Portobello is Edinburgh's seaside, and the strange thing is how few people treat it that way. A mile of real sand, a Victorian promenade, working Turkish baths, and a row of cafés facing the Forth — fifteen minutes from the city on a bus. On a bright morning it's the best cheap pleasure the city has.
Come in down Bath Street, which opens onto the whole firth at its foot, and step onto the Promenade. Walk east with the sand on your right and the painted seafront terraces on your left, built when this was a proper Victorian resort. Drop onto the beach itself — the firm sand at the tideline is the best surface in the city to walk on — and keep an eye on the Fife shore across the water.
The Portobello Swim Centre holds one of the last working Turkish baths in Scotland, a 1901 survival you'd never guess from the prom. Cut a block back for the resort villas with their sea-watching balconies, then carry on east to Joppa, where the sand gives way to rock pools and the crowds thin to nothing. The bus back into town runs from the road behind.
