Edinburgh, Scotland (July 7, 2025)
Well, sort of. I mean, I landed in Edinburgh, Scotland and met Sabina Incolo (Nalepa) at the airport. I took a picture of her in front of the sign that clearly shows the name “Edinburgh” and then we promptly left and headed to where she lives with her incredible family in Kinghorn Scotland, where I stayed for the the next few days.
Kinghorn is directly north of Edinburgh and where I stayed for my journey
After an intense start to my journey with an epic first week in Ireland, I welcomed an alternative approach while in Scotland. This was, afterall, my second visit to Scotland. And since this was a slower paced visit, I’m going to take my time to tell my story in the next few posts so that you can get a feel for my experience and why these few days were exactly what were needed at this point in the journey in my travels.
Previous Edinburgh Visit
The last time I visited Edinburgh was in 2015 for Dan Pena’s 70th birthday party. He wrote a book called Your First 100 Million and it was about how he had bet against the OPEC oil crisis in the 1970s and won. He went on to buy an actual castle in Scotland and pull the two designers of the most famous golf course (St. Andrews) out of retirement to create his own private 9 hole course in his house (which I am fortunate to have played).
I interviewed Dan Pena for Inc.com back when I was writing for the publication. He liked what I wrote and invited me to join him for his celebration. I paid for my own airfare and he put me up in a nearby hotel and took me to and from his castle for a 7-day celebration. Yes, that’s correct. It was an over-the-top you’ve never seen anything like it birthday party with a who’s who guest list including CEOs and founders of all sorts of companies including Bulletproof Coffee, Dave Asprey — a lovely guy who I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting up.
You can’t make this stuff up. One minute I’m interviewing an eccentric (hundred millionaire? billionaire? does it matter? I don’t know his net worth and don’t really care.) And the next minute I’m the odd man out hob nobbing at a power event with power players from all over the world. It was very cool to be sure and a very surreal way to enter Edinburgh for the very first time.
One of the events during this 7 day shindig was to play the 9 hole golf in Dan Pena’s back yard. He quoted the two designers he had pulled out of retirement who said, “If you ever share this, we’ll deny we ever said it, but I think your course is more challenging than St. Andrews. As it’s the last we’ve designed, we took what we learned from St. Andrews and applied it to yours. Again, don’t tell anyone we said this, but know that you have one of the most challenging and exceptional golf courses in the world.”
And, to be clear, I’m not nearly a good enough golf player to enjoy the nuances that these world-renound course designers built into the course, but it sure was fun (and challenging) to play.
After that, I gave myself a few days to do the typical tourist things like visit the Edinburgh Castle and walk around the town of Edinburgh so I felt no need to do any of that this time around during my world tour.
Golf course behind Sabina Nalepa’s home
I did, however, have a bit of nostalgia as we walked from Sabina’s back yard to the beach through this beautiful golf course. What I noticed in Ireland and Scotland is that just about everyone I stayed with had some lose connection to golf but didn’t play themselves. That’s fine with me.
I’m a “fair weather” golfer. If you want to play, I’m there. But I prefer “best ball” and not keeping score. I play for the fun the game rather than to keep score and win at all costs. That drives some people crazy and I can understand if you’re a die-hard golfer.
View from my room where I was staying with Sabina Nalepa; inspired to write.
I set this context so that you can understand when I share about the next few days. No typical tourist stuff in Edinburgh. Instead a truly magical week that unfolds in an entirely different way.
