Edinburgh for The Slow Weekenders: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Seventy acres with a rock garden, a Chinese hillside and benches facing the castle across the city; free, and the gates close with the light.

A small, carefully stocked bookshop on the Stockbridge street of antique dealers; buy the one you will read in the bath.

Dean Banks's seafood room, oysters and a plate of langoustines, with a table that is yours for the evening and nobody turning it.

A thermal suite and a rooftop hydropool that steams in the open air with the castle in view; a day pass is the whole morning.

A long lunch in a timber warehouse with a wood stove, Scottish produce in a few quiet courses and a cellar that leans to small growers.

A seventeenth-century-style garden of clipped hedges hidden off the Royal Mile, with benches and almost nobody; the city noise does not reach it.

Two miles of Victorian seafront with cafés and sand; walk it slowly to the Joppa end and back, coffee from the kiosk on the way.

Three hot rooms, a plunge pool and a marble slab under Victorian tiles from 1901; the Sunday session runs for hours and nobody talks.

A chef-run room in a former shop with Scottish produce on short menus, an early table and an early night.

Charles Jencks's Landform of grass terraces and pools on the lawn, and the Water of Leith at the bottom of the garden; sit before going in.

Eduardo Paolozzi's studio moved across the road in plaster and clutter, and the three-storey Vulcan in the hall; free and quiet on Mondays.

Soup, a sandwich and a slice of cake in the gallery's café, with the garden to look at and a taxi to the airport from the door.