"We booked our 3 night stay here to celebrate our 20th anniversary, which also co-incided with Hogmanay, so we were very excited about the trip. We wanted to stay in a more traditional Edinburgh property rather than a large chain hotel, and that's what we got.
The hotel is beautiful, thoughtfully designed with decor sympathtic to the period of the building. We had a junior suite, which was huge. There was loads of storage space and everything needed for enjoying some time relaxing in the room after a hectic day before going out in the evening. The bathroom was small but well appointed, and how big does a bathroom need to be anyway?
The location was great; about a 10-15 minute walk to the centre of the city, which was perfect to walk off the big breakfast, and just far enough out to feel away from the hustle and bustle, especially over New Year.
Noticeable Plus Points:
- Beautiful room and location
- Fantastic, delicious breakfast with a nice selection also available if you don't want a cooked meal; it kept us full for the whole day.
- Wonderful hospitality, we were left some complimentary chocolates and brought some Prosecco on New Years Eve - very nice, unexpected touch.
- Reasonably priced drinks in the bar
- Friendly, helpful staff
- Clean & well maintained
Minor criticisms for the hotel to consider:
- The room was quite cold, with only 3 small radiators, which wasn't enough for such a large space with high ceilings and 3 floor to ceiling windows that weren't double glazed. We were offered a fan heater when this was mentioned to the staff though.
- The tea / coffee selection was underwhelming, only 4 coffee pods for the machine, and mostly herbal tea bags, which i don't like at all, so had to ask for regualar ones from reception, and the cups were so tiny that there were literally only 3 mouthfuls, so we bought our own coffee and milk for my husband and made drinks with the kettle.
- Housekeeping a bit hit & miss - we were only left washing flannels on the 3rd day but could've done with them from day 1 as we didn't bring any. We also had to ask for the shower gel to be topped up, as this wasn't done by the housekeeper.
- The bed was 2 singles zipped together, and it was sort of tilted down towards the headboard, which was quite uncomfortable and disorientating, so for the 2nd and third nights, we slept with our heads at the foot end of the bed, which helped. I'm not a fan of single beds joined together, because of the bump in the middle; I expected as we'd booked it as a double, it would be one big bed.
- Woken up between 4am & 5am on Tuesday 2nd January by the bin collection, which was very noisy probably due to the cobbled streets - not a fault of the hotle at all, but would've been nice to be told about it in advance so we could use ear plugs.
Finally, one big problem for me personally were the toiletries - i was looking forward to having a few relaxing baths during our stay (as we don't currently have a bath at home), with the lovely l'occitane products, but they were in large dispensers fixed high up on the wall - perfect positioning if you're having a shower, but impossible to reach when in the bath, so every time you wanted a squirt of something, you'd have to stand up, then sit back down, which may be fine for most people, albeit inconvenient, but i have chronic arthritis, and am unable to do this; it takes me ages to get into the bath safely to begin with and then out again, so my husband had to help me, which was sort of fine, but if i'd been alone, i wouldn't have been able to enjoy a bath at all :-(. I can't comment if the toiletries are like this in every room, but i was really disappointed with this, after spending £1500, and wanting to enjoy the full exeperience. I get that it saves on plastic waste to have the large refillables, which i'm all for to help the environment, but no thought was given to the practicality of using them - in our room at least.
Having said all of that - it is a beautiful place, and we would probably stay again; knowing what we know now about the few issues, we'd be prepared for them and could make special requests, which i'm sure the hotel would accomodate."
