A Selfie Tour of Edinburgh

I have a well-documented hate-hate relationship with selfies. Be about them if you want, but to me, it's an unnecessary exertion of my facial muscles for a fleeting documentation of a moment that could have passed quietly into the recesses of memory without any detrimental effects on my future life. But sometimes you have to take a selfie tour of the place that you live in order to convince a friend to come visit and decide that it was too good of an effort to share with anything less than the entire world via the internet. So, without further ado, take a tour around town with me!

We'll start just down the road from my flat, where we have Holyrood Palace...

Scottish Parliament...

and Arthur's Seat.

Okay, not me and not a selfie, but come on. This picture is amazing. 

Heading back east towards town, you've got Cowgate...

a lovely little pub on Candlemaker Row...

a fossil shop...

Grassmarket...

 this bookstore...

 this eatery that has everything you'll ever need....

 this cat that I met in the window of Scotland's first cat cafe...

 and a suit of armor I found.

Taking a detour west to the George IV bridge, we've got a joke shop...

Victoria Street...

Decked out for the holidays.

 my favorite pub in town...

this other bookshop...

Greyfriars Bobby...

 the Elephant House, the "birthplace of Harry Potter"...

 and this Irish pub (towards the George Square campus).

Turn back the way you came and you'll end up on the Royal Mile, where you can find whisky...

 St. Giles...

 stores selling an absurd amount of plaid...

 this sad fountain...

 this happy fountain...

 and one of many closes in town.

If you walk down this particular close, you'll end up on the Mound, where you can see New College...

 and the Museum on the Mound, with its punny signs.

This time of year, you could walk over to Princes Street, decked out for the season...

and of course, if you go up Mound Place, you end up at the castle.

I'd hate to make the castle play second fiddle to me in a picture.

We're clearly done taking all the pictures of me that I need to take, so let's walk back down the Mile...

and if we've got the energy, back down to Arthur's Seat and to take another look back out at the town we've just walked 'round.

Pretty fantastic, yeah? Who wouldn't want to come visit all this?