The streets worth walking
Bruntsfield Place is the main run: a mile of independent shops with almost no chains, from Falko's Austrian bakery to the Edinburgh Bookshop and a good handful of charity shops that are better stocked than most vintage stores. Cross the Links to Marchmont for the Victorian tenements and the Meadows' tree-lined walks; in cherry-blossom season the double avenue at Melville Drive is worth timing a trip around. West, Merchiston takes you past Napier's tower and the house where John Napier invented logarithms.
Eating and drinking
Söderberg does the cardamom buns and sourdough; Project Coffee and Salt Café cover breakfast. For dinner, Montpeliers is the all-day brasserie people default to, Locanda de Gusti serves Neapolitan seafood a short walk north, and Bross Bagels does the late-night answer. The pubs are neighbourhood pubs rather than tourist pubs: the Golf Tavern on the Links has been pouring since 1456 by its own account, and Bennets Bar by the King's Theatre is a Victorian interior worth a drink on its own.
Green space and family days
Bruntsfield Links has the pitch-and-putt, open to anyone with a few pounds for club hire, and the Meadows beyond it has tennis courts, playgrounds and enough grass for a long afternoon. Blackford Hill and the Royal Observatory are twenty-five minutes south for the best skyline view in the city, and the Union Canal towpath at Fountainbridge gives a flat, car-free walk out west. For rainy days the King's Theatre and the Cameo cinema are both within ten minutes.
Getting around
It is a twenty-minute walk across the Links to the Grassmarket and twenty-five to Waverley. Buses 11, 15, 16, 23, 27 and 45 all run along Bruntsfield Place into town every few minutes, which makes this the best-connected neighbourhood by bus in the city. Street parking is residents' permit on weekdays but genuinely available in the evenings — one of the few central areas where arriving by car is straightforward.
