Edinburgh is beautiful, as I have been told many a times.

“Edinburgh is beautiful. You should go.”

Go we did, but before we could savour the beauty we needed to understand her first.

Wha’ yer din her?

I am sorry?

Wear yer flom?

Nothing made sense, I was starting to wonder if we had perhaps got on the wrong plane and landed in Iceland instead.

The accent took a while to digest but eventually we started to get absorbed into the Scottishness of things. It seems like Scotland was determined to make us like it, for on arrival in the hotel we were upgraded to a suite, compliments of the hotel management, with breakfast, movies and minibar included. The suite was bigger than our flat back in London, and we were thrilled with this Christmas present.

“Ai hope yer’ll fael rite’a home her”, said the clerk at check in.

Just as well, with a name like MCPHERSON we couldn’t have felt more at home anywhere else.

Christmas in Edinburgh is a colourful affair, with its own German style market (less crowded than Bath), loads of street light decorations, and the castle illuminating red, green and gold in the backdrop, the city had an instant medieval feel about it.

It is indeed, as everyone had said, a beautiful city. Our four days were spent strolling up and down the Royal Mile, visiting the interior of Edinburgh Castle, attending the Boxing Day Sale on Prince Street and hiking up to Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park. The hike was amazing, and in some parts was almost like we were in a mini-highland area. From the top, we were rewarded with a fantastic view over the city and the highlands beyond.

Of course, we spent a lot of our time in the suite. We’ve never stayed in a suite before and it was amazing to have the space to actually live, not just to sleep, in a hotel space.

We had come up here to increase the possibility of having a white Christmas, but hope dwindled as reports of irregular weather pattern literally dampened our chances. It had rained instead of snow. Oh well, next December we’ll have to go further – I am thinking Iceland.