Grassmarket Edinburgh Old Town: 4 places of interest

1. Rejuvenate your body and your insta feed at Hula

Hula Juice Bar & Healthy Eatery is an apothecary of gemstone shaded freshly pulped fruit and vegetable infused juices and smoothies. Ginger Jack, Tahiti Kicks, Chia Fields, Sunshine in a Cup, the drinks menu promises the plethora of a YouTube influencer's pantry cupboard, a late afternoon energy kick and a sense of a beverage well done all poured into dome-topped and straw-speared plastic cups which silently beam I'm ready for my close up now as they're handed over the counter.

Self-described as an "island in the city" their PR miss-proclamation is less exotic and more social media stolen and superfood sprinkled wellness trends. Nevertheless, Hula delivers artfully designed smoothie bowls of berries and seeds, matcha lattes, Poke bowls, avocado toast, sandwiches, wraps and rainbow bowls which could bring a health-conscious unicorn to climax.

Hula, 103-105 W Bow, Edinburgh EH1 2JP, serves both sit-in and takeaway. Open 8 am 6 pm, 7 days a week.

2. Sip and swoon at Scotland's first cat cafe

Maison De Moggy is a homey cafe of 12 cats, coffee and cakes based on the same phenomena trend in Japan. Cat paradise a la cafe, Maison is a cutesy hub of custom climbing frames, kitty bunk beds and on floor cat nanny for those irregularly spaced moments of the day when the cats are awake.

Perfect for patrons with a wish to be in the sheer presence of felines whilst they take their caffeine fix. Maison De Moggy has the intimate, calm atmosphere of any other independent, boutique cafe, plus cats.

For those assuming they're signing-in for cat-to-patron interaction? A few of Moggy's house rules: no shoes, no picking up of the cats, no invading of the cats' personal space and no stroking the cats when they're asleep. Cat's are awake sixteen hours a day, Maison De Moggy is open six, seven of Thursdays, let the math be yours.

Maison De Moggy, 17 West Port, Edinburgh EH1 2JA, is open seven days a week. 10.30am – 11.30am, 11.45am – 12.45pm, 1.00pm – 2.00pm, 2.00pm-3.00pm CLOSED, 3pm – 4pm, 4.15pm – 5.15pm, 5.30pm – 6.30pm

7.00pm – 8pm (Thursdays only).

3. Snap, crackle and pop and 'Aha, ha, ha's' Joke shop.

Aha, Ha Ha is settled at the spiralling base of the cobblestone road of turreted, pastel-painted and chocolate box re-imagined Gothic architecture of West Bow-street, the very one which inspired J.K Rolling's Diagon Alley and for picturesque, fantastically perfect reason. This street has the rickety and brass accented 'Harry Potter shop' as termed by tourists, officially Museum Context, which holds movie prop replicas and dunbeldorian atmosphere, but that's a different review.

Where Bow-street widens to the Grassmarket's paved expanse an old-school comedy disguise nose and glasses bulbs reminiscent of London's Camden Town from the side of a building, a gigantic Groucho Marx settled above a door, bell chime and a window display of horse head masks, itching powder and super sour candies. Aha, Ha, Ha rumored to be the inspiration for the Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, is a tiny, cluttered spectacle for pranksters and dress up devotees regularly maned by strays of Edinburgh's niche art community dressed in tweed and emo technicolor.

Inside are cauldrons of plastic jobbies, small cartons of powders and pastels for pranking friends, whoopie cushions, boobie trap props, and a very warm welcome. Most entering the store, which has reigned sturdy and humble in Edinburgh for over twenty-five years, will crane their necks upwards eyes glassy with delight as skeletons sky ski above them smoking fake joints in sunflower sunglasses. Leaving no wall space dozens of professional horror, movie characters and animal latex masks beam down at patrons as though entering a pop-culture circus LSD trip.

AHA, Ha, Ha, 99 W Bow, Edinburgh EH1 2JP, is open 7 days a week, Mon-Fri 10 am - 6 pm and Sundays 11 am - 5 pm.

Note: at the time of writing Cathi and Bill Bowen have very sadly placed AHA, Ha, Ha up for resale after seventeen years of ownership. We dearly hope it goes to good, worthy hands.

4. Feed mind and imagination in a stacked shelves labyrinth of bound books.

Armchair Books, arguably, I will argue with you, at length, the best bookstore in Edinburgh. A heartwarming gem beloved by city natives they are the appreciation of the written word, fictional, political, historical, rare, hipster and Scottish, objectified into a semi-circle of lovingly up-kept titles, threadbare oriental rugs and an antique musk of pages of dog ended past.

Armchair carries the leather-bound, the threadbare, the pockmarked and the glossily coated of a photographer's book bound visual dream. What distinguishes the store is the sense of love for each leafed, digested and thrown aside volume by the store sheltering them, the hushed patrons left in peace bowing their heads above them and the managers hunched behind the counters over them. In narrow lanes of shelves, there is an unspoken assumption that here sales stand second to the love of literature.

Multiple stacks of the full works of Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) and local author Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting), fiction novelist favourites of Armchair Books, scatter a daydream's interpretation of alphabetised throughout the store. Nooks of decades preserved Bronte and Hardy turn tetristically into new domains of rare, thin volumes of Carl Marx to fall deeper into antique folios of caricature artworks and fantasy illustrations. Warning: neck strain may be inevitable.