Hogmanay in Scotland – Your Next NYE Adventure

What is Hogmanay?

Imagine this – spending the day strolling through the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, Scotland, with the anticipation of the night to come all around you.  There are castles, hidden alleyways, rowdy bars, quaint cafes – all along the Royal Mile & Princess Street.  Twinkly lights are strewn throughout the streets, along with wreaths and holly leftover from the Christmas holiday.  People from all over the world are walking along the streets and sipping on cocktails by the bar windows, just waiting for the festivities to start for Hogmanay.

For NYE 2016, I went with 7 friends to Edinburgh for Hogmanay, which is Scotland’s New Year’s Eve celebrations.  We were already in Ireland, so we flew out of Dublin to get to Edinburgh.  Hogmanay is a multi-day festivital, starting with a torch light procession on December 30th.  Have you read the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon?  Maybe not, but I bet you’ve seen a preview for the show!  This event has been around for hundreds of years, possibly as early as the 1400s, and is referenced in the series set in the 1700s.

The actual event on NYE is set right downtown, you enter the festival through barricades blocking off certain streets.  This event requires tickets, which are roughly $10 and well worth it.  It’s BYOB once you enter the barriers, so it’s relatively affordable.  The actual limits of the barriers encompass a huge part of the city, right underneath the beautiful Edinburgh castle that gets lit up for the holiday season.

Edinburgh is the perfect host for this magical event

On New Years Eve night, our group stayed in our amazing Airbnb (more on that later) until about 10pm, just playing cheers governor and enjoying each other’s company before the inevitable craziness ensued.  We had already picked up our wrist bands for the night.  Once we were ready to join our fellow NYE celebrators, we walked to one of the entrances on Princess Street and began our night. We made ourselves some rum & cokes, and sipped them while walking underneath the castle. There’s a Ferris wheel and some other fair type activities within the event, so that was our first stop.

Midnight hit when we were all together (barely, after a very long bathroom line – tip: adult diapers…kidding), we got some fantastic pictures with the fireworks in the background.  The event was so well laid out, it wasn’t overly crowded.  It was the perfect amount of people so that you could walk around freely with your group without having to squeeze by mass amounts of humans.  There were waffle stands, places to buy beverages (if you ran through your own BYOB stock), and tons of interesting people from all over the world to meet (we met some Tasmanian and Welsh friends that night).  

Event Details

The event offers some package deals for housing, so we took advantage of that – and boy, was it a great decision.  There were 8 of us, so we had 2 apartments next to each other with 2 queen bedrooms and a large, modern kitchen & living room in each.  We were there for 3 nights, and we had such a great time.  We almost just booked it for NYE 2017 as we were leaving.  I have to admit that Scottish accents kind of threw me for a loop.  We speak the same language but I had a tough time understanding some of the locals.  Nonetheless, everyone was extremely kind and hospitable (and patient with my blank stares after they’d speak).  I’m very much looking forward to my next visit to Scotland, next time I’m planning on visiting Glasgow & The Highlands!

Summary of Trip

Time of Year: Late December through early January
Weather: Low to Mid 40s, Drizzled most of the time
Highlights: The Hogmanay festival itself; Just walking down the Royal Mile & Princes St; Driving around northern Scotland
Lessons Learned: Nothing was too crowded during this time of year, airfare was relatively cheap and the slightly dreary weather didn’t bother us much – I’d love to go in the summer to compare, but I would still recommend visiting during the winter holiday season, it’s dreamy!