Edinburgh's most archetypal suburb, whose name has become a shorthand for a certain respectable, quietly self-satisfied version of Scottish middle-class life. Morningside Road is a long High Street of stone-fronted shops, bakeries, delis, and the kind of tea rooms where you order scones without irony. The neighbourhood spreads through wide streets of Victorian stone villas and Edwardian semis — well-kept, tree-lined, and strikingly quiet for somewhere barely two miles from the castle.
It is also a useful base: the Bruntsfield Links and the Meadows are close, trams and buses run frequently into the centre, and a scattering of good independent restaurants has taken root among the traditional tea-and-cake establishments. The old Dominion cinema on Church Hill is one of the best independent screens in Scotland.