ahd

Not cheap but it worked quite well for us.

Nothing for children under 5. Not even opportunity for parents and kids to play together. There were options for older kids, although mine wasn't interested and other parents were complaining that the hours were quite reduced.

We used a taxi. You can call or use an app to set it up.

(I think the hop on hop off was around 17 ish pounds per person). Also there was an insane amount of construction on the roads from Lieth (the tender port area) to the royal mile area.

Bad traffic and cranky pint -sized travelers led to the spur of the moment taxi decision; we were interested in efficiency at that point;) would recommend the hop on/hop off bus. They seemed to be operating regularly and have a good route. For one person and with the discounts, the formal excursion bus would make financial sense for sure.

We were planning to taxi/Uber, but the waits were like 40 min to get from the harbor to the royal mile. (We had tendered to the harbor, can't remember the name of the harbor.) There were volunteers there that had general tourist information and also a rep from a bus company. You can take a City bus for a few pounds to the royal mile area, or buy a ticket on the spot for a hop on/off bus right there. (It was a blue and yellow bus, not the red;the stop was a 90 second walk from the tender). Later, I was able to get a taxi (i think from Edinburgh city taxi--download the app and enter payment info in advance) within a few min to take us back to the harbor. We could have waited for the bus again, but the traffic was so bad. The 'on your own' bus leaves and comes back at rigid times. That might work for you or you may find that you would want more flexibility with a bus or taxi. depends also on the size of your party (if you are a party of 1 and don't want the Lothian city bus), the excursion might make sense. If you are two or three people, the cost might be a wash.

We were on this cruise also. Had an awesome time. We don't do cruise company excursions generally, but we did the Kirkwall/Orkney one called 'ancient treasures of orkney.' the tour was awesome but the guide (while very nice) was terrible. She was very hard to understand and did not add anything/was not a good guide. We did our own tour of Alesund ( the little train right In front and then walked around, thought about doing one of the tours of outer Islands but didn't) and Edinburgh (we did one of the hop on busses). The queen was In Edinburgh and the traffic was awful /we had a hard time getting a taxi initially.

Will need to get a child a PCR test in Iceland, in order to board a ship in June. I have had problems finding information about how/where to schedule this. Does anyone know?