Benjamin Franklin's Edinburgh Walking Tour

In 1787, after the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked, "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"

"A republic," Franklin said, "if we can keep it."

Twenty-eight years before that, in the year 1759, Benjamin Franklin first visited Edinburgh, the centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. He was friends with the great luminries of the Age of Reason, like David Hume, Adam Smith, James Hutton, Joseph Black, the list goes on! What sort of future Enlightened government might they have imagined? Find out how this visit, 17 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, influenced Franklin's small but significant edit to that world changing document.

We start our walk at East Princes St Gardens, the N'or Loch to the old walled city, then wind our way up and over the High Street, and finish at the top of the Mound. It is a wonderful way to see the city, especially if one has an interest in 18th century Edinburgh and Benjamin Franklin, the only Founding Father to sign all three of the most important documents to create the United States; those being the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris to end the Revolutionary War, and the US Constitution.

We will see where Franklin, Smith, and Hutton all got Cauld Cock and Feather! Was that an 18th century disease? No. It was a large brandy with raisins at the old John's Coffee House, Parliament Square. Where was Mrs Cowen's boarding house where Franklin lodged, or Lucky Boyd's Tavern, where he drank? Where was Creech's Land, and what did Franklin buy there to send back to Philadelphia? And how might have Benjamin Franklin and the famous Edinburgh celebrity Indian Pete have known each other?

Learn why Franklin called his trip to Scotland "the densest happiness I have met with at any part of my life..."

A tour led by Rick Conte, an American who was taken in by Edinburgh 36 years ago, and has yet to be spat out.

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