Our Neighborhood

Stockbridge Neighborhood in Edinburgh

We will be living in the Stockbridge neighborhood in the capital city Edinburgh. When we visited during our reconnaissance trip in September, we were attracted to that neighborhood because of its proximity to the Edinburgh city center and old town and because of how vibrant it seemed. We have booked a small one-bedroom Airbnb flat for our first two months and a larger Airbnb two-bedroom flat for the remaining four months. The larger flat will be perfect for hosting guests. Renting through Airbnb is something we are familiar with and is quite easy to do.

We gave serious consideration to renting a flat through a local Edinburgh agency and ultimately decided against that approach because of its uncertainty and difficulty. The uncertainty comes from the fact that we would have to wait until we actually arrived in Edinburgh to secure the rental. And, the difficulty comes from the fact that the process to rent a flat is fairly complicated; instead of flats being centrally listed as they tend to be in the US, each of the many letting agencies takes responsibility for a limited number of flats and must be dealt with individually.

One really positive aspect of our two-bedroom flat, especially for Mike, is that it is just down the street from where Ernest Shackleton lived one hundred years ago. He is a famous Antarctic explorer whom Mike has studied, written about, and spoken about at conferences.

Backstory

Edinburgh Location in Scotland

Beth and Mike are headed to Edinburgh in southern Scotland for six months, beginning in mid February 2020. This is a lifestyle type of trip with some volunteering. It should be an exciting and enjoyable experience. We had a very successful volunteer trip of this length in Hungary in 2008, and one in Tanzania in 2017. We recently visited Scotland's two largest cities, loved the capital city of Edinburgh, really liked the friendly people, learned about renting a flat, found a wonderful neighborhood, and identified a number of volunteer opportunities.