We are renting a car for the second half of our UK trip, which ends in Edinburgh. We will not need our rental car in Edinburgh and would like to return it as soon as we arrive. (We are staying near St. Andrew Square.) On a July weekday morning, would it easy enough to drive into the city to return it to Waverley Station or would it be easier to return it to EDI and then take public transport into the city?
Posted by
Seattle, WA, USA ☔️
6788 posts
IME, as long as you stay out of the historic center, driving in/around Edinburgh is not difficult. That said, the airport location is going to be easy, and the airport is very well connected to the city by inexpensive tram and bus service, which runs frequently.
Posted by
Paris
9565 posts
Return it at the airport and take the tram into town. Save yourself the headache of trying to drive in Edinburgh.
P.s. you might want to move this question to the Scotland forum.
Posted by
Mid-Atlantic area
6532 posts
We picked up and dropped off at the airport, then took the bus into town.
Posted by
Edinburgh
12 posts
Drop the car at the airport then take the very frequent tram from there to St Andrew Square stop. Easy. Buy your ticket from the machine before you board or you will pay a penalty.
Posted by
SF Bay Area
304 posts
We did exactly this – we returned our rental car to Waverley Station on a weekday morning in July (2018). Do not recommend : )
We should have asked on this forum, but I didn't know about it back then!
In addition to the "excitement" of driving down the Royal Mile (inadvertently), we got charged an extra day for the car, since we dropped it off around 11:30am and then went to take our train to London, not sticking around until they processed it; when we checked later we saw that they had processed it at 6pm. Hmm ....
Posted by
OP
Portland, Maine
9 posts
Thank you everyone! It sounds like an airport return would be less stressful, however my only hesitation is that our hotel is a 7 minute walk from Waverley. Given the close proximity, would you still recommend the airport return? (I’m not sure if it would make a difference, but if we were to end up doing the Waverley return, we’d be entering the city on via the A1 or the A7.). Any and all suggestions are appreciated.