Relaxation and romance

Feb 7 2010 by Steve Brown, Sunday Sun

AS Valentine’s Day looms, STEVE BROWN brings out his romantic side in Scotland’s capital city.

Once liberated – her from the netty, me from the telly – we walked along Princes, Rose and George Streets, fine shopping arenas all.

Fine apart from Links of London jewellers, whose diamond engagement rings Wor Lass took a worrying liking to. "Let’s cross the road," I said, "the Princes Street Gardens are a much nicer walk."

Which reminded me, I once came up on a family holiday with best mate Fredo – of Seaton Delaval ice cream fame – and he cheated, in the Gardens, on the Pepsi Challenge. Brilliant.

Anyway, on we went up Princes and Caroline Castigliano’s wedding dress shop appeared on the horizon, but before Wor Lass clocked it, I suggested we hang a left to Harvey Nicks.

Now I know, Edinburgh is chock- a-block with culture. Galleries, theatres, museums. Tours of spectres and single malts, dungeons and torture, the panoramic views from the Scott Monument, the new Scottish Parliament, old Holy- roodhouse and infinitely-older Arthur’s Seat.

All that, and we’re shopping. I know, I know.

So, her shop-fondness sated, intae it we delved, up the Royal Mile and into the Castle, the city’s ultimate, but far from sole bastion of grey, gothic ghostliness.

You can keep your Hogmanay, Festival and Tattoo. All great, I’ve done them all. And the capital isn’t romantic in the card shop, chocolate box, edible lingerie kind of way.

Much better, its castle, cobbled alleys and cosy boozers ooze warmth while its cosmopolitan new town – littered with upmarket bars and eateries – smacks of coupledom.

So what better than to . . . split up! She for a manicure, me, muscles burning from all the walking – a small city, it’d be a synch to get about were it not all hills and valleys – to One, Europe’s top spa, at the Sheraton Hotel.

And despite the snowfall – and how good of the tourist board to lay that on? – I took to the heated hydropool, its invigorating jets pummeling my limbs, and swam, via an adjoining tunnel . . . outside.

Surreal, sublime - and the latter sensation sustains through the spa’s thermal suite, a series of saunas and steam rooms inspired by the ancient Celts and Romans.

I doubt their cleansing sessions were ever interrupted by a fire alarm but not even that – forcing a be-gowned me temporarily outdoors – could arrest my descent, aided and abetted by a Balinese massage, into utter relaxation.

It left me so chilled out, I simply had to perk myself up with a pint in The Blue Blazer, one of a zillion traditional Edinburgh pubs where the welcome isn’t just a mat on the floor.

And no one does "Welcome to Edinburgh" quite like Chris Potts, front of house at Tony Singh’s exceptional and exquisite Oloroso restaurant, where the food – her quail narrowly beat my duck – is matched only by the stunning rooftop views of the city and Tynemouth-born Chris’s genial patter.

No wonder Jack Nicholson, Oasis, Sean Connery and Sarah Harding are all regulars.

Nursing a hangover the next morning – we’d subsequently taken a "cocktail class" at The Living Room – I was gutted to learn that the thickening snow had forced the temporary closure of Edinburgh Zoo, a short bus ride away (Edinburgh’s buses are excellent).

So not so much "Och aye the noo!" as "Och no to the zoo!".

"Nice touch," Wor Lass texted me later. I’d made her breakfast in bed see, wheat-free an’ all.

And if it can bring out the romantic in me, Edinburgh must be, as Robert Louis Stevenson once said, "what Paris ought to be".