Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow

After about three hours on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, taking too many photos, making the obligatory Harry Potter-shop detour and buying souvenirs we absolutely did not plan for, we reached the stage of sightseeing where everybody suddenly becomes very interested in sitting down.

That is how we ended up at Gladstone’s Land, not initially for the history, but for tea.

The coffee shop sits right on the ground floor of this centuries-old tenement, and there is something rather satisfying about stopping for a hot drink inside a building that has been trading in one form or another for hundreds of years. We ordered tea, hot chocolate and a doughnut, then gave our feet permission to stop working.

Gladstone’s Land Has Seen Quite a Lot

Gladstone’s Land is much more than a cafe with an old-looking exterior.

The building dates back to the 16th century and takes its name from merchant Thomas Gladstone, who bought it in 1617 and expanded it partly so he could rent rooms to prosperous tenants. Over the centuries, the building housed merchants, shops, tradespeople and eventually less affluent residents as Edinburgh’s wealthier population moved towards the New Town.

By 1911, widow Mary Wilson was running a boarding house here, advertising rooms for respectable gentlemen. The building later deteriorated badly enough to face demolition before the National Trust for Scotland rescued it in the 1930s. Today, the upper floors tell those different chapters of Edinburgh life, while downstairs has returned to what the building has done for centuries: commerce, conversation and people eating things.

There is now a coffee shop and ice cream parlour on the ground floor, alongside the visitor attraction above.

Breakfast Tea Was Exactly What We Needed

The English Breakfast Tea was not about discovering a revolutionary new beverage.

It was hot. We were tired. Excellent combination.

It came with milk and sugar on the side, and adding both turned it into something closer to the comforting milk tea we are used to drinking back home. The tea itself remained strong enough not to disappear completely once the milk went in.

After several hours of walking in Edinburgh weather, sophistication becomes less important than warmth.

This did the job beautifully.

The Hot Chocolate Was Good, Just Not Our Favourite

Gladstone’s Land offers both a standard Hot Chocolate and a Luxury Hot Chocolate. We ordered the regular one.

Compared with the hot chocolate we had earlier at Word of Mouth, this was noticeably less creamy and more chocolate-forward. It was also sweeter, with the cocoa flavour sitting more obviously at the front rather than being softened by lots of milk.

Bad hot chocolate? Absolutely not.

We have encountered the genuinely questionable kind before: oily surfaces, syrup-level sweetness, watery texture, artificial chocolate flavour. There are arguments we are willing to have. Defining the world’s worst hot chocolate is not one of them.

This was simply a perfectly decent cup that did not leave us thinking about it afterwards.

The Speciality Tea Was More Interesting

The menu rather mysteriously lists a Herbal/Speciality Tea rather than committing to one permanent flavour.

Ours arrived a deep reddish colour and tasted strongly of berries, with a floral aroma underneath. Unlike the Breakfast Tea, we did not want milk anywhere near this one.

It did not need sugar either.

Without either addition, the tart fruitiness came through more clearly and the floral note became more noticeable as the tea cooled. Of the teas we ordered, this was easily the more interesting cup.

The doughnut alongside it was simple but effective: soft, fluffy and sweet enough to work with the slightly tart tea without turning the entire break into sugar overload.

Nothing profound happened with the doughnut.

We still finished it.

A Good Place to Stop on the Royal Mile?

Yes, especially when your feet have started negotiating their resignation.

Gladstone’s Land is not somewhere we would tell people to visit purely because Edinburgh’s greatest hot chocolate is hiding inside. It isn’t.

What makes the stop enjoyable is the setting. You are drinking tea inside one of the Royal Mile’s historic tenements, with little reminders of the building’s past worked into a modern coffee shop. The National Trust currently operates the cafe daily alongside visits to the historic house above.

After three hours on the Royal Mile, respectable and seated was exactly what we needed.