Edinburgh

Edinburgh's New Town was laid out from the 1770s, and it is still the new one. The two towns face each other across a valley like two different cities. The New Town is a Georgian grid of wide streets and gardens, calmer and more formal. The Old Town is the medieval city, strung along the Royal Mile between the Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, with closes and wynds running off it on either side. It is the busiest and loudest part of Edinburgh, and steep underfoot, and it is where we would stay: we were on George IV Bridge, on the corner of the Royal Mile. Anyone who would rather walk to the noise than sleep in it can cross the valley.

Two days go on the Old Town and on getting above it. The Castle sits at the top, on Castle Rock, and wants reaching first thing on a timed ticket booked ahead, because from there the Mile runs downhill all the way to Holyroodhouse, and downhill is the way to walk it. St Giles' Cathedral and the underground Real Mary King's Close are both just off it. After that, get up a hill. Calton Hill is a five-minute climb for the view over the city and across the Forth to Fife, best at sunset. Arthur's Seat, the extinct volcano in Holyrood Park, is 251 metres high and a proper walk, with a wider view for the effort. One is enough. The evening belongs to the old pubs and whisky bars off the Mile, and the Old Town is steep enough on the way back from them.

We went in late spring, and it was the time to go: long light, with the sun not down until after 10pm by midsummer, and the city still ahead of August. Every August the Fringe, the world's largest arts festival, fills Edinburgh for three weeks. It gets the year's best weather, and the longest queues and highest hotel prices with it, and it has to be booked months ahead, which is a lot of planning for anyone who only came for the Castle. Winter is cold and dark by mid-afternoon, with the Christmas market and Hogmanay to make up for it.

Ondine, on the same bridge, gave us one brilliant seafood meal. It has since left. Building works on the block closed it, and it now cooks at Seaton House in St Andrews, in Fife, somewhere beyond the view from Calton Hill.