The Edinburgh Tour Guide
Edinburgh, done properly
Which whisky tour is actually worth it. Vaults or Mary King's Close. Which hop-on-hop-off route to skip. Written by someone who checked, not an affiliate feed.
Start with things to do →Six things people actually search for
Whisky Tours
The Scotch Whisky Experience vs. Johnnie Walker Princes Street vs. an actual distillery. Which one is worth your afternoon.
Which one is worth it
Ghost Tours
Four different products sold under one word. What separates them is what they can physically get you into, and one of them enters nothing at all.
The access map nobody publishes
Hop-On Hop-Off
Three buses that look like three companies. They’re not, and that changes which ticket you should buy.
One operator, one real rival
Harry Potter Trail
The Potter Trail is free. The Potter Tour costs up to £185. One word apart, easy to book the wrong one.
Free vs. £185, one name apart
Day Trips
Highlands, Loch Ness, Isle of Skye, St Andrews. Is the 12-hour coach tour worth it, or should you take the train.
4 destinations, one hub
Free Walking Tours
Tip the amount everyone recommends and a free tour costs the same per hour as a booked one. The maths, and the real meeting points.
Free to join, not free to finish
Loch Lomond
The train to Balloch is £27 return and takes 2h11. The coach is £51 and does not include the castle entry or the cruise. Which one depends on whether the loch is the point.
Train £27 vs. coach £51
Isle of Skye
There is no train, and a one-day coach trip means roughly five hours of driving each way. What that leaves you with on the island, hour by hour.
Why one day rarely works
Rosslyn Chapel
Twelve pounds, and the day ticket converts to an annual pass for nothing. Photography inside is banned outright, which is why you have never seen the carvings properly.
The annual pass is freeThe gap the big guides leave open
Official sites own the tickets
Edinburgh Castle, the Scotch Whisky Experience, Mary King's Close: if you want a ticket, their own websites are the right place and we link straight to them. We do not try to sit in the middle of that.
OTAs own the "best of" lists
TripAdvisor and GetYourGuide sit on the generic "best tours" queries. What almost nobody does is the comparison and the decision: vaults or close, is it worth it, which operator. That is what this site is for.