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EAT

The Grain Store
30 Victoria St.
Edinburgh
www.grainstore-restaurant.co.uk

Just because you’re traveling internationally doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think locally. The Grain Store, located in Edinburgh’s Old Town, specializes in exactly that: Scottish beef and lamb, forest-picked wild mushrooms, game birds and venison, and so on. They also bake their bread fresh every morning, and prepare their sauces to order. If it’s on your plate, then it’s in season—and pretty damn delicious.

SLEEP

The Glasshouse
152 Morrison Street
The Exchange, Edinburgh
www.theetoncollection.com

The Glasshouse’s 150-year-old church façade is no indication of what lies within: an ultra-modern boutique hotel with floor-to-ceiling windows in every room, plus a two-acre roof terrace with a garden of juniper and heather. On the walls, nudes. In the bathrooms, heated floors. The only thing the Glasshouse doesn’t have is a restaurant, but who wants to eat where they sleep anyway?

SHOP

Flux
55 Bernard St.
Edinburgh
www.get2flux.co.uk

Flux, in the historic port of Leith, is a gift shop for people who can’t stand gift shops. Their craft merchandise is always changing—thus, their name—and comes from around the corner or half a world away, but every item is stocked according to their self-described criteria: “they must be quirky, unique, never cute and, most importantly, well made.” They also religiously adhere to fair trade principles, unlike many of the other shops in the same neighborhood.


Mr. Wood’s Fossils
5 Cowgatehead, Grassmarket
Edinburgh
www.mrwoodsfossils.co.uk

Located in Grassmarket, Old Town’s vibrant shopping district, Mr. Wood’s Fossils is unlike any other store in the city—or perhaps the entire country. Founded by fossil hunter Stan Wood, whose discoveries include Lizzie, the oldest reptile fossil ever discovered, the shop sells everything from dinosaur teeth from Morocco to a 540-million-year-old trilobite fossil from Utah.

SEE

Highland Wildlife Park
Kincraig, Kingussie
Inverness-shire
www.highlandwildlifepark.org

The Edinburgh Zoo gets all of the accolades, but the Royal Zoological Society of London’s other site, Highland Wildlife Park, allows visitors the chance to see animals roaming not behind bars but around the park’s drive-through reserves. Which means you it’s up to you how close you want to get to that Amur Tiger.


The Lost Gallery
Strathdon,
Aberdeenshire
www.lostgallery.co.uk

The Lost Gallery is aptly named—the directions on its website instruct visitors to take a left “by the wild cherry tree”—and its collection is almost as unusual as its location. Housed in a 19th century farmhouse, the gallery contains more than 160 sculptures that have only one thing in common: they were created by Scottish artists of whom owners Peter and Jean Goodfellow are fond.