Being a first time visitor to a new city allows for a bit of trial and error. Edinburgh is full of old roads, alleyways that connect one street to another, various staircases that your not sure where they lead. This makes for adventurous city walks, which just means that you learn to experiment with where your heading. If a staircase looks to be the direction your going, follow it, and even if you’re wrong you still get to see new parts of the city. Mistakes are fun and make a story. My friend and I on our first day here made it a mission to visit Edinburgh Castle so we walked out onto the street and picked a random direction. This led us to bustling streets with large church’s, bookshops that smelled of old paper, and an indoor market in an old repurposed building. We stopped at a café for breakfast and gathered our strength  to once more walk the cobbled streets. Finally making it to the castle in the afternoon, which is a story all on its own. When we had finished and decided to return to our hostel, we once more fiddled with our map and took a right turn down a large staircase. This led us directly to the front door of our Hostel, maybe only a 30 second walk up the stairs, and we started laughing. We couldn’t believe that we had taken a 30 second walk and turned it into an hour long journey. It was a mistake,but again one that meant we got to understand the roads more, so today it was rather easy to move about. Its a good thing we didn’t take the fastest route because going the long way was a lot more fun and makes for a good memory.