9 Moray Place
Moray Place. Ours is the one with columns. The private garden is on the right.
We lucked out with our flat… my mum referred us to a ‘letting agent’ who navigated the crazy process from across the pond… best decision we made. We got this place before it hit the market. Interestingly, there aren’t standard lease lengths like in the States- all rentals are month to month.
We’re in the New Town, a few minutes’ walk from the heart of Edinburgh and next to the charming neighborhood of Stockbridge. Our hexagonal street, Moray Place, is Georgian, built by the Earl of Moray in 1822. There’s a beautiful 3-acre private garden in the middle (my Notting Hill fantasy come true!). According to ‘Edinburgh’s Hidden Walks’, “after nearly 200 years it remains arguably Scotland’s grandest street”. Goodness. And we’re American! Must watch our p’s and q’s…
My bedroom/office has huge windows and a view over the old rooftops. There’s a freestanding roll-top bathtub in a corner of the bedroom next to the windows- it seems so random, but it’s really lovely to take a bath in the bedroom and look out over the view! It’s fun to think of people living their lives within these walls 200 years ago. Nothing in the US is this old… There’s a museum up the street called The Georgian House that shows you what these homes looked like in the 1800s, and how people lived. So glad chamber pots are no more! I’ve been learning alot about Georgian architecture… what I haven’t figured out yet is why they had such high ceilings when it was so hard to stay warm!
Both the dining room and living room have floor to ceiling bookshelves, and you know I’m a total book nerd, so I feel right at home. They’re packed with hilarious titles like British Blood-Sucking Flies and How to Build Your Own Tennis Court that deserve their own post. Every few days we find one of the cats sleeping in the empty spaces.
The ceilings are 18 feet high- but that’s all that’s ‘big and tall’. The tiny kitchen sink is the size of our bar sink at home. The fridge is the size of a dorm fridge- remember those? Good for Cokes and leftover pizza… not so much for a condiment-loving family! We bought a second little one and stuck it in the master bedroom closet. However- a pleasant surprise has been how little we use it after all (truly- just leftover pizza!) We do the shopping almost daily on foot at the greengrocer, the cheesemonger, the fish shop, the wine shop- no Costco runs, for sure! It feels simpler. I like it. Even the big grocery stores have little ‘locals’ in every part of the city with all the basics, so it’s easy to go weeks without a big shop.
The washing machine is TINY (think one king sheet). There’s no dryer, which is normal here (energy is expensive)- so there’s a ‘pulley’ instead, a contraption that has been in use in British kitchens for hundreds of years. You hang your wet clothes on it and it hoists up over your head to dry near the ceiling. I’m still getting used to seeing our underwear dangling overhead, but I’m sure that will wear off eventually 😳
Living with someone else’s interior design choices has been challenging. I love creating spaces, and I’d just finished our house in the mountains when we moved into this furnished flat. It’s a fantastic space, but it’s full of weird (to us) antiques and odd furniture, and I just want to make it amazing. But I can’t, because it’s not mine, and that is probably going to be an enduring lesson- how to live with things that could be better and just let them be. I’m battling my instincts and learning to smile at the giant gilded patriarch portraits on the hallway walls (Anne has named them Archibald and Ismelda) and accept them for who they are- part of home, for now. In the meantime, I’ve replaced all the rugs and bought about a dozen throw pillows 🙄 Home sweet (temporary) home.
