time.

After our adventure we grabbed some snacks and wound down in our hostel for the night. We were enjoying the ambiance and the people as it's our last hostel stay of this trip!

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