Brandon's Chevening Fellowship Blog: My Flat

Some of you have asked what my accommodations are like. All in all, reasonably nice and excellent location. I live in a 3 bedroom basement flat in the "Old Town" part of the City. It's called the South Side Apartments and the address is 7 Newington Rd. Edinburgh. Here's a satellite map:

View Larger Map

I'm about a 15 minute walk South of the Royal Mile, which is the main tourist drag that runs from the Edinburgh Castle to the Holyrood Palace. It basically goes right under the word "Edinburgh" in the map above. The Business School (where most of our classes are held) is about 10 minutes away in Bristo Square. Edinburgh is a really walkable city. You can get to almost anything you need - groceries, shopping, pubs, the gym - by foot. The only tricky thing is that the street names seem to change every block or two...so the street I live on goes from North Bridge to South Bridge to Nicholson to Clerk to South Clerk to Newington to Minto to Mayfield Gardens to Craigmillar Park all in one day's stroll. Makes giving directions by street name a bit confusing, so instead I tell people that our building also houses the Reverie Bar, a pub with really good live music a few times a week.

All of the Chevening Fellows are staying either in this building or right next door. The apartments are all different inside...our common room/kitchen is nice but without much counterspace, though we also have access to the courtyard behind the building - so it's a tradeoff.

My roommates are Nitin, a political reporter for the Times of India, which has the biggest circulation of any English language newspaper in the world, and Zahid, a top advisor to the Turkish energy minister. Both really nice guys.